Kate McCready

After studying a Bachelor of Business (Entrepreneurship) at RMIT University, Kate began her early career working as an innovation catalyst for EPA Victoria and later Deloitte, but it wasn’t until she experienced a health scare that she truly started to pursue the career track that has defined her life up to now.

“I stumbled across an organisation called Huddle and they did something called service design, which I had never heard of before but was immediately interested in,” says Kate.

“They were using human-centred service design to help organisations do new things and create better experiences for their customers or their users or whatever it might be.”

Having spent the majority of her degree far more interested in service-based entrepreneurship over product-based entrepreneurship, Kate felt like the perfect opportunity had landed in her lap, especially when she discovered that two of her former classmates already worked there and could provide her with the inside track. A cold email and a quick interview later and Kate was employed off the back of her experience in innovation and the fact that they were certain she’d be a great cultural fit.

“The thing about human-centred design is that it actually requires people with different backgrounds,” says Kate.

“That’s what makes people work really well together in that kind of setting, because if you only have people that have similar experiences and outlooks on life then you can miss out on important and different perspectives.”

“Culture-wise I actually just finished up some research … [that shows that] whatever career it is your degree is just a baseline,” adds Kate. “It’s actually who they [prospective employees] are as a person, their emotional intelligence and how they will fit into the team, and add to the team, that is most important. You can’t fake cultural fit … you need to bring your real self to the table, employers want to see that you have passion and drive that goes beyond getting paid.”

Kate worked with Huddle as a contractor for just under 18 months before realising it was time to take the plunge. Officially launching Kinsight (now simply Kate McCready) in 2014, Kate has spent the last few years getting to the heart of things – in people, businesses and organisations. Whether she’s coaching people one-on-one, working with organisations to unlock the unique talents of their teams or organising her soon-to-launch programs and workshops, Kate is constantly “helping people create conscious and human-centred working lives. Ones that activate their true potential, achieve personal wellbeing and have a meaningful impact.”

Since our interview with Kate, she has also founded Leading Beings.