Kathy Leonard Email & Phone Number

I grew up believing “she makes her own clothes” was a compliment. After learning to sew at age seven, I became quite good at it. Not only did I wear my creations, but my dresses could always be found at the state fair or entered into contests. I usually walked away with the blue ribbon, too. I attribute these first place wins to my mother, but not because she made a single stitch on my behalf. Actually, she ripped mine out. Taking my garment, she’d peer carefully at my work, then take her seam cutter and erase my wiggly stitches with swift strokes.Her message? “Try again. You can do better.” Later, out of grad school, I joined IBM and attended their sales training. I learned how to sell from the best, and I use concepts from that experience to this day. After a few years, however, I knew sales wasn’t for me. It lacked the creativity the right side of my brain craved. So, I joined the world of advertising.In advertising, I carved out a place for myself, working my way up to leadership roles at agencies like TracyLocke, DDB and the Integer Group. I became intimately familiar with insight-driven marketing, learning exactly what it takes to create communications that win awards, and more importantly, change hearts and minds.So when I left to co-found a staffing company, many of my colleagues thought I was making a big mistake. I knew, though, that I had the winning formula.It turns out that marketing runs on two things: ideas and people. Through a staffing business model, we have an infinite number of ways to offer that to clients, creating more opportunities for talent and more results for brands that need them.My mother taught me that making and fixing mistakes is a necessary part of success. And through my experience, I learned it’s important to keep going, because you never know where the next move may lead you -- or what it may lead you to create.What we’ve done at Freeman+Leonard is proof that innovative ideas can come from anywhere, but you’ll never find them without some trial and error.

Listed skills include Integrated Marketing, Advertising, Marketing, Interactive Marketing, and 44 others.

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  Oklahoma State University

  Organizational Communications