Hello! My name is Katie and I’m the new Head of Content and Media with the ITTN group- and this website you’re on right now is my new baby (so cute). I thought I would ‘pop on’ (as the influencers say) to tell you a little bit about me so you can get to know me over the coming weeks, months and hopefully years!
So, let’s start at the very beginning: I was born in Dublin with wanderlust coursing through my veins, I dreamt of mountains, busy cities and big open spaces and my parents were restaurant owners. That was my childhood. When I was a teenager, I was naïve enough to think that I could be the next J.K Rowling one day, so I pursued that into early adulthood, and I have a degree in English Literature with Film Studies to show for it. In the tumultuous time between graduating college (and realizing my degree made me only 2% less unemployable than if I hadn’t ever gone to UCD at all), I found my real love: travelling.
Having worked in my parents’ restaurant every weekend for seven years and saving up all my Communion and Confirmation money- I started travelling. Being broke enough anyway, I sought out ways to get out of Ireland whilst also earning money. And here’s where the journey begins. Firstly, I worked outside Paris as one of those friendly Eurocamp couriers who leads you by bicycle to your mobile home. That job was a lot more cleaning toilets and making beds than was advertised, but it was one hell of a summer. The following year, I became a manager of a smaller campsite in Carole, Italy. The following season I headed off to Pennsylvania on a J1 visa. A recruiter had mistaken my ‘Film Studies’ on my CV as ‘able to operate a 15k drone and twenty-thousand-dollar worth video equipment and editing software’. So, there I found myself just outside Allenstown, leading two other people in a camera department I knew less than nothing about. I learned two lessons here- firstly, I can teach myself to do just about anything, and always say ‘yes’ and just figure it out later (I did, and I did a good job). My wanderlust expanded then to a three-month group tour for under 25s to South East Asia, a six-month sprint working in a bar in Amsterdam, back to Annecy (France) for another Eurocamp season and then a three month solo-backpacking adventure back to Thailand. It was this sprint in Thailand, Malaysia and Kyoto (Japan) that I began to develop and work in social media in the hospitality industry, and I realized that somewhere I had garnered a really good idea for graphic design, marketing and social media generally.
After all my travels, and my pockets emptied, I came back to Ireland in 2017 and thought- ‘I know what I’ll do, I’ll just start a travel agency! How hard could that be?’ WELL. If you’ve ever owned a travel agency, then you know the pain of the Commission for Aviation Regulation and their many thousand rules. I was laughed out of the room by them (hi Gavin), the only solicitor who specialised in travel trade, three separate accountancy firms, two insurers, and at least a dozen real travel agents who told me it wasn’t worth my time (they were right, all forgiven). Through many panic attacks and enough tears to fill the Liffey, I clawed my first travel agent license through with a borrowed cash (!) bond and began operating in 2018. Capture Travel specialized in group travel for student groups, staff tours, mystery groups and escorted wine tours. Things were slow at the start (and there were more tears) but eventually, with no help from anybody, I reached my sales goals by the end of 2019 and things were going just swimmingly.
But then, sneaking up on the oblivious world was a wet rat (or something- wet market? Bat?) in China that was about to change all of our lives. I’m not going to even begin to tell you about the tears then. Not because I thought my business was going down the drain, (‘two weeks to stop the spread’ was alive and well at that time) but all the refunds that had to go out that unravelled my 2019 sales goals within a week. Cancellation, refund, cancellation, cancellation, refund, refund.
Anyway, I’ll fast forward through the pain. What happened then was- I decided to help other women who were starting businesses at that time and found out loads of other women want to do the same thing. That’s when I founded my second business, Mentor Her- a worldwide platform connecting female Mentors and Mentees, in entrepreneurship, corporate careers and self-development. From there, I started developing marketing strategies that really worked. Mentor Her went viral quickly, with videos amassing 100k+ views and five totally viral videos with over a million likes each. Then, I started helping with other people’s businesses, and their websites- working in the hospitality industry under the Port House brand, writing press releases that got my business into Forbes and others into the Irish Times, Independent, and others, alongside radio spots. Over the last few years, I’ve loved the marketing and the growth, but my heart was calling out for travel once again. Which brings me to a well-timed email to Ms. Sharon Jordan who gave me this baby (Travel Times) to look after and the other baby (Travel2Ireland) to mind and I’m so excited to start this new year with a fabulous team!
