Life in Full Color

KATE LOWERY BEGAN HER CHILDHOOD ON THE BANKS OF CLEAR LAKE WHERE HER GREATEST INFLUENCES WERE THE STRONG WOMEN SURROUNDING HER. THIS SMALL TOWN GIRL GRADUATED FROM LSU AND MOVED TO MEXICO CITY, BEGINNING A CAREER IN PR THAT WOULD EVENTUALLY TAKE HER ALL OVER THE WORLD.

ARTICLE BY MARÉ BRENNAN AND PORTRAIT BY MARTIN G MEYERS

Kate Lowery’s home in Austin’s Pemberton Heights neighborhood is filled with the world-beat sounds of traditional salsa music. She pours her signature Sangria, crafted with the freshest Texas citrus, into hand-blown glassware collected from the part of her life spent south of the border. Colorful and creative artwork by Kate’s talented high school freshmen son, Townes, is hung in gallery frames and represents his prodigious talent from a very young age. Her kitty, Stella Beans and Rice, is, like Kate, a transplant to Austin from little Clear Lake, Louisiana.

Throughout Kate’s home, reminders of her previous lives abound. Traditional crafted objects from Oaxaca, intricately embroidered textiles and extraordinary art fill bookshelves and walls. Kate’s is a life spent developing public relations campaigns that deliver the stories that turn companies into household, trusted names. Her communications skills have also paved the way for numerous successes for non-profits such as Austin’s Trail Foundation and The Hispanic Alliance, which she co-founded to help underserved populations have access to life-changing artistic opportunities. In Mexico, she works with the Puente a la Salud Comunitaria, which contributes to food sovereignty and advances the health and well-being of rural communities in Mexico by promoting the consumption, production and commercialization of amaranth.

Kate’s journey began as a child on the banks of Clear Lake, a community that practically splits the difference between Rayville and Logtown. Her parents, Nancy and the late Bud Lowery, and her late grandmother, Helene, shaped Kate’s world view instilling her with a daring sense of adventure and a love of Southern hospitality and storytelling, which was bolstered by an agrarian work ethic that anything is possible with hard work.

After graduating from Rayville’s Riverfield Academy, Kate attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she received a BA degree in Advertising from the Manship School of Journalism and a gained a command of the Spanish language that would prove to be invaluable her life’s work. While in school she traveled abroad with LSU Paris and LSU Oaxaca, deepening her desire to push herself beyond comfort zones.

After graduation, “I made a bet with one of my best friends that we should go to Austin and do graduate school. My goal was to get a dual masters in Latin American studies and communications,” says Kate with her million watt smile. Kate recounts telling her daddy that she really wanted to go to Mexico. Then she walked over to her grandmother’s house for advice. Her “Nana” wholeheartedly encouraged her to go, even offering to accompany her south of the border.

direct flight from New Orleans to Mexico City found Kate and a few intrepid sorority sisters in the largest city in the world. While staying in a hostel, Kate was fortuitously introduced by Mr. Gonzalez, the hostel host, to guests from Shreveport. With that, Kate landed her first job, serving as an interpreter for the couple and a nanny for their two children.

When time came to make the permanent move to Mexico City, Kate’s grandmother went along for the ride, dropping Kate off at the family’s home. At a newcomer’s club of American ex-pats living in Mexico City, Kate happened to meet the wife of a man who was opening a branch of the esteemed Public Relations firm, Burson-Marstellar. Not long after, Jorge Ortega called Kate into his office to interview for a position at the newly-founded branch. “He told me to write a press release about the invention of scissors,” explains Kate, shaking her head. She was almost finished writing about a fictitious inventor Eduardi Scissori, when he asked her to ride with him to the airport. He had a time sensitive document that needed to get to the USDA Rice Council. Now in the days pre-9/11, pre-Internet, pre-cell phones and before international UPS and FedEx services, businesses in foreign countries often sent proposals and critical documents with complete strangers who would take envelopes from Mexico City to an airport in Houston. Once they arrived in Houston, they would be met at the airport by a representative of the company who would take the package to its final destination. “So here I am at the huge Mexico City airport, Mr. Ortega jumps out to find a passenger who will act as our courier, and I am double parked in his car,” describes Kate. “My job was to move the car in case the authorities tried to tow it. In that year model of vehicle, the seatbelt had to be attached in order for the car to start.” A fact that was completely lost on Kate. When she couldn’t start the vehicle due to a disconnected seat belt, it was quickly towed. “So there I was. I hadn’t even been hired for the job yet with Burson-Marstellar, and I had already gotten my almost boss’ car towed. No car. No cell phone. Can you imagine? As luck would have it, I met a guy at the airport who happened to be from New Orleans, and he helped me retrieve Jorge’s car from the impound lot.” Kate calls it her “baptism by fire.” Despite the mishap, she landed the job, spending four formative years creating public relations magic for a myriad of multicultural clients in Mexico.

While in Mexico City, Kate was fortunate to meet John Bruton, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce. His wife was also a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, like Kate. The couple introduced her to a Laura Kelso, a new transplant to Mexico City and straight from Brown University. The two became fast friends and ended up rooming together. “We were super young and naive. I had come from the smallest little town to the largest city in the world. But we got to do a lot of things. I like to think it’s a universe thing – being at the right place at the right time.” Kate became known as the fearless girl and credits her spunky nature to her Clear Lake grandma. “I grew up with two amazing, widowed grandmothers – Helene Lowery and Frances Albright. My role models were strong, independent women.”

At the ripe age of 22, one of Kate’s earliest successes was a fashion show held at a beautiful museum for fashion forward and ethically conscious brand, United Colors of Benetton. “Every media outlet showed up; everyone was there from television and print,” says Kate, And Luciana Benetton kissed her hand for her efforts.

An opportunity to open offices of Burson-Marstellar in Santiago, Chile, as well as Argentina, took Kate to South America, where she began to feel the effects of being far removed from the fields of Richland Parish. She recalls that because of an outbreak in cholera, the government had banned the use of lettuce on sandwiches. Kate worked with the Chilean government in filtering crop water in order to restore lettuce back on the Big Mac for her client. During her South American years, she worked for corporate giants, building brands for the likes of Proctor and Gamble, Ford Motor Company, 3M, Motorola, IBM and Unilever among many others.

In 1997, Kate took the call from another mammoth in the public relations industry, Fleishman-Hillard, jumping on the chance to move closer to home and leveraging her experience within Spanish-speaking communities. As Vice President for the firm, Kate served as the Spanish spokesperson for a telecom powerhouse in the booming Texas market, providing diversity and inclusion public relations for the client. The turn of the century was an interesting time to be working in Texas with an explosion of Dot Com and high tech clients, says Kate. One of her tastiest publicity stunts was for the opening of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, because she laughs, “Let’s face it. Who doesn’t love fried masses of sweet carbs?”

In 2001, Austin-based Whole Foods, the flagship purveyor of organic and ethically sourced foods from around the globe, was in rapid expansion mode. Kate made the leap to the client side of public relations, becoming Whole Food’s Global Head of Public Relations and Communications. One of her first projects for the brand was to open London and New York City stores. Early on, Kate helped launch the Whole Planet Foundation. “I got to travel to Madagascar to learn about how cacao beans make the journey to become bar chocolate. It was one of the best trips of my entire life.”

After fifteen years as head of Global PR for Whole Foods, Kate decided to stretch herself and make the move to another Austin start up, HomeAway, where she has led their global team since the end of 2015. “Leaving Whole Foods was the hardest thing I have ever done,” says Kate. “but I thought capping off my career with a Dot Com experience would be the icing on the cake. I also love that it’s a truly global job, but I didn’t have to leave Austin.” Her communications team is spread across five continents with the goal to increase brand visibility through public relations. Home Away is an Expedia brand and is the world’s leader in vacation rentals with sites representing more than 2 million unique places to stay across the globe. Represented in the HomeAway portfolio are HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, VacationRentals.com in the United States, and many vacation rental websites in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, as well as BedandBreakfast.com. Kate shares that one of her goals is to experience one new country each year. Her trip this year entails a tour of Bali, Singapore and Thailand. While there, Kate will take part in HomeAway leadership meetings and participating in a fun Thai food cooking school.

Known for her ability to take a big idea and turn it into reality, Kate’s time with HomeAway has been nothing short of spectacular, if not slightly miraculous. Kate and her team created content driven public relations events that no amount of paid advertising could touch. Seizing on the fact that HomeAway was a sponsor the EUFA EURO Soccer Tournament, which was held in Paris, France, Kate and her team created the “Eiffel Tower All Yours” campaign to capitalize on the brand’s sponsorship in the City of Light. A temporary apartment, created in partnership with a French interior designer, was built out in an existing conference room within the tower.
Winning entries were chosen based on their answer to HomeAway’s question: What would you do in the Eiffel Tower, if you had it all to yourself for one night? Winning families came from the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Japan. Post terrorism, Parisian authorities were trying to encourage travel to France. The “two bedroom apartment” was built out in 48 hours wth the same stipulations for returning the space to its original state as a conference room. HomeAway secured different curated experiences for each family based on their answers to the contest.

Needless to say, Kate’s Eiffel Tower give-away generated enormous amounts of positive media exposure from Good Morning America, The Today Show, BBC, NPR, Reuters and more, resulting in double the amount of impressions for HomeAway, year over year. How does one top such an impressive public relations feat? If you are Kate Lowery, you dream like a Disney princess! HomeAway, partnering with Disney’s during the release of their blockbuster movie Beauty and the Beast in 2017, created a “Be Our Guest Sweepstakes” to win a 5-night stay in Duns Castle in Scotland for twenty friends. The media response to this experience was over the top with NBC’s Today Show allocating multiple days of coverage with both Al Roker and European correspondent Kir Simmons, diving deep into the story with live feeds from the 14th century castle. Kate and her team brought in bloggers and influencers to help promote the event and giveaway on social media outlets as well. Says Kate, “Nothing could top Al Roker sitting on the castle’s throne, and we hated it when he had to cut his time in Scotland short due to an impending winter storm in New York.”

With a new promotion about to drop for HomeAway in April of 2018, one can only wonder what authentically wonderful idea Kate has in store for those who want to wander.

In Austin and in Mexico, Kate has put her expertise in public relations and business acumen to work for non-profits that are making a difference in people’s quality of life.

As a Founding Board Member of The Hispanic Alliance in 2011, Kate helped create and guide this non-profit that builds participation in the performing arts in Austin’s growing Hispanic community, focusing primarily on underserved youth and their families. “We use music as a catalyst to help students get ahead. Austin Sound Waves, a program of The Hispanic Alliance, has just graduated its first class with all of its participants receiving letters of college acceptance,” says Kate proudly. Sadly, after this interview Kate learned that one of the program’s success stories, Draylen Mason, was murdered in a package bomb explosion. He was accepted into the selective Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin and was to begin classes there in the fall of 2018.

The walking trails around Austin’s Lady Bird Lake are in good hands with Kate, serving currently on The Trail Foundation’s Development Committee. Kate has also served as this non-profit’s Board President, Vice-President, Secretary and Communications Chair. The Trail Foundation is celebrating its 15th anniversary of connection people, pets and the environment.

Fifteen years ago, Kate’s friend started a non-profit in Oaxaca, Mexico to create Puente a la Salud Comunitaria (Bridge to Community Health), which contributes to food sovereignty and advances the health and well-being of rural communities in Mexico. This non-profit promotes the consumption, production and commercialization of amaranth, which is a natural, sustainable and nutrient-dense solution to many of the health problems faced in developing countries. Ever resourceful, Kate asked friends through social media to give $15 in honor of this non-profit’s 15th anniversary. She, in turn, matched her friends’ donations and HomeAway matched her donations as well. Within minutes she had surpassed her goal. “It is heartwarming and validating proof that the biggest hearts are in Northeast Louisiana. My 1980’s high school friends gave to help my Mexican friends,” says Kate, flashing her movie star smile.

Kate’s advice on success? “Find your passion, then give it your all.”

KATE’S AUSTIN TO-DO LIST

KATE’S MUST SEE PLACES IN AUSTIN:
The Trail is a must, and a hike to the top of Mount Bonnell provides gorgeous views of the eastern shores of the Lake Austin portion of the Colorado River.

KATE’S TOP RESTAURANTS TO EXPERIENCE IN AUSTIN:
There are so many great restaurants, in no certain order:
Taste of Texas for approachable fun
Lambert’s for delicious fish and BBQ!
Kimuri Tatsuya is a departure for Austin and is a fusion of Texas meets Japan in an Izacaya style with slow-smoked fish that literally pulls apart in a casual atmosphere
Fonda San Miguel – Brunch here is an Old Austin tradition not to be missed
Tacodeli for breakfast tacos
Jeffrey’s for Happy Hour and burgers by the fireplace
Launderette
Mattie’s

BEST PLACE FOR LIVE MUSIC?
The Continental Club is an authentic Austin experience