I began my career as a copywriter for a small but powerful political PR firm in Chicago, Jusculca Terman. Early in my short career at “JT,” I was assigned to the Quartet Corkboard account. I spent my days—having walked to work in either the sweltering, sweaty Midwestern heat or the nose-hair-freezing cold—writing press releases that were supposed to support the creative brainchild of JT’s Creative Director: “National Corkboard Month”… hilarious.

My Account Supervisor was a hard-drinking redhead, born and raised in the Chicagoland area. Foul-mouthed and hungover, her fat index and middle fingers continuously formed a peace sign. However, her unpeaceful fingers did nothing but pump one fiery, stinking cigarette after another into her mean, Cabbage Patch Doll face.

She frightened me. Like a sociopathic 3-year-old running toward an outlet with a Phillips head, she seemed unhinged—like she could hurt herself or someone else and wouldn’t care.

One day Jan—her real name—seemed to be even more enraged than ever. I could see her in her very large glass-enclosed office speaking on the phone, her face getting redder and more furious as she looked at me while talking into the receiver. She looked like an apoplectic puffer fish at the bottom of an aquarium, somehow expanding in her Irish Catholic green cable-knit sweater. Unfortunately for me, I knew she could breathe out of her tank.

She came barreling out.

“Oh my God, Kathryn! You spelled out ‘hyphen’?! Like you actually f*%king spelled out the word HYPHEN?!”

Her frizzy red hair was crackling with hatred.

“I’m so sorry!” I say. “When I reviewed the press release with Victoria, she said that it should say ‘ever-hyphen-evolving, awe-hyphen-inspiring corkboards.’ And then she spelled out ‘H-Y-P-H-E-N.’”

“I KNOW what she said because she CALLED me!” Jan was so mad her evergreen cable-knit sweater was starting to creep up on her back. Redheads always wear that evergreen color for some reason.

“She called me because she said you are so INEPT that you did not UNDERSTAND that ‘ever-evolving’ and ‘awe-inspiring’ would need HYPHENS! Never did she IMAGINE you’d spell out the word ‘HYPHEN’!”

“Well,” I said, “maybe we should suggest to her that saying ‘ever-evolving’ and ‘awe-inspiring’ to describe a ‘corkboard’ might be a little generous?”

They did not extend an offer after my internship.

It was from this auspicious start to my writing career that I moved on to Ogilvy & Mather. After a few more, much less dramatic, and slightly more successful copywriting adventures, I left the States for a real adventure: to become a SCUBA instructor in the Caribbean (a career that lasted for a day), a DJ for a reggae radio station, a VP of a Destination Management Company on St. John, and then eventually washed up on the shores of San Francisco to become a media sales rep working for legendary brands such as KFOG and KNBR.

In this role of slinging airtime, clients often asked me, “Who writes these commercials? They are really good.”

Maybe it was my deep-seated fear of hyphen misuse, but I would say, “Oh, we have a copywriting team.”

“Wow,” my clients would say. “Any chance your team might take a look at my________________(website, headlines, t-shirts, billboards, email newsletters, TV commercials, award speech)?”

And so my real writing career began… albeit on the down low.

Since the above, I’ve parlayed this mishmash of experiences into creative endeavors such as media planning, media and sports sponsorship sales, starting Carve Tahoe—an international snow sculpting event in partnership with Vail Resorts—founding The Ultimate Fitness Vacation, in which people have paid me to help them risk their lives while feeding them “farm-to-fork” cuisine, and co-founding Hot Yoga Republic, an award-winning yoga and fitness brand in Northern California.

But at my core, what I love to do more than anything in the world is to use words, images, media, and unforgettable experiences to bring people together.