Katie Gailes is a proud native North Carolinian who has devoted most of her professional life to helping small business owners and entrepreneurs.  She attended Bennett College for Women in Greensboro and the Duke University Fuqua School of Business.  After a long career with IBM, Katie launched a consulting practice, which she ran full-time for six years.  She was a counselor in the Growing American Through Entrepreneurship (GATE) program at the NC Rural Economic Development Center where she helped displaced workers in rural North Carolina start businesses. Through this program and her consulting practice, Katie has trained or worked with over 1,000 small business owners and entrepreneurs.  Her strength is strategic planning, messaging, and creative problem solving.

She is currently the Director of Entrepreneurship Initiatives at Wake Tech, where she runs several projects like LaunchWakeCounty and StartUp@WakeTech.  LaunchWakeCounty was born on the campus of Shaw University and has grown to include 7 of Wake County’s 12 municipalities and 229 small business owners.  It also spurred what appears to be an international movement called LaunchMyCity.

Katie has been recognized for her commitment to veterans entrepreneurship by the North Carolina Veterans Business Association.   She received a Collaboration Award from the NC Department of Administration Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) Office for the now statewide HUB Certification Day program that was developed and piloted at Wake Tech.  Katie was named a Paul Harris Fellow by The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International and received a Vocational Service Award from the North Raleigh Rotary Club.  And, she also received a 2018 Women in Business Award from the Triangle Business Journal and was named the 2018 Woman of the Year by Black Professional Women of NC. 

 Katie currently serves on the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Business Council, Arc Benders, the White Oak Foundation, and the North Carolina Theater.

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Workshop Title: How to Make Money Before You Die: Artists as Entrepreneurs

The image of the starving artist is romantic, unless you are the starving artist. Artists can make money and create a lifestyle from their art if they embrace entrepreneurial characteristic and habits. Let’s talk about that.