Katherine Black
Partner, Consumer and Retail
New York

Originally from a small town in North Carolina, Katherine Black began her professional life with an internship at the FDIC in Washington, D.C., as part of her studies at Wake Forest University. Her next move was into commercial banking with Wachovia and credit card marketing with Capital One. At Capital One, she fell in love with the data-driven environment. “It wasn’t about who was the most senior person in the room. It was about who had the most logical or concrete case backed by data,” she says. That became the cornerstone of her career.

When Katherine moved on to Fifth Third Bank, her job was to infuse the bank with data. “I was taught the value of understanding individuals, how they work, what motivates them, and blending the art of understanding and motivating people with data to make logical decisions.”

Consulting offered Katherine an opportunity to try something new. But one thing has remained the same: data has been a thread woven throughout her career. She is data-driven with a mission to put the customer at the heart of retail.

An avid cook, she was drawn to grocery shopping not only because of her interest in food but also because food drives behavior. “Food is part of the fabric of everybody’s lives,” she says. “If you understand people’s eating patterns, you understand a lot about how they behave, how they think, how they act.”

Katherine helps consumer and retail companies understand how consumers are behaving and what the market looks like on a granular level to help them achieve their full potential. At Kearney, she sees a culture set up for success and appreciates the spirit of collaboration. And at the end of the day, she knows that people are a product of the culture they are in at that moment in time.

Katherine believes in leaning into relationships, knowing that anytime there is conflict in a business or personal relationship, it is important to understand what you’re doing. “There’s a pivotal moment when you realize you need to change in order to make the situation change,” she says. “I’ve seen that in teams that I’ve led when the entire situation changed as we approached things in a different way.”

In her free time, Katherine finds joy hanging out and playing with her children.

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