What does mentorship look like when the future is unclear—and constantly changing? In this episode, we sit down with Kate Byrne—founder of Women Advancing, advisor, and civic leader—to explore how mentorship must evolve in a world shaped by AI, rapid change, and uncertainty. Kate shares why traditional advice is becoming obsolete—and why modern mentorship is really about helping others navigate ambiguity, think critically, and find their voice. From bridging generational gaps to fostering real human connection in a digital-first world, this conversation dives into what it truly takes to guide the next generation into careers and realities that don’t even exist yet. If you’re a leader, mentor, or student trying to make sense of the future—this one is for you.

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Mentorship For The Future: Bridging Generations, AI, And Human Potential With Kate Byrne

We have the privilege of having Kate Byrne, who is joining us from Charlottesville, Virginia. Kate and I had a chance to meet and it was one of those things where when two frequencies collide and we’re on the same page, we’ve never lost track of one another. I asked her to join me because Kate is one, the Founder and Host of a media platform herself called Women Advancing, I’ve had the privilege of being on Women Advancing. She’s also the co-facilitator of the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy’s Civic Corner Fellowship.

Since many of us are in the audience are part of the collegiate world, whether we’re leaders, collaborators, or students, just an FYI, Kate is a graduate of Stanford University and after she graduated from Stanford, she became a seasoned C-suite executive and advisor. She’s also a lifelong advocate for women’s leadership, which I really appreciate and access to capital, which is another thing that we might get into a little bit later. Kate, welcome and how are you?

I am well, thank you, and I really appreciate getting to sit down and chat a bit.

The Black Ops Agent At Skywalker Ranch

Yeah, that sounds great. Okay, so before we get into the serious stuff, a little birdie told me that you’re going to be the lead in an indie movie where you’re going to play a former Black Ops agent working for George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch. I didn’t even know what to think. I was like, “What?”

There’s a little manglement there. I’m a former Black Ops agent and it has nothing to do with me. I worked with George Lucas at the George Lucas Education Foundation. That’s a separate fun fact. Definitely, yes, I have been asked. In fact, there was an episode. The Todd sisters have created a film company and I’ve known them for a while and I was in a musical at the Live Arts Theater here in Charlottesville and we were talking and next thing I knew, they said, ” we’ve got a role for you. We’re doing an independent feature film and we would love you to be our leading lady.” I will be a former Black Ops agent and so I’m getting ready. I’m going to start doing some mixed martial arts training.

Get out of here. No.

True story. God help me and God help the other guy. I get to do a headbutt, I get to do cold plunges, which actually scares me more than the mixed martial arts.

I hear it’s good for the soul.

That’s what I’ve heard too. It should be fun. We’re filming this fall, either here in Charlottesville or in Northern Virginia and then it should come out, I believe end of ’27, maybe early ’28.

I just couldn’t believe the details, so I know I kicked it off with a bang. For the audience, this is why we’re going to list all the things about Kate because you never know what direction it’s going to go in with Kate. We’re excited for you. Welcome to the Hollywood side of Kate Byrne and I can’t wait to see the release. You’ll have to keep me updated on how everything goes.

Will do.

All right. We are gathered here because we want to talk about things that you’re involved in, but also as it pertains to mentorship because again, our audience is primarily in the collegiate space. We do have those that are leading universities across the United States. We certainly have wonderful mentors, alumni who are volunteering their time and then we have students. We’ve got all this audience that’s made up of people interested in mentorship and we have many mentors who interestingly share their paths and they share ones that they might not have intended when they graduated from college and now you graduated from Stanford.

I’m curious to kick it off so that we go back to the early Kate. What did you study at Stanford? What did you think you were going to do? I don’t think you were going to be in an indie film. How did you arrive at the work that now spans not only media as we said early on, but civic leadership, investing, which is super cool, and storytelling?

It’s funny, I guess the way I’ve come to look at it because it is all in the story and this is an opportunity to own one’s narrative, but it is true, is I’ve always been a sucker for potential. Really, the media aspect, that’s where I got my start but let me take a step back. I studied psychology and international relations because I have always had an interest and a gift and a comfort in speaking with people and I’m very honored that they seem to open up around me and then I can elevate and help them get to be their better selves.

Global, I always knew I’d want to work with the world and in the world. To that end, I started in media because that’s where storytelling comes and the platform, getting the story out, knowing what it looks like, how it should appear, understanding different the nuance of different audiences. Technology was really my next foray and playing field because I very early realized that is the tool that’s going to help elevate everything and is going to continue to make everybody remain relevant, whether you want it or not.

Lastly, then I needed to figure out, okay, well what about the money? The money is the thing that really helps grease the wheel and helps the flywheel continue to move forward, but it’s also where corporations and companies really have the ability to be really great social citizens and players. That is literally the throughline. To me, I’ve always been a believer in everybody playing a role, but in the place of women, we’re systemic thinkers. Our brain waves go cross, cross, cross. Males tend to be linear. You need both. You need it all.

More often than not, we are the ones who are able to connect the dots and I think for far too long, women have always been taught how to manage the room, see the room, but stay silent and now we can’t stay silent anymore. Really trying to help this next generation of female leaderships and coming up and through and out into the world to get more comfortable with owning that voice.

Mentorship As “Orientation” For The Future

Amen. You touched on something that I want to dive a little deeper in. I love what you said about you see potential and you want to help raise potential. Where does this come from? I think there are many people who don’t see their potential, they see the hurdles, so where do you think that comes from and then how do you help support that in another person?

It’s really funny, Tina, I’d be a wealthy woman if I was paid a dime every time someone said, “You’ve got great energy.” I think one, I am just by nature a positive person. Yes, I have always been that way. It doesn’t mean I don’t get little down in the dumps here and there. One, I think it gets boring and I get tired of hearing myself whine so I turn myself around by asking and reminding myself things happen for me not to me.

This is where this plays into mentorship. I think mentorship is not about advice anymore. It’s really about orientation. You’re not just helping someone get ahead. I think roles as a mentor, you’re helping them interpret complexity. You’re helping them navigate like ambiguity because God knows it’s always going to be ambiguous. That’s the hard truth. Stay involved. Don’t get involved in cancer culture so you can be in these systems that rewards sometimes the opposite.

For the mentors, what I’ve come to realize for myself is instead of me sharing, because I think this is death trap, what used to work back in my day because that’s not always going to be super relevant. It’s more about I think you’re trying to give insights on a world that doesn’t even exist yet. Really what it is you’re helping someone give themselves permission to speak and ask and be something that they don’t even know that they could be.

Be really comfortable with that. If they are getting comfortable in their skin to that degree, it really can help them move ahead because this. In today’s landscape, it’s so not just about being talented, that’s fabulous, but you really have to be able to translate your value into the different situations you’re not in and that’s where the mentor and the sponsor jumps in, helps you get into those rooms.

We have this commonality. We work between generations, sectors, different perspectives. You’ve already teed it up with you’re trying to mentor someone in something that doesn’t even exist yet, which is so true. That’s the headline of, AI and its implications for the future of work and none of us know because we’re not there yet. Thank you for stating this concept of the future and how do we mentor people into the future. Can you share why you bridging between the generations, the sectors, and the different perspectives with your work at Karsh and with your work at Women Advancing, why is this important to you and what do you hope to accomplish by building those bridges?

For me, it’s because the way we’ve been doing it for so long doesn’t work anymore. I feel that for the this to all work and this is in any relationship, but particularly in an intergenerational, there is a mutual exchange. This comes up just as much with my generation, older generation, as it does with the younger generation because the younger generation brings speed and fluency and cultural awareness keeps you relevant. Older pattern recognition, what I do as a bridge builder is figure out the pattern recognition.

It’s really about unlocking that exchange. It is also, though, understanding and having this plays to the pattern recognition, being able to see things that that actually do connect but other people may not and it may seem crazy, but more often than not, connecting unusual dots, that’s how most innovations take place. For me, it’s making sure that by bridging these generations, the elder generations continue to be relevant because they do have relevance. The younger generation gets the space that they need to be all of whom they can be.

I heard one time somebody mentioned how sometimes younger generations, because of all the tech that’s been available, hasn’t necessarily had the space and place to practice their human connection excellence. Dating’s online, everything’s online, we went asynchronous for learning. It’s been that type of decade or more. We continue to lean into it. For good or for worse, it doesn’t matter. There’s lots of good that comes out of it too.

Canceling Cancel Culture Through Curiosity

This concept that you’re talking about is bridging generations and just giving people a space and place to practice excellence. I love this thought. What would you advise to people who are starting to practice in this space? They’re used to the technology, they’re used to being a little bit more apart. Is there anything that you want to say to those individuals as to how they can practice, why it’s important to practice?

You’re saying practicing building bridges or just mentorship?

Building bridges, connecting dots, just the interpersonal. Talking to someone who isn’t like themselves. You’re constantly working with people who are across aisles and you’re bringing them together into conversation. What would you advise people that are like, “I have a voice, I just haven’t been taught how to use my voice, how to connect”?

There’s a couple of things. With regards to the tech piece, if you think about it, AI can give you answers but a mentor can help you ask better questions. It’s the power of the query on that front. With those who are trying to find their voice, think about it and this is so critical. It’s really critical with the work that I do with Karsh. Disagreeing, because that’s really what we do. We are encouraging and teaching people how to disagree. We’re literally canceling cancel culture.

Without disagreement, there’s no democracy. Thomas Jefferson really believed that an educated citizenry was crucial to a healthy society. If we all just live in our little bubbles and we look the other way and we don’t say what we really think is true, talk about flying blind, we have massive blind spots. The thing that I enjoy about human interaction and talking to people that may not agree with me is it’s a delicious opportunity to practice intellectual curiosity.

It encourages me and the other person hopefully to stretch our minds so that we can open our minds to other thoughts and expand our awareness. I don’t have to agree with it at all, but knowing it sure as heck makes me smarter, helps me gain more intelligence, and it also practically probably helps me find another dot to connect.

To me, it would be, if you encounter someone or a situation or a belief or something along those lines, curiosity is your best friend. My dad always used to say, “Ask the person you’re with a question about themselves. People love talking about themselves.” they do. That’s not a bad thing. That’s the best way to start creating some of those bridges. It can be incredibly absolutely unoffensive too. It can literally be, “Where’d you start thinking like that or how did that come to pass?”

“Unpack that a little bit for me,” or “What does that look? Paint a picture for me?” I tend to be visual and so I often use those kinds of phrases or simple things like, “Could you define?” there have been some conversations that I’ve had at my own dinner table where someone will say, “All we need to do is hire better politician, a good politician or get better tech.” Could you define better tech? What does a good politician mean to you? That goes in a whole other conversation and it gives you opportunity then share your thoughts too because that’s where some of that goes too.

Yeah, well your dad, wise man it sounds like, and it also sounds like he might have gone to the Dale Carnegie school of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

He did.

Why AI Can’t Replace The “Human Presence”

That’s a great book. You’ve given some great advice. I love how because you’re visual you like to paint a picture. That’s great advice for people that are trying to connect the dots, trying to enter into the place and space to connect with people on a human level. Let’s flip the script and let’s talk about the leaders. You work with lots of leaders. What do you believe that leaders are over either overvaluing, they’re either missing or they’re underinvesting in at present?

Really quickly I want to add one more thing to about the whole AI giddyup and the interpersonal thing because I think this is really important especially right now with all the doom and gloom about jobs, the job market. The one thing about all of that about AI is it can give you insight, that kind of thing. It cannot at all read a room, doesn’t understand power dynamics. It can’t help you create your own identity with your integrity.

Those are things that you yourself, the mentee person, needs to go show up with. Just know that and that’s always going to be something that people who are looking to hire people are always going to be hungry for. I believe that’s why I’m not afraid of AI. I think people are going to be more and more hungry for that, the humanity aspect. No replacing that.

There are plenty of students who are wondering, “What’s my future going to look like? I don’t even know if there’s going to be any entry-level jobs available for me. I just spent all this money to get through a four-year institution and what’s that market going to look like?” that is a real sweat right now for this generation. You hit the nail on the head. As a hiring manager myself in the past. You also said it very early on.

We don’t even know what the skills and the title is. It doesn’t exist. Unlike maybe where it took a long time for those things to shift in job markets in the past, now it’s very rapid. Your comment about the human side, the interpersonal skills, what’s your character look like, what’s your integrity look like? AI can’t help you build that, that is something you must build on your own in going out and connecting with people and having those conversations. I love that.

That is something, oddly, that is somewhat physically felt because we’ve all had a person when they walk in the room, you just feel a presence and you feel them. More importantly, when they leave, there’s something missing.

The energy went out.

Exactly. That’s what I want everyone to realize, we all have that. That’s up to us to create that, own it, and be proud of it and share it, I think. You were asking me about mentors.

Leaders in particular, because we’ve got all these students that are coming out, they’re looking for jobs. We’ve got all these leaders that are saying, “We’re trying to hire for something we don’t even know what it looks like in the future.” Talk about leaders because you have been one, you are one, you work with them all the time. What do you believe leaders are either overvaluing currently, maybe it’s AI, I don’t know, what are they missing and what are they underinvesting in?

I think it’s potentially from the AI side. I definitely think potentially, they themselves most likely don’t really understand AI to the same degree. A lot of them have been given mandates to like AI everything. It’s very much akin to when the internet became a thing and everybody was going digital. It’s not having a breath of understanding about what that is. I think they are underinvesting in the I’m going to say the curiosity but also the tremendous drive, counter to what most people think in this younger generation. What I’ve experienced and what I see is they are freaking hungry to do it. “Just let me do it.”

They’re the creators of the side hustle.

Yes. Get out of the way and don’t be threatened by it. It’s like any huge wave. Harness it and figure out a way and look at it as an opportunity to frankly update your company’s structure, your department’s structure. I would challenge every leader to say, “Instead of being threatened about this, what’s a good thing? How can I look at this differently? What could I actually take away?” That’s how innovation happens, frankly.

Also, you’ll get some of your best thinking, and often times there’s a lot of neurodivergence taking place or we’re finally recognizing neurodivergence. It’s a great way to harness what some of the deepest thinkers in your potential employee group are actually really thinking, but they’re too afraid. Let them figure out the systems because guess what? They’re going to be customers outside of your company walls that are thinking the same way as those new and potential employees.

It’s actually positioning you beautifully for the future but you’ve got to get out of the way. Really learning how to communicate with them. I think the whole notion that we hold on the reins too strong. I’m not saying let everybody run free, but I am saying I think a number of us have had in the older leadership positions have had, I think we forget that we were them once.

We were never going to become our parents, we were never going to become our bosses and look at that, I am, I have. How can I disentangle and do a slight little baby step shift? This may not be popular, but education is really important, and on-the-job education is really important. Someone could have a host of different degrees and such.

I think someone who’s actually willing to roll their sleeves up and is hungry and again I’m going to keep saying the word curious, but they really are, they want to be a part of it, that’s underestimated because they haven’t done it before when they’re new getting into the job market. Of course they haven’t done it before, it’s their first job. Are you going to be the person who’s going to shut down somebody’s potential and feed the negativity or are you going to see that person’s spark and say, “It’s a little counterintuitive, but God, there’s something about that person?”

Listen to that, “There’s something about that person,” because leaders, we do not listen to our gut enough. At all. We listen way too much to “This person looks great on paper.” I guarantee you a lot of us have made that hire where they’re fabulous on paper and then flame out or they came in for 3 months or 4 months, decided, “It’s not a fit for me,” and then that just really cost you.

The “Sailing” Model For Education

I’m going to pull a Kate Byrne because you said might be unpopular and then you talked about the education system. You and I are both deeply involved in the education system. We are I guess education adjacent. Maybe that would be the better term.

That’s a better term. Yeah, for me.

We believe in our educators, we are a product of the education system here in the United States, and we support it. I want you to paint me a picture of what the education system could do to do exactly what you just said, which is the, “What about the on-the-job training? What about the outside of the classroom and the theory that we learn there?” What is it that we as a society can do to better support the educational system? What can the educational system do? I don’t know, what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

First, educational system, we could sure as heck pay our teachers better. I’m talking about K through 12. I think the collegiate market gets paid pretty well. Graduate education does, some that I know of. I think really getting in and also understanding and taking the time to understand and to train educators five different learning modalities. This is really relevant now more than ever, not everybody is an auditory learner. They don’t read.

It’s much more kinesthetic. It’s much more experiential. From an early day early on, getting their hands dirty in a project. Frankly, again, K through 12, I would definitely integrate more art. I just would. Science is all around us, we should celebrate it and I think what happens is people say, “I can’t do science,” but then when you go back and you look, gosh, do you like gardening? I’m a gardener. That’s science. Form of it.

Are you a cook? Do you cook? Yeah, that’s science. Better understanding and having everyone realize, “Science is much more at my fingertips,” so that we would then be more comfortable with these things that so many people are so limited or believe that they’re so limited in. I would do definitely more case study. I would have definitely move away from theory, do limited theory.

I’m going to make a jump here. When you’re learning to sail, which that happened to me, that happened, I had the benefit of doing it through the American Sailing Association, thank you. How you learn there? Yeah, there’s a book you read, but you’re in a classroom for an hour and then you spend the next six hours out on the boat. You are learning real time and that means all the language, all the physicality, all the way the team works on the boat, the crew. I’ll tell you, it embeds it in you.

Mentorship For The Future: We’re overvaluing speed and underinvesting in discernment. The leaders who matter next will know when not to move fast.

You don’t even have time to say, “I can’t do this. I can’t believe this.” It’s literally, “Yeah, you’re doing it. That’s how you do it.” I actually think that if we were able to give more real real-life job experience going within companies, I think that would much better prepare people. I also think it would prepare people to understand, “It’s going to take a while to get promoted, okay? There’s a lot of blah blah blah in titles.”

I think as one gets older, you come to realize so you hear you’re getting a promotion, well is that coming with pay? It’s not. That’s not a great promotion. I don’t want to call it managing expectations because that sounds so negative. It is opening their eyes to what is commonplace because I think sometimes when it does happen to you, you do feel a little bit beaten up upon, betrayed, victimized. If they understood, “Okay, so this is what’s happening. Here’s how I can negotiate or turn this so that I have a little modicum of control in what I can make this happen and how I can make this work for me.”

The Gift Of Being Fired

Can I ask you, you speak to that as though that might have been an experience in your own past. Can you share with us what that was like? Can you give us an a-ha moment?

I think one of the things when you’re entering the job market is you’re afraid of being fired. At least I was. I was so afraid of being fired because that means I’m bad and I’ve failed. I found at one company that I was working for, I was actually groomed to be the president of said company, but it had an international parent.

I was encouraged. This is the time when apps were becoming a thing. I was given an assignment to really quickly go build an app. Literally, they were just getting started. At the same time, it turned out the parent company was too, but the person to whom I was reporting wanted us to come in first. They knew that I could be much more agile, ragtag. I went ahead and I did that. We won awards for it, it was amazing. First of its kind, has social media in it. It was great.

I was really proud of it. We did with six people, we negotiated the people that built the Barnes & Noble app, they did it for us for free. There are all sorts of cool really gold stars. It came out and then six weeks later, I was called into the boss’s room and he said, “You don’t look good,” and he goes, “I’m going to be better than you,” and I said, “What? Are you going to fire me?” I laughed. He said, “Actually, I do have to let you go.”

He let go of me and my team because the parent company felt betrayed. Yes, I was set up to a degree. I realized, I don’t know where I had the presence of thought in this. I actually thanked him for the opportunity, said, “Don’t thank me, I just let you go.” it’s like, “No, I do. When something like this this crazy and seemingly visually wrong happens, it means there’s got to be something extraordinarily right coming up.”

Also, I knew I was leaving behind my team, my team was the one who built it. I was the block and tackle person. It was incredibly humbling, but then it also opened me up to a really important time of my life, which is where I started really learning more about impact investing and figuring out how can I support companies that don’t do stuff like that. Help founders and build tech that can be tech for good. I was a publisher at Fast Company, tap my Fast Company roots where I was on the founding team of the social capitalist awards, which is really a core pillar to me. It actually got me back on track. I sure as heck didn’t know it at the time.

That is such an important lesson about adversity and that goes full circle back to you seeing potential not only in others but in a terrible situation, having the wherewithal after being fired to say, “Thank you. I feel the wind from the crack in the window, I’m not sure where that window is yet but I’ll figure it out.” That is extraordinary and I think people need to hear that because you did exactly what you were as asked to do, you shined, you outshined. You did it too well.

It was so strange and the best thing, I will tell everybody this, I’ve noticed. There have been two other times where there have been some weird things that happened along those lines. One, I’m a big believer in karma. I’ve been there for the benefit to witness karmic payback, and believe me, it is indeed a b*tch. It’s not on my hands, I’m just saying. Shortly thereafter, six months later, my boss had been then let go.

We got to have coffee because all of a sudden, he was in a place for needing help from me. That’s where you come to a position do you say no or do you help another person out and actually, I was on my way to this other thing, so it was great. I got to ask him, “Why did you do that to me?” he said, ” Kate, place wasn’t big enough for you. I was seeing things that you weren’t and right now that this company is taking up 6 floors in this building, in 18 months it’ll be 1 floor. If anything, I got you out ahead of time so you could go do what you’re supposed to do.”

That hindsight six months later, I don’t know if he had said that to you in the moment if it would have resonated the same, but it sounds like six months later, that hit you just at the right time. How good did that feel?

It did. It was true. I watched it. That’s why sometimes the saying, “Rejection is protection,” I’m a fourth generation Californian so I often talk in juju terms. That is one that’s so true. It just is like it is it and sometimes to your point, Tina, sometimes you’re better able to hear it but I will tell you it does it does land. I always feel if I can feel it and I feel stuff at my heart or in my gut, my tummy, or I get a little shiver thing, then I always think yeah, that’s true.

You didn’t burn a bridge.

No, not at all. In fact, we still are in touch. All my bridges are intact with every person with whom I’ve worked from the people who I worked for and I will tell you, that was how I got all of my jobs. Any job, people would come and tap me. I very rarely did I go through headhunters or anything like that. It was always through past experience and maybe part of that goes back to what we were talking about earlier, the positivity aspect because it used to drive me crazy as a boss people would say, “Are you going to be in?”

I would say, “No,” “It’s so much better when you’re in.” I thought, “You’re not supposed to say that. It’s supposed to be better when I’m not there.” I think it’s just because I’ve always infused humor and given people a lot of rope, a lot of space. I’ve had a lot of trust because I treated people the way I wish people had always treated me and believe me, I do not, as you can imagine, fit in a little tidy box. Definitely a little bit of a draw outside the line gal.

That was what attracted me to you when I first met you and you were on stage and I decided I’m just going to walk up and introduce myself because I love her energy. You mentioned that earlier, so I was one of the people in the audience that felt that energy. I was like, “She’s reaching a room that is far and wide and somehow, I feel very connected to her despite the hundreds of people that are in this room.” it’s great energy. The fact that you never burnt a bridge, thank you for emphasizing how it is that you have had your opportunities.

It has not been through 100 resumes, through some online search firm, it hasn’t necessarily been through headhunters. It has been through the people that you know. You don’t get to know people until you try to get to know people. You having that curiosity and engaging has really supported who you are and where you are now.

The “Smartest Person In The Room” Networking Hack

Yeah, another thing that too, two other quickies. One, when you find yourself in one of those networking events, none of us love them, even the extroverts of us don’t like them necessarily. When you’re feeling particularly uncomfortable, go ahead and be like my dad said, ask someone about themselves. Next thing because everyone feels uncomfortable, just break that ice. Break that ice and next thing people will think you’re the smartest person in the room because “Yeah, she’s great.” That’s one.

I will say when it comes to networking, it is one of those things where people can feel really good about networking because they see the potential or you do it so much and you’re like, “I’ve got to go out and network again,” or maybe you’re just a super introvert and you’re like, “I absolutely do not want to be in a room full of people.” the curiosity side and the asking question side, I’ve always felt it really important to learn the stories of other people.

If you just learn the stories of other people, never mind the networking from the standpoint of what am I going to get from a business perspective? Don’t worry about that. Worry about who am I going to connect with and why? What was it about that meeting that I garnered something out of that I thought was interesting? Maybe that was the networking event, who knows?

That’s a really great point, Tina, because at this point in time, people just want, as we’ve been talking, about just pure authentic human connection. Just you the person, not what can you do because we’ve also all been in those rooms where people, I can’t stand them, they’re name badge readers. You don’t you show me nothing. You show me even less. Saved my time on that one. You don’t want to be that person where it’s always the vulture because it’s really true. People can smell desperation and it should be a mutual exchange.

This is true with your mentors as well. It’s a mutual exchange, it’s not just a one-way extraction. What I was going to also say that I’ve noticed lately in my experience is we’ve all signed up to go to something and then it comes and you’re like, “Do I have to go? I don’t want to go.” I have found more often than not if I coerced myself, forced myself, made myself go, I end up meeting the person, hearing about the thing, learning the nugget that is critical that I had to have. If I hadn’t gone, it would not have happened. I’m just going to say it’s been uncanny how that’s really been true. If there’s that little voice going, “Yeah, you really should go,” I swear, go. Heed that voice and go.

I have had that exact same situation happen countless times and I always say just showing up is half the battle.

Doing what you say you’re going to do. I’ve been saying that to my daughters forever. If you say something, then I swear to God, do it. You doing that raises you better than 97% of the people.

Connecting The Dots From Charlottesville To California

Where can people get in touch with you Kate? What’s the best way for them to reach out to you?

You can reach out to me at it’s KByrneco@gmail.com. That’s my email. Please feel free. I’m on LinkedIn, Kate Byrne. Also, my website, KateByrne.co and also KatherineByrne.com. Women Advancing is on podcast platforms everywhere, all your expected ones, and it’s also on my site. I’m trying to think of where else. That’s it. Also, Charlottesville. By all means, yes. I live in Charlottesville, I spend some time in California, some time up in Massachusetts as well. Seriously, if you send me a note, I really am good. I got my start in sales, so I’m very good on follow-up.

I can say she absolutely is because she follows up early and often. With that, thank you, everyone, for reading about my friend Kate Byrne. She has been absolutely fascinating to me. I hope our conversation was fascinating for you. Stay tuned for our next episode, we’re going to be coming out with episodes every week. We look forward to joining you on all of these conversations and have a great day.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Kate Byrne
• Women Advancing
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Kate Byrne Email
• Kate Byrne on LinkedIn
• Kate Byrne on Instagram
• Kate Byrne on YouTube

About Kate Byrne

Kate Byrne grows people, businesses, and systems that endure.

A Stanford graduate and trusted cross-sector leader, she works at the intersection of emerging technology, human-centered AI, leadership, and organizational trust, helping organizations navigate complexity with clarity, integrity, and operational discipline.

Kate is a seasoned C-suite executive and advisor who has led and built with blue-chip brands including Katapult X, SOCAP Global, Businessweek, Inc., Fast Company, Tides, and the George Lucas Education Foundation. Her work spans funding and impact investing, intentional leadership under pressure, mentoring and leading intergenerational teams, and trust as a strategic and operational asset.

She currently serves as Co-Facilitator Lead for the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy Civic Cornerstone Fellowship Dialogue Program and as Senior Thought Leadership Strategy Advisor to the Batten Institute at Darden Business School. She is also the co-founder of CARE360, a global initiative focused on building intentional leadership and human-AI fluency across generations, and advises startups and executives as both an advisor and investor.

Kate is the host of the podcasts Women Advancing and Rebels with a Purpose, a frequent keynote speaker and moderator, and a contributor to Impact Entrepreneur. Her work building vanguard media and leadership platforms earned her recognition on Folio’s Most Influential Media Leaders list.

A lifelong advocate for women’s leadership and access to capital, Kate has served as President of the UN Women SF Board and continues to support female founders and investors across the Virginia entrepreneurial ecosystem and beyond. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her family.