Kate Catlin

Kate moved to Detroit in 2013 to work at Grand Circus, a startup that provides tech training. Inspired by the life- changing impact that technical training had on Grand Circus students, Kate dove into the intensive Detroit Labs Apprenticeship program where she learned to code and was then hired to work on the DTE Energy app. Committed to closing the gender gap in the startup and tech worlds, Kate launched Women Rising in 2014 as a side project, which she hopes will be the foundation for her own startup one day. Women Rising helps women in tech find peers and mentors in order to advance their careers. Drawing on her experience in high school and during a gap year as a youth activist for the environment working on local, statewide and UN campaigns, Kate now speaks often at conferences and other venues about her new cause: attracting and retaining women in tech. Kate recently discovered she loves to develop sales deals more than software, so she now works in business development for Detroit Labs, which she finds incredibly rewarding. While she loves Detroit, this outdoors-woman from Washington State now works remotely from Denver where she can enjoy the mountains. Kate has a degree in Economics with a concentration in Entrepreneurship from Gonzaga University and is in the 2013 Venture for America class.