Kate Pascucci

Athlete, Blogger, Brainstormer, Designer, Event planner, Foodie, Idea generator, Marketer, World traveler, Writer/Editor

I am a marketing professional with experience in B2C and B2B in both agency and corporate environments. I specialize in inbound marketing strategy. I currently run the marketing department at Stratus Video, the healthcare industry leader in foreign language interpretation and translation. We are growing rapidly and helping to significantly improve healthcare for limited English proficiency patients the nation over. In the past have served as a social media marketing coordinator at Los Angeles agency, Stradella Road. I have a degree in Communication & New Media from Cornell University, with concentrations in Applied Economics & Management, Literature, and Spanish. Go Big Red!

Marketing Strategy, Psychology, Graphic Design, Community Service, Health & Fitness, Good Storytelling (in marketing, branding, and fiction), and creating a lasting, positive impact.

Social media is changing the way businesses and consumers interact. I am fascinated by the level playing field social media has created. People are becoming brands and brands are developing personalities. Marketing, sales, and advertising are evolving along with technology in incredibly interesting ways.

Communication, Customer Service, Event Planning, Marketing, Strategy, Writing

My mother's mother had a profound impact on who I am as a person and the way I choose to live my life. She was a post WWII Ukrainian immigrant who experienced everything from wheat farming in Europe's breadbasket, to Nazi occupation, to rebuilding a life in America. During her lifetime she went from living in a one room home with no plumbing to accessing the internet over a smartphone. Her legacy is best summed up in the Eulogy my family gave for her last year: Matrona, known to nearly everyone as Baba, was a remarkable human being. This world was blessed with her presence for 93 years, and her legacy will continue on far beyond what we say here today. Baba touched the lives of everyone she came in contact with, and I know I can speak for my entire family in saying that it was an honor, a privilege, and gift to have been a part of her life. Baba emigrated from the Ukraine in 1947, following a very personal brush with World War II. She grew up in a small country village called Dobromyl. She lived in a one-room house with a dirt floor and was responsible for tending to her family’s cows. A few years ago I asked her who had taught her to make pierogies and galumpkies, and when she had learned to braid hair. She just smiled, shrugged, and said “I dunno”, as if she was born with these skills, and perhaps she was. Her Ukrainian heritage was a part of her being. The infectious love she felt for her home country has been passed down to two generations already – you would think that all of us made the trip over with her from the fierce Ukrainian pride all of her descendants display. In the last few years of her life, Baba would reflect on her time in the Ukraine. I have a vivid memory of sitting at our kitchen table, it was sunny and green outside, which everyone knows Baba loved, and she began talking about the woods on the edge of her village. She told me that during the night, the young people in her community would sneak out of their homes and hike in to the woods during summer. There they would start a fire, play some music and dance until the sky began to lighten with the sun. “Sometimes when I dream I go dance with them still,” she said to me. She then called her self a “silly Baba” and giggled. Like many people of her generation, Baba’s life was shaped by world politics. Her remote little village didn’t know about the tensions rising in Europe until tanks appeared at the edge of her town. She described the tanks rolling in across the wheat fields towards the end of summer, crushing that fall’s harvest. She said that people began to cry, wondering how they would survive the coming winter with no wheat to make bread. Bread held a very special place in Baba’s heart. One Mother’s Day, years ago, a lot of us went for Banfi Brunch at Cornell’s Statler hotel, a yearly tradition. They were serving a coarse, fruit-filled bread that day that Baba just loved. My mother asked the young waitress whether the bread was made in-house, or whether it came from the Ithaca Bakery, because if it were from the bakery we planned to stop on our way home and buy her some. The waitress went to ask the kitchen, and promptly returned with several loaves of the special bread, explaining that the chef made it in-house, and he was so happy to hear that she liked it so much that he wanted her to have a few loaves for Mother’s Day. That may have been the first time I saw my Baba cry happy tears. Bread was special. The end of Baba’s time in the Ukraine was difficult. She was forcefully recruited by the German army to go serve their war efforts on the other side of Europe. She never used the word “painful” to describe saying goodbye to her family, but she could vividly remember the last walk she took with her older sister up a hill at the edge of town. Her sister said goodbye, put Baba on a train to Germany and the two never saw each other again. It was in Germany that Baba began to lay the foundation for her own family. She worked in the kitchen of a German farm housing prisoners of war, and Petro (known to nearly everyone as Poppy), worked in the fields. I remember once asking Baba what had attracted her to Poppy, and her response was “well, he was the only other person there who spoke Ukrainian!” Fortunately, the bond grew beyond a common language, and the two began risking German punishment to see one another. One of my favorite Baba stories of all time is about her staying out past curfew once with Poppy. The next morning the woman who owned the farm called a German officer in to speak with Baba about her disobedience. Now, Baba told me this story nearly 60 years after it took place, but as she put it, after some bad words came out of her mouth, the German officer told her she had a “fresh tongue” and placed his hand over his face, demonstrating that he would put her in prison if she dared to break the rules again. But that was Baba, strong-willed to the core. A woman who faced down a German officer during the height of their reign of terror in Germany, and lived to laugh at it decades later. Baba and Poppy were eventually married in a refugee camp before deciding to seek sponsorship to the United States following the liberation of Germany. The newly minted family took a boat, a train, and a bus before finally reaching their first American home in Gardners, Pennsylvania, where they worked on a lovely farm owned by a lovely family. It was here that Baba gave birth to the first of her seven children, John, and officially began the legacy that you see with her here today. Just like her Ukrainian heritage, Baba’s family was inextricably linked to her soul. Baba had seven children of her own, thirteen grandchildren, and most recently, five great grandchildren. The joy of creating new life never faltered in Baba’s spirit. Over the past few years I heard her say more than once that the great grandchildren were her new little angles that she couldn’t wait to see grow. Watching the next chapter of her family begin kept Baba with us. She made every single member of her family, including spouses and friends, feel welcome and loved. I remember a speech my Aunt Patty gave at Baba’s 80th birthday party. She talked about how as the youngest, the lessons Baba taught her had already been taught many times before, but that Baba still approached everything she did with Patty with love and enthusiasm. Patty remembered Baba teaching her to tie her shoes, something simple and mundane, but the pride that emanated from Baba the first time Patty got it right was still felt and remembered decades later. All Baba wanted for her family was to feel love and acceptance. I myself remember wanting to teach Baba to read. In my first grade logic I thought, “Wow, reading is great! I should teach Baba how to do this with me!” I sat her down at my kitchen table, fetched some paper and crayons and started by explaining to Baba the difference between a capitol and a lower case A. I then set her to work copying the “A”s I had drawn, and went about my business. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that many people had tried to teach Baba to read and write English before her 8th grandchild stepped up to the plate, but that didn’t stop her from patiently listening to my lesson, and diligently copying a few lower case “A”s onto the construction paper I had left her. The ability to make every single person feel special and cared for is something I tried to learn from Baba, it was clearly her greatest skill. Now, after speaking about her emigration from the Ukraine to the US to start a family, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention a third love in Baba’s life - her love for America. Baba came to the United States in 1947, but didn’t get her citizenship until she was 82 years old. She had been living as a legal alien, but had always wanted to become a part of the nation that had saved her from war. After submitting an application and giving a verbal exam that she had studied tirelessly for, Baba was granted citizenship in the country she had called home for over 50 years. I will never forget the pride that I felt the day we all gathered at Fort Stanwix and watched Baba get sworn in as not only a US citizen, but as Miss America. Baba faced a lot of hardships in her life, but you would never know it having met her. As long as she had a home, warm clothes, and food to eat, she thought of herself as fortunate. She taught us what it is to get up and keep moving. My mother often tells a story of her first year away from home at Cornell. She said she used to use the hall phone in her dorm to call Baba. She was desperately homesick, stressed over coursework and missing the comfort of her mother. Baba’s response to this? “Oh sweetie, come home! I remember when you father and I first moved to this country. We didn’t know anyone, we didn’t speak the language and it was so lonely. I never want my children to feel that way so just come home, it’s ok.” And it was that selfless, loving comment that made my mother realize that if her mother could survive all of that, then college life was well within her realm of capabilities. For all her bravery, Baba never bragged or preached or tried to explain her experiences, she just lead by example. She gently formed all of her children and grandchildren into kind-hearted, successful people who will never forget who their teacher was 8and where those lessons came from. The world was lucky to have such a beautiful soul for 93 years, and we are truly blessed to have been her family.

Choreography. I took dance lessons from age 2 to 21, then transitioned into a teaching role where I discovered that my favorite thing about dance is the choreography. I've taught ballet, modern, jazz, tap, and hip hop.