Stay Curious Consulting
More About Kate
Kate Livingston
Equal parts evaluator, coach, facilitator, strategist, creative, and change-maker.
Where It Began
Kate (they/them/she/her) was born and raised in Colorado. Kate's had the good luck and pleasure of having lived in many amazing cities — from Edinburgh, Scotland to Durham, North Carolina. Right now, San Marcos, California (just north of San Diego) is home. Travel and adventure continue to be a big part of Kate's life, though coming home to Southern California is nothing short of delightful.
Kate lives with their partner, Allie, and their sweet Pit mix, Dio. Kate would love to have about 10 more dogs (and maybe a miniature donkey too), but that's not in the cards just yet. When she isn't working, Kate might be found reading in a green wingback chair by the window, drinking black coffee, working on writing a novel, or in the kitchen puzzling out a complex vegan recipe.
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Kate holds a BA in Psychology and Criminology from New York University (Go Violets!) and a MS in Investigative Psychology (a cool British term for Forensic Psychology) from the University of Liverpool (England), with a focus on violence prevention. At age 21, Kate was interning for the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and, by age 23, managing victim and witness services in London’s criminal courts.
Formally educated in psychology, criminology, victimology, social science research, evaluation methods, and instrument design, Kate spent most of their pre-museum years in grassroots nonprofits focused on victims’ rights, equity, access, and social justice. Those principles remain at the core of Kate's work today.
The Journey to Arts + Culture
After returning Stateside, Kate's life took a big turn in some beautiful ways.
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When Kate was 29, she adopted a 9-year-old kiddo. (Kate would be happy to tell you that story someday; it's a good one.) Becoming an instant-parent was not only life-changing, but sparked a big career change– enter museums!
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Though Kate's favorite book growing up was From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, they never dreamed they’d end up work in and alongside museums. Yet, when a friend handed them a job description for a job in museum evaluation, Kate was intrigued. They began to imagine the possibilities of evaluating exhibitions and museum experiences for people of all ages. (Also, this was an ideal opportunity to focus on something a bit "lighter" for work while new to raising a child.)
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Kate grew up visiting the very museum where they would return to 20+ years later (the Denver Museum of Nature & Science) to start the department of Audience Insights.
A Focus on Field-Wide Change
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Kate was Director of Audience Insights at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) from 2007-2013 and began consulting in 2010. (A related aside– Kate now has a "From the Mixed Up Files" tattoo. Really!)
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At DMNS, Kate led a team of 3 full-time staff and 20+ on-call research assistants. They directed, planned for, and engaged in exhibit, program, and process evaluations of all shapes and sizes– from front-end and formative to remedial and summative.
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In 2010, Kate formed the Denver-area Evaluation Network (DEN)– a collective of over a dozen local cultural institutions working to better understand audience and community. In 2011, Kate co-founded Drinking About Museums (with the inimitable Koven Smith), a social and cultural gathering that has now spread as far as Brazil and Russia. In 2017, Kate launched Fund the Change, an effort to bring attention to the power, privilege, and resource inequities in museums and fund activists and change-makers in the field.
Ongoing Leadership + Vision
Kate has been the principal investigator on IMLS and NSF grants and coordinated evaluation on IMLS, NSF, NASA, NEH, and NIH funded projects. She is a former board member of the Visitor Studies Association and the American Alliance of Museums' Committee for Audience Research and Evaluation, and served in leadership roles on the American Evaluation Association’s Arts, Culture, and Museums group and Data Visualization and Reporting group.
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Kate has consulted with organizations ranging from 2 to 500+ employees, teaming with boards, senior leadership, educators, activists, community influencers, politicians, entrepreneurs, artists, master planners, architects, strategists, economists, and designers to ensure usable, sustainable, beautiful results.
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In 2018, Kate completed her coaching certificate from the Hudson Institute in Santa Barbara. In 2020, Kate was awarded the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) designation by the International Coaching Federation. Executive, Leadership, and Career Transition coaching currently comprises about 50% of Kate's portfolio, including one-on-one and team coaching. For more information, please visit Kate's coaching website.
It All Comes Back Around
Kate has now been an evaluator-for-hire for over a decade, and while museums, arts, and cultural clients remain central to their work, a growing number of organizations, businesses, and government entities focused on violence prevention, equity and justice work, and civil and human rights have joined Kate's roster.
It's been incredible to blend the experiences gained from twenty years of evaluation in non-profits and arts organizations and the added skill set of coaching with the foundational threads of psychology and criminology where Kate's work began. As is true for most of us, there are a few central core values and a few undeniable themes in our lives that keep coming back around.
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Now, more than ever, Kate is poised to help mission-minded people do their best work yet. Let's change the world together.
Kate's CliftonStrengths (i.e., StrengthsFinder)
STRATEGIC
Sees many paths forward
when others assume there is no way
INDIVIDUAL-
IZATION
Sees people as individuals; recognizes potential in each person
ACHIEVER
A hard worker, setting the
pace for productivity
and completion
IDEATION
Brings fresh perspective; unafraid of ambiguity or taking risks
ACTIVATOR