TRAVEL
Entrepreneur
KCA Staff. Photo courtesy KCA
A Veteran Female Business Owner Invests in Young College Graduates BY CHRISTINE VOGT
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An angle of sustainability is ensuring there are generations of professional leaders and innovators. As director of a research center at Arizona State University, I was tasked with starting an advisory board for the Center for Sustainable Tourism and our tourism degree programs.
To do this, I considered who was speaking in our classes to motivate college students, who was giving our students an opportunity to intern, and who was employing our students after graduation. The answers to all those questions was Kate Christensen, a female tourism entrepreneur extraordinaire.
THE WOMAN Christensen is an Arizona female business owner and has been working “on” and working “in” her business for nearly 30 years. Katherine Christensen & Associates, Inc. (KCA) was established in May 1992 as a home-based business. In just eight years, she and her early employees outgrew the space and she purchased (not leased) her first building. In
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the years since, she has renovated the space many times over—but remains operating at that very address in Chandler, Arizona. Christensen’s team has grown to 24 people (mostly Arizona State University (ASU)/University of Arizona (UofA) interns and grads); many having some serious tenure and have earned their way to managerial and directorship positions. Christensen is proud of that human investment into Arizona university graduates, and over the years, the firm has been successful because KCA is able to make decisions and pivot quickly and easily (a hint for a business survival tactic).
