Speaking
Making the hard parts understandable.
With three decades of international experience across multiple disciplines and industries, Kat is a skilled public speaker who has engaged, educated, and motivated diverse audiences on a wide variety of topics. She can navigate the complexities of transportation, energy, technology, environmental issues and risk and make the most difficult subjects understandable.
Kat’s energy, enthusiasm, and authenticity have inspired and encouraged everyone from STEM students to seasoned professionals for more than a decade.
Watch
Mario Cordero, Executive Director of the Port of Long Beach, on Chasing Zero — the book, the ports, and the work behind them. Published by the Port of Long Beach.
Where she’s spoken
What she talks about
Every talk starts with a question. Each one can become a keynote, panel discussion, or workshop, shaped to the audience and the conversation.
A lawsuit forced two rival ports to rethink how they balanced trade, growth, and public health. Twenty years on, communities, ports, regulators, and competitors in California and around the world are still watching closely.
What a port actually is, how it is governed, how far its reach runs, from every congressional district to nearly every store shelf, and what keeps the whole system moving… and why it sometimes doesn’t.
A story that existed only in fragments, told by people who often disagreed with one another. What it takes to preserve every perspective and still write one coherent story. What happens when everyone tells the truth, but no two truths are exactly alike.
Every clean technology arrives with bold claims. Which ones survive contact with the real world? Drawing on years of evaluating demonstration projects and following their progress, this talk explores what separates promising ideas from practical solutions, and why failure can be just as valuable as success.
From both sides of the table: bidding as prime and subcontractor, and reviewing proposals on behalf of a grant program. What late payment does to a small firm, how a small business can help win a contract and still never see the work, and what that says about the system.
One city, many languages and nationalities, centuries of changing rules. Is the ruler above the law? What is justice? What belongs to a person, and what belongs to the state? Questions one family faced through generations of changing borders, governments, war, and occupation in Europe, and questions every society still answers today.
Two port towns, two languages, and a career rebuilt from the ground up — engineering, strategic advisory, entrepreneurship, and eventually writing. What carries over, what you leave behind, and what you only understand years later.
It started with trying to solve problems no existing software solved. One project became three. Along the way came naming, branding, websites, image generators that refused to cooperate, and a surprising realization: you no longer have to be a programmer to build useful tools. Necessity still drives resourcefulness.
Some of the most valuable knowledge never makes it into reports. It lives in committee meetings, conference hallways, board discussions, and conversations between people who have spent years solving the same problems. How do we capture that knowledge, share it more widely, and still preserve the value of bringing people together?
Green shipping corridors bring ports, carriers, fuel providers, governments, and industries together to work toward zero-carbon shipping. Despite political shifts and skepticism, the movement continues to grow. The hope lies in people willing to learn from setbacks and build something that works for today and future generations.
Organizing an event? Kat is happy to pair a talk with a book signing — just say so when you get in touch.
For event organizers
High-resolution and ready for programs, slides and press. Pick whichever suits the event.
Free to use for event promotion. A short biography is on the Meet Kat page — and if you need something specific, just ask.