She PivotsThis week’s guest is Cate Luzio, Founder and CEO of Luminary - the professional education and networking platform propelling women and allies through all phases of their professional journey. She spent two decades in financial services, where she recognized the need for a space for women to build community and share resources, time, and expertise. She pivoted and founded Luminary, all while experiencing health challenges which eventually led to a life-changing surgery. In this episode, Cate gets super personal, opening up about her complex feelings around the intersection of these deeply personal experiences and her career success.
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She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Cate, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Kate Lucio.
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dare to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Today we have on Kate Lucio, the founder and CEO of Luminary, a first of its kind global professional education and networking platform created to address the systemic challenges impacting women and our allies across all industries and sectors. Luminary also has a brick and mortar location that you just might recognize from our season three launch party last year. I met Kate through one of my dear friends, a former she Pivots guest, Marissa Lee, the author of the must read book Grief Is Love. In fact, I had the honor of introducing both her and another she Pivots guest, Brookshields, at her book launch, the party held at you guessed It, the Luminary. This is exactly what I love about this show, the way it brings women together and uplifts all of us individually, and Kate is the perfect representation of this. She started Luminary after wanting to bring together women in a meaningful community to share resources, time and expertise. She had spent two decades in leadership and financial services, leading global, multi billion dollar businesses, and she saw a need for a platform that would allow people to fully embrace their stories and skills, and so she pivoted and started Luminary. But that's not the end of her story. In fact, it's just one side, the professional. On the personal side, Kate was dealing with her own health journey from IVF to breast care answer to eventually a hysterectomy and acute and difficult loss for her after trying for a baby for so long. I'm so grateful to Kate for coming on and opening up about her still developing and complex feelings around the intersection of these deeply personal experiences and her blossoming career success. Ladies, this is an episode you won't want to miss enjoy. Oh and if you hear some chirping birds, it was just the idyllic setting that Kate was recording from. Let's jump right in.
I am Kate Lucio, and I am the founder and CEO of Luminary and what is luminary. Luminary is a global networking and provisional education platform. We started here in New York City in twenty nineteen as a physical space for women and allies to connect, create, develop, and thanks to the pandemic, we went online overnight and now we have a global community around the world.
You also hosted my launch party for the podcast we did, and I.
Couldn't even be there but because I was having surgery. So but I you know, so many people continue to bring that event up. They're like, I was at Emily She Pivots podcast launch at the Glass Ceiling. You weren't there, but so many people continue to talk about what a magical night it was.
Oh my god, I love that so much. Well, I mean, I think the energy that you brought into it, like into designing the space and even just like the spirit that you bring into it was so felt there. It was so everybody was just happy to be talking about their pivots and like how to help other women, and everyone was bringing that energy and like, yes, what can I do for you? What can I do for you? What can I do for you? Which is the kind of room I want to be in? Like that's definitely the kind of I want to create, and you really help do that with the space.
Yeah, isn't that amazing where it's not just about listen. There's there's a time and place for the for the get, but there's also a time and a place for the give, and I think when it happens at that same time, it just inspires other to have that given the get. And so I'm pretty proud of what we've built and both physically and virtually, and just know that the incredible community and people coming into the space again physically and virtually is is exactly who we wanted to walk into the space.
Well, I actually met you and came into the space for the first time in exactly one of these circumstances, because you hosted a book party for my friend Marissa Renee Lee and her book Grief Is Love, and that was my first time in the space and I was just blown away.
And we love Marissa. She's amazing. So thanks to you. You introduced Marissa to Luminary. You introduced us to Marissa and her book, and that was an incredible book launch as well. But she's become a Luminary member and she's just an inspiring motivating is not even the words that I could use to describer It's so much more than that. But that was because she did her book launch there and now she's so engaged and so involved and also bring this idea that grief is love and we have to talk about it.
You know, what she's talking about, what you're talking about, the luminaria, what we're talking about here at Cheap Pivots. It's so intertwined. It's like the fact that we want to show up professionally and we know that we're good, and we know that we can be our best selves, and we have these other personal factors that interplay sometimes and we want to show up with all of it.
Yeah, and I think they interplay all the time, right. I think historically women in particular women and women of color just were kind of told not to show up, you know, leave that at the door before you come into the I'm using air quotes into the office. I think the pandemic did change a lot of that, right, because we had windows into what everyone's lives were because everyone was going through it at once. And I think that the more we share our stories and we do it not behind closed doors or through what we call Whisper Networks. We're doing it out in front. It does inspire and motivate others to share their stories and bring their whole selves into whatever they're doing. Yeah, I mean it's the whole, you know, Like it's the whole idea behind a group therapy that like if you see someone showing up emotionally, then you are compelled to meet them, absolutely, both for yourself but also for them, like you don't want them to feel alone, and so like you show up to talk about the thing that you're going through and it helps them and it helps you absolutely. That's such a great analogy. I was just leading a workshop for one of our corporate our enterprise clients and around self advocacy. But I like the term self promotion much better because it makes people uncomfortable. Oh I don't want to be around someone who self promotes. It's the same as self advocacy. It's just this negative connotation that you're doing it in an in authentic way. And it can be done in an authentic way. But if we show up and we actually give facts and context, I say that's the way to do it. And so for me, when somebody shares an achievement or an accomplishment. When they're advocating for themselves, it inspires others to do that too.
Yeah, totally. Okay, So let's get back to you, Kate. Okay, okay, So set the scene for us, give us a little Kate, like, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up? So, actually, my mom recently found something that I wrote. She has kept a lot of our kids stuff, and I think it was in fourth grade I said I want to be the president. Probably not what I thought I was going to do, but at that time, I think I was inspired by leadership. And so to me at that time, if I unpacked that a little, it was like that was the example of a leader. At the same time, I was in fourth grade, it was when the Challenger happened, and so we were watching all of these amazing astronauts, one of them being a teacher, right, So for me it was like anybody that was in a leadership role, that's what I wanted to do. I really looked and my teachers were leaders, and so one I thought there was they had a position of power, which an influence which probably didn't recognize then do now. And so for me growing up, I really wanted to follow my dad's flote steps. He was an FBI agent, and that's what I thought because that's what I knew.
And my mom was a teacher, loved what she did. I could never be a teacher, but I guess I do that now. So when I went to college, I thought, I'm going to do political science criminal justice as a minor, and that's what I'm going to do. Or I'm going to work somewhere in the government, and that was what I really aspired to do.
Wait, so how did you not end up as an FBI agent? Oh?
Boy? So the true story that I don't think I've ever shared publicly. So when I was a sophomore in college, there was an internship program at the FBI Academy, oh sorry, the headquarters in Washington, DC. I went to University of Maryland underrub and very long story short, my dad said, you should apply for this. It's to be a tour guide, but that will get your foot in the door and you can start experience. What I didn't know is you had to go through the same application process that anybody that wanted to work with in the FBI. Was like thirty pages What I also didn't know is that I had tried marijuana for the first time about three months prior to that. Now this is in the nineties. The last page of the application said your drug history, and everyone in my dorm said, just lie, you've tried it one time, but I couldn't. I had to be honest, and I'm an FBI agent's daughter, and so we get into the interview and they're like, this is amazing. You're amazing, and then they get to the last page because they do it they did it in person, and they said, wait, oh, you've tried drugs. I said it was one time. I started crying. They said, I'm so sorry, You're ineligible to apply, and so had to go home and tell my parents and my dad was very disappointed, but he said I'm glad you didn't lie. And then got a letter a few months later saying because of your drug abuse, you know we can't you're not ineligible, and I thought, are you getting me? Literally, I tried it at one time, and I said, that's not where I want to be If that's the judgment, I understand their processes and rules, and so that was that was my I guess failed attempt to try, and then years later my dad actually said to me, I'm so glad that you did something different.
Okay, so do you know what your dad was trying to get you away from?
No. I think he thought, and again I'm putting words into his mouth, that I was destined for bigger things and bigger impact. And I didn't know it then that I really wanted to do something very international, and not that you couldn't do that at the FBI, but that would have not been my path. And so you know, many several years later, when I got recruited into banking, that took me into an international career for the better part of twenty years. And so I think that was one I do also think my dad was so committed and it's really a public service job. You're not making a lot of money, which is a shame. It's because they sort of protect us. And I think he wanted me to not have to worry so much all the time about finances and to put my four years of college that he paid for. That was a huge gift for me to use and to hopefully go and be financially stable.
So was that the driving factor for you when you graduated college, like, I'm going to find a job that will help me be as financially stable as quickly as possible. No.
I got a job in a nonprofit.
Not known for financial stability.
No, but so I was. I loved my job. I was working for an affordable housing nonprofit still around mana love them, and the CFO at the time, who was probably not that much old, wasn't old, but looked older. I was in my twenties. He came and he called me into his office the city said I think you need to leave. I don't want you to get stuck here. And it wasn't a negative. It wasn't like you should leave, and because it's more a bad place. It was you have a lot to give, you are, you have a lot of energy, and go work in the private sector. You can always give back and be philanthropic over time, and you can always come back like he did, because he had been a CFO in the sort of private sector and came back. And I really took that to heart. And it was the Internet boom, and so I went out and got a job at a tech startup and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I'm rich because of what I was. I mean, it wasn't that much more money, but it was significant for me, and I could start saving to buy a house, things like that that didn't exist. So I went from well, I'm going to make money to a nonprofit to a tech startup to that for a couple of years, and then pivoted when I got recruited into financial the financial.
World, you had really interesting international placements, what you would call yes, yes, that's great. Were the international jobs. Were you trying to find something where you would move around the world because I want to hear what you learned. It's just so interesting.
Not necessarily so. I when I was in college, I studied abroad and that was for me. I mean I really I had been out of I never I've been on a plane one time before I studied abroad. So I went to Spain and it was amazing, and I was like this whole world that I never knew existed outside of sort of New Jersey, Midwest Florida, and I fell in love. I remember coming home going I think I want to live abroad. And when I got to that tech startup, about six months into the job, my CEO called me in and it was a very small company and you said, you have a passport. I said, of course, and he said, great, You're going to China with our CTO and you're going to help him figure out if we should set up joint ventures. He said JVS. I didn't even know what it meant, and Google was just starting, so he couldn't google it. And and then I went to China and it was like, wha, this is amazing experiencing this culture. And I spent you know, sort of the better part of two years on and off there working at this company and then realizing that I just loved international And so when I went back to school at Georgetown, it was not because it was I had a job in mine. I did a master's in international relations because I loved international and learning and learning about economies and political systems and certainly job the sort of what was happening in their markets. But there wasn't a plan. There was a I'm going to go back and either work in a startup or I'm going to go work in the government. There still was that government in the back of my mind, and I did a night program, so I was surrounded by people that were working in the government, whether it was the State Department, the CIA, the NSA. So I was like, this is what I'm going to do.
And then I.
Got recruited by a bank which was just nowhere on my radar, and that then over the next you know whatever, almost twenty years took me to Mexico and London and then working and traveling all around the world.
When you were moving, did you think every time you think like this was a permanent move or you thought of it as a tour of service. No.
I always thought, Okay, I'm and I'm very close to my family, and I always thought, well, this is just going to be temporary. But I didn't know how temporary. So for example, when I moved to London, the assignment or the placeman was two years, and I remember having this conversation with my mom like she's I'm very close to her, and I said, she said, it's only two years. It's going to fly by. And two years turned into seven. And so when I did move back to the States, you know, and Mexico was sort of on and off for two and a half years, and then I sort of lived a pneumadic life on a plane in Latin America. And even when I was in London, I was on a plane almost three weeks of every month, so but always in a different part of the world. So when I kind of moved. When I moved back to the US, it was very difficult for me because I loved learning and being and being thrust into situations where I sort of have to adapt, and coming back to the US. People warned me about repatriation, but I didn't really appreciate it until I did it, and it was difficult. I'll just say that it was difficult. I also was not happy in my marriage at the time, and so I think there was a lot going on when that happened. But I still love the travel. I've been, you know, amount one hundred and twenty eight countries, and so that's just part of who I am. It's in my DNA and my mom and dad always go, we don't know where you came from, but it's just they gave me this opportunity as a kid and growing up to believe I could be anything I wanted. And I think just giving me that belief and sort of reinforcing it and think for myself and become who I wanted, that has driven so much of why I love international and certainly you know, my job and giving it.
All, will you fill in, like illuminate into a little bit into the personal. When you were going through you know, like twenty years of international living and international travel, I feel like sometimes it's hard for me to keep friendships and relationships with people like a town over or you know, like a different city. Yeah, So how did that work for you? Were you making friends as you went? Were you keeping up relationships? Were you dating?
Like?
How did that work? Oh?
Absolutely? I mean, you know, I think you're you have to make time to invest in relationships, right, So relationships that come from your past as well as the relationships that when you're in different places. And I think it's really important to surround yourself with local people as well, not just the people that make you comfortable, and usually those are Americans. So I made it a priority wherever I was to really invest time and build relationships locally, and a lot of those relationships I still have. It also was very intentional about how did I stay connected with my sort of network and my friend group that were still I'll call use the word home. And that's what's I think pretty wonderful. Is this is like before the Internet and before all the social media, so you really had to take time. And then obviously social media made it so much easier. I remember when Facebook came out and I was moving. I was actually moving to London, and it was like, oh, this is a great way to stay connected, and it really was. And it was also allowed people to see what you were doing. So many people thought I was in Cia because they're like, you're in a different country every week. So that and then you know, I got married when I was in London and my now ex husband, but my then person was living in New York and so we got married, he moved to London and spent a couple of years in London together before my job. The job opportunity brought me back to the US, but that was always going to be the thing that I wanted to do as my parents got older. But it was definitely it wasn't easy, but I think you really have to make an effort and and build that. And by the way, I also say, listen, I I'm not going to be in touch all the time, but when I am in touch, let's make the most out of it. And all of my US trips back home, I would really make it a point to see the people that mattered to me. It wasn't just I saw my parents and my nieces and nephews, which I did see, but it was like those those friends that I really needed to to also fill me up personally and also invest in them. It was important to me and be there for their special you know, events in their life and their weddings and experiences. Just because I wasn't in living in that area didn't mean I shouldn't make time for it, and I did. So let's talk about when you started to think about pivoting out of the corporate career. Was it when you came back to the US because you stayed in it for a little while? Still, right, Yeah, I stayed for a couple of years, and you know, I loved I loved my job. I love managing people, I love clients, I love deals, and and so when I when I decided that I was going to leave banking or at least, you know, take a stop in that part of my career, it wasn't because I didn't love it. I think the culture where I was was not the right culture for me. And I also, in a very again pivotal conversation with my one of my mentors. He said, you know, you need to go somewhere and build your continue to build your career somewhere where you're able to have a tremendous amount of impact, because that's when you get I don't want to use the word board, but you start to feel sort of antsy when you're not having an impact. And so that was a really eye opening conversation for me because I'd never ever had that and I'd never actually looked at myself that way, but he saw it. He had known me for you know, close to a decade and he's still a mentor of mine, and that was a very sparked the idea for me around, wait, do I have to do this for the rest of my life just because that's what as a gen xer I've been kind of told. And then a week or so later I had another conversation with him and he said, Kay, what's the worst that can happen? You build new skills, you do something different. If it doesn't work out, you can always go back, and your reputation precedes you. And so for me that was almost like if you heuish my coach or my boss, like this permission to go and do something different, not knowing what that was going to be. And so I decided that I was going to take a step back from that particular role. And what did I immediately start doing? Like within two weeks started interviewing with other banks again, and I said, what, wait, you didn't do this. You could have just done that when you were still in the institution you work for. And it was in that moment that I allowed myself to think. And I didn't even know that this was happening at that time, but I came out of an event and just wasn't what I wanted it to be, and I thought, I think I can do this differently and better and actually bring more people together versus we get so siloed. And I was called my then he still is my boyfriend, but I was divorced by then in my divorce, and he said write it down and I said I'm just spenting and he said, no, no, you have something and write it down. And so I spent the next week or two writing it down. And that was the business plan for Luminary. So what is it that you were Like what kind of event were you at? Yeah, And it sparked it, and like, what were you trying to solve for. So it was a very i'll call it intimate fundraiser, charitable fundraiser for about twenty twenty five women, and a friend of mine had invited me. And when I got there, I didn't have a job right because I was in this break and so I really was having a hard time identifying how to introduce myself. And there was another woman there from another financial institution. She was like, Oh, that's so bold, and that's amazing because she was the only person that would talk that it was talking to me. And so they went right into this like twenty people, and I'm like, why is no one getting the opportunity to introduce themselves? Like I don't know who these people are. And so I stopped everyone and I was like, I know we're at this dinner, but could we go around the room and introduce ourselves and tell a little bit of our stories? And you would have thought I'd eight heads. And these are all women that I thought well, and most of them were not working anymore. They had left to raise their families or do philanthropic things. And these were amazing and credible women that had these awesome stories, and yet then none of them wanted to tell their story. And I don't know why, but for me, it felt like I didn't get an opportunity to know any of them. I got a business card if I was lucky, and there was no connection. And I think because people weren't sharing their stories about themselves and maybe they all knew each other. I don't think that's the case, but I realized that so much of what connection is is being open to hearing about someone else and wanting to help if that's an opportunity, but also sharing our own stories. And then I looked around and said, wait a second, are we doing that in corporate America? How are women doing that? Is this holding us back that we're not doing this? This goes back to advocacy and advocating for ourselves. And then at the same time, I really was watching all of these women starting companies which I had no interest in, to be honest. And after I wrote this what now I know was my business plan, it was then I started really doing research and saying, Wow, there's an opportunity here that I think is untapped. And I was only thinking about New York, right, I didn't even think about more broadly outside of But I needed that community when I came back to New York and I didn't have one. What was the original business plan? So the original business plan was a physical space in New York City that women and allies because we've always been gender inclusive, but predominantly women, because we were trying to advance one of the workforce would come and learn and connect and collaborate. However, the first audience that was in that original business plan was really targeted at corporate women because that's what I knew. And it wasn't until I started to do more research that I saw so much focus on entrepreneurship and women in entrepreneurship and all also the lack of capital and all of the things that we know, and I was like, wait, that's a whole different audience. So what if I got both audiences and also women like me that are in transition. But what's really interesting is that original business plan didn't have the word digital or virtual at all. I did a word search, like when the pandemic hit, not one, so it was all around physical and then a year later it changed overnight.
Yeah, so I want to just stick with the original business plan for a second to understand. I mean, you're talking about three pretty different audiences, bringing in women who are within corporate structures, women who are entrepreneurs, and then women who are in transition. How did you think about marketing to each of them to bring them in and to let them know that they were included and like really wanted. Like I feel like there's often if you market to one of those communities and the others feel excluded.
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think as a banker and walking into that room of other women that were mainly philanthropic and there's nothing against that, but that was in me, I felt immediately excluded. I also had gone through the process in London for many years of trying to get into the Shortage House, which is part of the SOHO House, and I was never accepted because I was a banker and they were very clear, we don't want you. That's changed now, so nothing against them, but well, once they didn't take you, I'd hold it against them. Yeah, So when I launched the Luminaria is like, I don't want anyone to feel that way. And so that's actually the experience that allowed me to say we're not going to have an application process because if it's a true community, we break down barriers for people. We don't put up barriers for people trying to get in. That's not what I experience in a supportive community. And so that was always part of the business plan. I remember sort of fake pitching it to friends in finance and BC and private equity and they're like, Oh, this is never going to work. You have to have an application process. But that appl not having that application process broke down that original barrier that we were talking about around well, that's for women in corporate America, that's for people in entrepreneurship, that's for people in transition. And so now I'm not judging, I'm not there's no criteria around what you do in your background. I think the other thing is we forget that the topics and themes that challenge us or potentially hold us back, or things we need to invest in, whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or you're just navigating it, whether you're in transition, you're in a lot of those are topics are applicable across right, So advocacy, negotiation, relationship building, everything that we do on a that we lack or we need to invest in. It doesn't matter if you are sitting and working for a two hundred and fifty thousand percent organization or you're running a two person organization. A lot of those topics are applicable across the journey, and so what we've done is one make them accessible and to when we're talking to a specific audience is really tailor it around them.
Okay, so you've created a physical space. Your entire business is raising dedicated on people being in a close knit strangers being in a close knit space together. The pandemic hits, what did you do? Yes? More after the break.
So luckily we had a member who are unluckily for her, but she gets she was stuck in China and she we chatted me and said, it's worse than they're saying it is. So this like two week thing not happening. And either way, we hadn't shut down yet, New York had not shut down yet, but I knew that people were less and less people were coming in. And also I was worried about my staff, and so I called an intern in, one of our interns, and I said, hey, have you ever heard of this thing called zoom? Can you just get us a zoom and we'll just see what that looks like, because we had all this programming for the rest of March it was Women's History Month, and I needed to continue to deliver that whether it was two weeks or two months. And she called me and she goes, it's free for thirty days. I said, do I have to put a credit card down? And she said yes because after thirty days. I said, oh, well, we won't have it for after thirty days. Yeah, here, I have like one hundred zoom counts already now. And that was it. So overnight, before New York, even before the physical space even shut down, we went online and I remember our first program was don't touch your face, don't touch your four oh one k because everyone was talking about like you, you know, touching your mouth, and then everyone was panicking, Oh my gosh, you know, it's going to be like two thousand and eight, and so that really for us, it was we didn't know it then because we were in sort of fight or flight mode because we didn't know if we were going to make it, But it was the beginning of such an amazing opportunity for us to think about how do we reach more people and have more impact and make what we were doing much more accessible. Than just in New York, and that's really what what transpired. But it was those first March, April, May June was the hardest for the six months of my career, hands down, way harder than the Financial crisis.
Wow. Wow. And I was a banker, right, I mean, that's that's quite a statement, to be harder than the financial crisis. Why do you think this was harder? How well? One?
You know, I don't. I mean, even with all of the cuts during the financial crisis, I don't think I ever really feared for my job. I was, I was, you know, really doing a great job. And I don't think I ever really thought, am I going to lose my job? When everybody in that company relies on you to pay their rent, or their mortgage or their childcare, it's it's a real rude awakening of the of the realities of what's happening and also the pressure of what was going on. And so we knew we had to adapt very quickly in order to just stay alive for a couple of months. And I think I went back to that original business plan and said, what could we do that could be innovating but also still at the core of our community. And if you remember so many individuals. So we have two you know, very again distinct audiences in that we have B two C and B too. B B two C. Everybody's worried. It's like, oh my gosh, like I'm going to pull back on my spending B to B. It was trying to figure out all these company these were trying to figure out how do they stay close to their people and connect them. And so we had already had some great companies that we were working with, and I called them and said, I think, you know, let's double down. And now it doesn't have to be in New York. I can reach your women and your allies anywhere in the world. And that sort of I think innovation and adapting and a pivot in a way was huge for us.
Yeah. It created a different way of thinking and a different pathway of opportunity.
Absolutely.
But while she was finding her stride with Luminary, behind the scenes, she was dealing with a diagnosis that changed her life. After the break, Kate dives into the personal that was behind her professional career. You know, the crux of this show is that these personal things that happen outside of us, like that we can't control end up opening up different opportunities. Like they're hard in the moment, and then they end up opening up different opportunities that we couldn't have even thought of. And a long which is basically this, I'd say, but this is still even kind of professional. You yourself have had a variety of health challenges that have taken you in different directions. Can you talk through that for us? Yeah?
And I think it's you know, it makes you feel really human when you go through something that you never expected. I actually it started actually in March of twenty twenty because as everything was shutting down, we were now locked down, and I started getting sick and I thought, oh, it's just like cold, and then no, it was COVID. So it was the original first strain, if you want to call it that, and I was trying to keep the company in business. I was going through PPP, the paycheck Protection Program, and it was really really rough on my body. And I think what should have been a two week maybe three week sickness lasted well into six to eight weeks because I wasn't getting any rest. And I think that took a tremendous amount of a put a tremendous amount of strain on my body. But then I didn't stop right, so I just kept going and it's the pandemic and I've got to keep the business going. And then in twenty twenty two, after failing to go to a mammogram for two years, I was like, oh, I guess go to collegist said you have to do this. You're not leaving my office until you go schedule your mammogram.
Fine, do it.
And then I was going to get on a zoom for about five hundred people one of our corporate clients, and my phone rings literally like two minutes before, and it's my doctor and they're like, hey, you know, very matter of fact, your biopsy came back because I had to have a biopsy. You have stage one breast cancer and now we need you to get in touch with the rest surgeon did and I remember not even listening. I was like, wait, what would they just say?
Huh?
And I'm trying to take notes while also thinking I have to go lead this gigantic zoom session. And I hung up and I get on the zoom and my COO at the time, who's still our advisor and our general counsel, could see my face and she DMed me in the zoom and said do you need a minute? And I said yeah, as I just needed to collect myself. I got back on into the zoom and then she came into the beauty bar, which which is where I was doing the zoom from, and she said what happened? And I had to say it out loud, and She's like, Okay, you're leaving, You're going home. I'm going to walk you home. And I'm getting a little emotional now because I don't think if she had done that, I think I would have just kept powering through that day. But it was really I just couldn't believe and I knew that it was stage one and it was all that was curable, and I was in New York City and the best city in the world for medicine. But you think you're invincible and then that happens, and it was. It has been a journey, and I have not been as open about it, not because I'm not open. I'm an open book, but I think I've also had to behind the scenes deal with having surgery, having treatment, getting ontomoxifen, which is the absolute worst medicine in the world, but it's a lifesaver. Then having so many complications from breast cancer and the medicine likely that led me to have a hysterectomy, a full hysterectomy in January of this year. And if I thought I needed help when I was going through the breast cancer, boy, what did I underestimate what kind of help I was going to need when I had a full hysterectomy. And coming from someone who never had children, unfortunately, you know, I never I didn't have any of that sort of like what happens when your body goes through trauma. So that has been May of twenty twenty two, that's when I was diagnosed and then I had my full hysterectomy January, and I would say, I'm still on the on the journey.
Do you think that you've had to adjust the way you think about your work, your impact, your time as you've been recovering and gone through these different phases. Yes, and no.
I don't think my focus and my drive and my determination are different, but how I do it is. And I think the hysterectomy. If you had asked any of my team when I was going through the breast cancer and all that I don't think they would have said that there was a huge change because I just sort of got on with it and I kind of managed things around it. When the doctor told my surgeon told me that I was going to have to take at least six weeks to eight weeks for recovery for the hysterectomy, I just said, no, that's got to be a joke. That's a long time. And I had to mentally come to the grips with it. I needed to let go and this was going to be not a huge opportunity for me and the team, and they just were incredible. They have been incredible and continue to be incredible, and so for me that almost the entire month of January, it did not do one video. I did a few zooms, but I really and I told people, I'm on short term medical leave and this is who's handling things in the team. And I really had to let go of that, and I think it was one of the best things that I could have done as a leader for me, but also for my team, because oh did they shine and they continue to and I saw that when I was going through COVID and we were all at home and we got to see different strengths from our team members, and I think I temporarily forgot that that people really can step up to the plate and shine and if you give them the opportunity. So that's really what's come out of this for me, and not holding on so tightly to every single thing just because it's my company and really allowing people to have wings and sort of take flight and own it. Yeah, there's opportunity, but it's hard for people to do, especially when they found company and continue to run it. Yes, and I think I've learned a lot too.
I also learned.
I think that it is really important outside of work to lean on the people that love you. And I think I've always preached that right so to my family and to friends, like lean on me, lean on me, and I don't think I ever really practiced what I preached. And this was a great exercise. If you will on, you have to lean on the people that are around you, and you have to ask for help and you tell everyone that, but you're not doing it. So start role modeling, Kate. So that was a wake up call for me too.
Yeah. Around the time of your Hysteric d Mags, a little bit after you had written on your Instagram that you were angry, that you were angry that the organ that you had never gotten to use to have kids was now the thing that was making you sick.
Yeah, it still makes me angry because I think there's obviously a societal thing that says, like, women, you're here to pro create and to have a family. And I have, you know, brothers. I have a brother on each side. I have ten incredible nieces and nephews who I love, and so I always wanted to have a family. I really it was such a big part of what at some point I was going to be able to do. And when I wasn't successful, I beat the shit out of myself. Right, I can be successful at every single thing, but I can't do this and my body won't work. And so fast forward I went. I mean, I went through a lot of IBF and then to have to find out that they're going to take everything that that sort of like makes you a woman. That didn't work on me. I didn't think it was going to be a big deal. Emily, I didn't. And then it just hit me one night that I had to grieve something that I could never do. But it still felt like a loss and how that is. And I know that's you know, we get into that and there's lots of people that have way worse things. But I just felt in that moment when I posted that I am angry because something that I wanted so badly in my life was enabled could happen. And now even though I the doctors had always told me after the IVF, I was not going to be able to be successful, I think once they take it out, it's like, well then it's really never going to happen. Not that it was going to happen anyway, but it was just cemented that. And I'm still grieving that because it's it's a hard thing to go through and by the way, it puts you an immediate menopause and that's also you know, terrible. So it's it's just a lot to deal with and emotionally and mentally, and I think for me cathartic to just share that on Instagram or even here, because I don't, you know, there's definitely still a lot of anger in there. And I the more I share, the better I feel. And the other thing is the more I share, kind of like what we were talking about the beginning this group therapy, Like the more I share or I really open my heart and my eyes to listen to others about their experiences, and I learned so much.
You know, often at this point in the interview, I would ask somebody to maybe like how they got through it, But I don't think that's a fair question to ask you right now. You're in it and like you're still having these waves of anger, maybe angry all the time. So how do you move through life with these big emotions? You know?
One is I always have something that I am focused on professionally and personally, right so I'm a goal oriented person. I always have something, and so for me, a little bit of is it And I'm again I'm not I'm not saying this is the best way, but I want to kind of just like move on, get on with it, and keep going because it will get better. I have learned in this kind of moment. Is my boyfriend Joe, who is amazing, would say, you know, you're all a boss, and he doesn't mean that in a negative way, but he's like, you're so tough and you have to let open yourself up. So part of me is still trying to figure out how to do that. I do that with my mom, my poor mom, every day. But that helps me move on. And also knowing that I have remarkable team and I have remarkable friends that if I need them, I can call on them, and even if I don't call on them, just knowing that they're there. But the other is I've got all these people in my community watching me, and I have nieces, and I want them to know it's okay to be honest about how we're feeling and that life is shitty sometimes and that we have to ask for help. So as an entrepreneur, you know, we have this emotional rollercoaster of like the terrible highs and lows. I think as humans we have that, and I just have to embrace both of them, because if you try to fight the lows all the time, I think you just get stuck in it even more. And so I have good days and bad days. I have good hours and bad hours, and that's really how I just kind of move I'm learning to move through it.
Yeah, that's a very real answer. You've referenced something that I think over the course of interview, something that I think about a lot is redefining success for myself at different points in my life. How do you think you're defining your success for yourself right now at this point.
Doing my best every day. You know, I tell my team all the time, we're never going to make everybody happy, and it's hard to run a company and whatever job you're in. I think if you go to work every day or show up in your personal life every day with the best intentions and giving it your all, and it sounds kind of like a TV commercial from the eighties, but that's how I was raised, and I think at forty nine, so much of how I was raised is really being reinforced now that I'm in that sort of you know, my mid life and my definition of success really now changes kind of daily. It changes in the way that if I had a really great conversation with an employee, too, I had a productive conversation with you know, my boyfriend too, I had an impactful dialogue about, you know, supporting someone's journey through menopause or loss or getting a promotion. So for me, it's it used to be. It used to be just everything about my career, and that is definitely still me and I own that and I love that part of me.
But I can do that.
I can still be relentless on my career and everything we're trying to build by also having a life and really embracing the love that I have in it.
That's so beautiful. What is one thing that at the time you saw as being like a negative or a setbacker really a low, and now in retrospect you see it's having really launched you into the success you.
Are right now. So I really when I when I decided to do the sort of leave banking, and I kind of sort of say it was like a temporary exit because you never know and never say never. But for about two months, I was really in a state of depression. And I think this is important for people that are going through transition. Whether you've been part of a job for production or you've made the choice to do something different and you're kind of figuring it out. It's really lonely because everybody else is at work and you're making this huge decision and everyone's going this is so inspiring and amazing, and I can't believe you're doing this, and you're feeling like, oh my god, what did I do? And I really felt that I was really depressed and I didn't know what to do. And no one knew that. Nobody knew that except for my boyfriend and my mom and maybe a few close friends, but very few. And I was so tied and tied up into my identity, which was work. And it was really like, oh my god, I don't have this thing that has defined me for twenty years, and now I've totally redefined that for myself. And I didn't even know that that's what I was going to do. And so I just think of myself those almost two months sitting in my bathroom of my apartment and thinking what did I do? I just blew up my life in lots of different reasons and ways. And now I look back and said I had to go through that because now I can be a better advocate, I can be a better leader, manager, founder, because now I can put myself in the shoes of different people before. I don't think I think I've said I could do that, and I don't truly think I could have. There's so much now on social media, and there's so much and we can create these great brands and personal brands and stories. But I truly feel like every day that I show up, I'm honest and I'm open and I'm direct and sort of what you see is what you get, and that's me and I'm okay with that. And someone doesn't like it. They don't like get One of my old bosses said, not everybody's gonna like you, but hopefully they respect you. And so I think whoever's listening, whoever out there, is like just own who you are, whether you're twenty five or forty nine or seventy whatever it is. And so for me, it's like, I am tough, I am relentless, I am I'm not as emotionally in touch with myself as I should be. I don't have a skincare regime, and that's okay because that's who I am, and I'm pretty happy with that.
Kate, thank you so much for joining. She pivots so good to have you on.
Likewise, I'm so happy to be here and it's so good to see your face too.
No, I know this just flew right by. Kate and Luminary are still in New York City, so if you're in the area, consider joining in person to truly tap into the magic of her community. You can visit their website we are luminary dot com to learn more. For more on Kate. You can follow her on Instagram at Kate Luzio. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us a rating and tell your friends about us. To learn more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our newsletter, where you can get exclusive behind the scenes content on our website at she pivots thepodcast dot com. Special thanks to the she pivots team, Executive producer Emily eda Velosik, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak, and audio editor and mixer Nina Pollock. I en yours she Pivots
