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Meet Katie Veeninga, bringing creativity to healthcare

A headshot of Katie with a design that reads: Kin+ Katie Veeninga

Our name is intentional. “Kin” refers to family and “Carta” refers to maps. When together, we’re Kin + Carta — a group of connected makers, builders and creators, who come together everyday to help our clients build experiences and plot a clear path forward in today’s digital world. Carta is what we do, Kin is who we are.

Kin+ is a series that uncovers the experiences, stories and lives of the people who make our collective “Kin” exceptional.

Our Kin are motivated to do their best work for many different reasons. For Katie Veeninga, combining data with healthcare to improve patient outcomes is driven by a passion born out of personal experience. Added to this is her artistic side that brings much needed creativity to a complex area. More from Katie Veeninga, Principal Data Strategist, as she shares insight into her experiences below.

A headshot of Katie with a design that reads: Kin+ Katie Veeninga

I've been at Kin + Carta for almost a year now, working in the strategy and innovation practice as a data strategist. This follows a 15 year career in health care working with providers and payers, as well as on mobile platforms to improve patient experience and health outcomes. I’ve led business strategy and data strategy and have a lot of experience and passion around digital transformation in the healthcare space, and how we can use it to improve the healthcare experience.

Part of my motivation to work in the healthcare industry comes from first hand experience through my own family members dealing with complex medical conditions. They directly faced a healthcare system that can sometimes be overwhelming in the best of circumstances, and even more so when you’re suffering from a challenging medical condition or diagnosis.

This is the reason why I started in the industry — I really wanted to improve health care for everyone. It's a complicated system, and I saw a lot of need for improvement and opportunity to do things differently. And that’s where my passion for data comes into play. The potential to use it to tackle many of the challenges in surfacing the right information to patients, as well as providers, is huge. My work has been focused on doing this more efficiently, so that people are empowered to make better decisions about their health. My goal is to make information and data more accessible, so it can be leveraged to improve health care.

The potential to use data to tackle many of the challenges in surfacing the right information to patients, as well as providers, is huge. My work has been focused on doing this more efficiently, so that our loved ones can make better decisions about their health.

And talking of accessibility, a career in tech for a woman is thankfully becoming easier. I’ve been consistently surprised and disappointed that there is still some male dominance across the different industries and sectors. Your ability to influence and be impacted by that minority status is still very real, and it’s something we all need to continue to collectively focus on.

Katie with a fellow Kin
Katie with a fellow Kin

Something that’s been helpful for myself is finding people who support you authentically for who you are as a person. Often that’s women supporting women, but there can be an empathy between colleagues, or friends who have a similar experience. There's certainly been men who have just seen me for who I am outside of gender, and have helped champion me as an advocate and ally. Finding those people is the most important thing you can do, and those people will evolve as you evolve.

Your ability to influence and be impacted by that minority status is still very real, and it’s something we all need to continue to collectively focus on.

One thing even my colleagues might not know is that I've been a fine artist for more than 20 years. This all started as a hobby, but over the past years I’ve been searching for new ways to take my art and share it with the world. That’s why I created Revelation Art as a platform to sell products that I designed myself, but also to host events like paint nights. All of this is intended to raise money to support nonprofits focused on AIDS advocacy and support of other vulnerable populations.

I am really committed to AIDS advocacy, prevention, and education. My father passed away when I was really young from AIDS in the eighties, when the disease was not very well understood and access to accurate information was a barrier to getting needed care. Although I was too young to have a deep understanding, his experience has foundationally impacted who I am as a person.

Katie hosting one of her paint events
Katie hosting one of her paint events

I’m a very creative person, and for me, the more opportunity I have to be creative in my personal life, the better I can be creative in my professional life. It’s all about thinking of how we can improve health care, coming up with new solutions to old problems, taking the information we know, and looking at it in a different way. And that's exactly what I do when I’m painting — I look at the world a little bit differently.

Want to work alongside passionate and creative people like Katie and make a real difference to people’s lives?

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