Kat Gordon

Change agent, Event planner, Foodie, Idea generator, Parent, Social entrepreneur, Writer/Editor

Kat Gordon has been called the “triple threat” of an entrepreneur, ad woman + marketing to women expert and was named One of 2013's "Top 10 Women to Watch" in Advertising Age and one of “Forty Over 40” women disrupting the world in 2014. She is the visionary behind The 3% Conference. Started as a passion project to spotlight a huge business opportunity in advertising -- the lack of female creative leadership and its impact on connecting with an overwhelmingly female marketplace -- the 3% Conference has grown exponentially since its 2012 launch. In addition to overseeing all 3% activity – the conference, road shows, student scholarship, social community, blog and 3 Cheers Award, Kat consults with startups in Silicon Valley and is Founder and Creative Director at Maternal Instinct, a marketing to women agency.

Tennis, early childhood literacy, advertising, baking, France, reading

I gave a TED talk in December, 2013 and my idea worth spreading was this: "The future belongs to women + we need to tell the world what we want it to look like."

Advertising, Marketing to Women

In 2012, I had the ultimate wake-up call of my life. After years of working as a Creative Director in advertising, I simply could not be quiet a moment longer about the lack of female leadership in my field. Advertising is a single man’s world. The vampire hours and last-minute meetings make it virtually impossible for anyone with someplace else to be. I shudder to think how many dogs have gone unfed, unwalked, and unloved so that some mediocre TV spot could see airtime. Kids? Forget about it. The very thing that drives women away from advertising — the family-unfriendliness of the business — causes the family-unfriendliness of ads. Yet women — moms, especially — are the single most powerful consumer segment in the world. Bearing witness to this became the professional itch I had to scratch. So I challenged the age-old boys club by starting The 3% Conference. Three years later, we’ve helped up the 3% number (of female Creative Directors) to 11% and taken our message all over the world.

Karaoke