Kat is an experienced and accomplished creative leader who brings an innovation and design perspective to organizations pushing boundaries to improve people's lives.

Trained as a medical and scientific illustrator, Kat works to understand complex concepts and disparate evidence, distilling insights that reframe opportunities, visualizations that drive better decisions, and stories that open understanding and engagement. The thread that runs through her varied and rich career is making complex and ambiguous opportunities visible, whether in science, health, belonging, brand, human behavior, or systems.

Speaking

Soul Reset IV - October 26, 2024 Rancho de Vida

Kat Jones - Bee and Wisdom Keeper
Honeybee Wisdom: The Ways of Female-Led Societies

Kat Jones stepped deeply into a beekeeping portal in 2023 after some shifts in her remarkable 30-year career. Kat ran her own groundbreaking ad agency, Milkshake Media (remember those yellow Live Strong bracelets – she created Livestrong!), spent time at The Gates Foundation as Deputy Director of Insights and led a health design initiative for Austin’s Dell School of Medicine at UT Austin. When she found herself in a liminal space between career endeavors, this medical illustrator immersed herself in beekeeping as a respite from the corporate world. Doing physical labor outdoors for modest hourly pay centered Kat. The fascinating ways of honeybees brought Kat back to her own knowing and her true self, renewing her sense of wonder and awakening the field scientist at her core.

Throughout her career, Kat has searched for good examples of female-led and maternal systems of organizational culture. She struggled to find these in human systems but found a gorgeous example in honeybees who take care of each other and work together as a whole. At the Soul Reset, Kat will share a multi-sensory experience of bee wisdom. This sweet session will be uplifting and inspirational.

Kat Jones Consulting

2023 - present

Provides strategic consulting focused on health, nature, and science to organizations using design, brand, data analytics, and insights. Work includes:

  • Advising clients on brand positioning, revenue/grantmaking strategies, and mission-aligned partnerships.

  • Supporting the development of brand and consumer insight strategies aligned with organizational goals.

  • Applying systems thinking and insight-driven storytelling to enhance audience engagement and impact.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Deputy Director, Insights

2020-2022

Led a team of global health and data methods experts who delved into complex systems, human behavior, geospatial data, modeling, analytics, and storytelling to generate insights that improve the delivery of primary health care, immunizations, and life-saving products to vulnerable populations, especially women and children in low-income settings.

A radical collaboration between the Dell Medical School and the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, the Design Institute for Health takes a design approach to provoke every aspect of health systems to work better for people.

  • Led strategy and key engagements that advance the culture, capabilities, and impact of the Design Institute and our specific expertise in health systems design.

  • Advised as Design Lead on Steering Committee for Texas's $305M Austin State Hospital Brain Health System Redesign, designing a state-of-the-art inpatient psychiatric hospital and rebuilding a regional public mental health system across a 79-county service area https://www.ashredesign.org/

Dell Medical School, UT Austin
Design Institute for Health
Director of Strategy/Mission/s

2017-2020

Milkshake
Principal and Founder

1999-2020

A strategy and brand consultancy based in Austin, TX, that builds brands that build community. For 22 years, Milkshake delivered unparalleled creative solutions to its clients under the leadership of founder Kat Jones, who managed the firm while serving as lead strategist and creative advisor.

Milkshake’s unique approach to branding lies at the heart of creating and shaping high-profile brands such as LIVESTRONG for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, sports architecture firm POPULOUS (designers of the London 2012 Olympics, Yankee Stadium, and Super Bowl), Whole Foods, National Co-op Grocers, John Wayne Brands, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Generation TX, a statewide movement to create a college-going culture across Texas, and more.