Dillon works to tie Daniels and its students to companies of all kinds
Each Friday this summer, the Daniels Newsroom is telling the stories of the behind-the-scenes staff who empower students, faculty and the College at large. Read past stories on our blog.
For a while, Kate Dillon ran from the “real world.” In Sun Valley, Idaho, it finally caught up with her.
Her post-college resume featured a job selling t-shirts and trinkets on a Costa Rican beach, along with a few waitressing and tourism-focused jobs in the Gem State’s infamous skiing destination.
She even sustained her outdoor-loving lifestyle with a “real job,” selling ads for a local radio station.
But six years later, she gave in to the inevitable: a move to a big city, a steady career and, ultimately, a niche at the Daniels College of Business, “selling” the school to local businesses and community partners.
Which, she has to admit, she loves.
“We serve as a front door to the College,” Dillon said of the Office of Corporate and Community Relations, which she oversees as senior director. “Someone may say, ‘I want to engage with Daniels, but I don’t really know how.’ That is us. We can have a consultative conversation, flesh it out, tease it out and get them into the right spot.”
‘Getting serious’ about life
An athletic, outdoorsy Oregonian, Dillon saw initially herself—naturally—working for Nike or Adidas after college. Her dad had steered her away from a degree in philosophy or astronomy and placed her firmly on the business track.
But just before graduation day, Dillon’s friend suggested a move abroad. So she passed on an internship at Adidas Soccer to take that “first sales job” on a Costa Rican beach, with a salary of $3 a day.
“And of course, when I got back, that [Adidas] job—shocker—wasn’t available,” she said, laughing. “That was the end game that I let go.”
Instead, Dillon worked in restaurants, the recreation industry and ad sales in one of Idaho’s premier destinations.
But after six years, she followed her eventual husband to Los Angeles and got, in her words, “serious about life.”
She first landed a job at The Onion (not because she’s particularly funny, she clarified) and soon for MTV, selling universities on programming specifically for students in dorms.
“I feel like I ended up working for these brands that sell themselves,” she said. “Selling ads for The Onion, any shop you walk into people have this very strong affiliation with it, positively or negatively. It was really easy.”
Building a signature event
But Dillon’s time in California came to an abrupt and painful end. Her husband, only 33 years old, died suddenly of a stroke.
She retreated to Idaho for a year to escape.
“I was in a kind of crisis place,” she said. “I didn’t know where to go or what to do. And so my brothers, who went to CU, were still living in Denver. They were basically like, ‘Just come to Colorado and we’ll figure the rest out.’
“I had nothing. I had no friends, no job, I didn’t have anything,” she said. “I moved here to be near them.”’
She drove by campus a lot in those days. Her sister-in-law worked at DU and her brothers lived nearby. Before too long, she took a part-time job managing the Voices of Experience speaker series—a signature Daniels event that hosted executives from some of the biggest companies in the country: Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods and many others.
“It’s been an amazing lineup of really good people who also seem to be good business leaders too and are really trying to do the things we teach,” Dillon said. “It was a win on all sides.”
In its heyday, before the COVID-19 pandemic, Voices of Experience took place up to seven times a year and drew crowds of more than 1,500 people.
Dillon managed it all, from the marketing to the guest coordination to the day-of logistics. It was a full-time job, and it officially became a full-time position a couple years later.
“And then it was like, ‘If you’re bringing people in to speak, let’s talk about recruiting our students and the full picture of what it looks like to partner,’” she said. “It started to be more of that corporate engagement role.”
A focus on relationships
Dillon still manages Voices of Experience, but her role has expanded even further. As senior director, much of her job is meeting with corporate and industry partners, drawing upon their talent pools for class speakers, case competition judges and more.
“Nowhere else would I have a job where you meet so many different types of people,” she said. “I’m constantly learning something about the companies that are here in Denver, who they are, what they do. It’s fun.”
The perpetual education has kept Dillon here for 14 years. That and the beauty of the DU campus and the connections she has built with her coworkers.
Her work mirrors the priority she places on relationships in her own life—whether it’s with her current husband, their two kids, her friends or her colleagues.
“You know the community so well [in this role]; then you get to try to marry and match that to a student who has interest in that and try to facilitate that for them in their career,” she said. “When that works, it’s so satisfying.”