Katie's Story:

My first job out of business school was a loan officer for Wells Fargo. It was not my dream job by any stretch, but in 2008 there weren't many jobs for recent grads.

I helped people pay off $10-50k in credit card debt and would always wonder - how could people let their debt get so bad?

My privilege was showing, I know.

What I learned is that no one sets out to build that sort of debt. When they open that first credit card, they just don't know what they don't know.

I didn't realize it at the time, but this lesson really set me on a course to where I am today.

I finally did get that dream job a few years later. I always wanted to impact my community in a big way and got a job in economic development. I got to work with hundreds of companies a year to help them grow in our community - Columbus, Ohio.

I got really good at my job due to my business instincts, passion and desire to learn. My work started to get noticed nationally, particularly by one of my clients at the time - a Scottish craft beer company called BrewDog.

I made such an impact with them that they asked if I would oversee their entire expansion into the USA. That experience launched my career. Their growth was like nothing I had ever experienced before and I realized I had special skills to help manage the chaos of setting up new operations.

I loved the work so much that I decided to start my own business, called Expansion Group. I had fast success working with growing companies to set up new operations or address the chaos of growth. Companies from coast to coast.

This led me to learn a lot about technology, having worked with companies like Singularity University and ThriveDX (formerly HackerU). And this is where I learned about tech debt, which can accrue with growth.

I started to see similar problems over and over again, all related to growth. It occurred to me that these problems were so similar to the debt I had seen in my first job as a loan officer and tech debt.

I started calling these growth related problems organizational debt and I found myself wondering again - how do these leaders let this debt get so bad?

This is when I relearned the same lesson I did as a loan officer - they just don't know what they don't know. But, my team and I do.

So, we decided to create programming to empower entrepreneurs with the skills and tools they need to overcome any operational challenge. From hiring their first opretional leader, through building a foundation for success in growth.