Kathryn Rudloff

Activist, Athlete, Business adviser, Business leader, Business mentor, Christian, Event planner, Parent

Kathryn Rudloff is a candidate for Doctor of Business Administration at Florida Institute of Technology, where she also serves as Executive Director of weVENTURE Women’s Business Center. weVENTURE WBC is an SBA resource partner that provides low and no-cost business education and mentorship to female entrepreneurs. As Executive Director, Rudloff manages a team of business coaches that serve over 700 unique small business clients a year. Her leadership extends beyond the university, as she serves on the board of the Association of Women’s Business Centers and is active on the advocacy committee. Before joining Florida Tech, Rudloff held positions as Executive Director for a local pro-business non-partisan small business advocacy organization and as District Director for the Congressman from FL-08. In her early career she worked in strategic messaging and communications for political committees and campaigns in Washington DC, California, and Florida. She has worked on campaigns at every level – local, state, federal, and even a 2007 presidential campaign as Florida Director of Field Operations. Rudloff holds a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from The Ohio State University, a Masters in Political Management from George Washington University and is a certified facilitator for Athena International. Rudloff also holds the license for TEDxFloridaTechWomen. She will be presenting her dissertation research, looking at the impact state-level family policies have on female labor force participation and entrepreneurship, to two conferences in the coming months, the Southern Economic Association and the Federal Reserve conference on Unequal Outcomes in the Labor Force. Rudloff is passionate about her work in women's economic empowerment and has been recognized for her outstanding contributions, including the 2017 "4 under 40" award from LEAD Brevard. She and her husband, Alex Rudloff, have three sons and enjoy all things Disney.

I am a passionate advocate for economic opportunities for women and raising awareness that most small businesses are actually solopreneurs and contract workers. The fastest-growing segment of these are female heads of households in the lowest income quartile. Our economy has shifted drastically over the last 30 years, with women increasingly bearing more economic responsibility.

Entrepreneurship, Raising little boys, Women's Economic Empowerment

My husband Alex worked at TED 2011-2016 as the TEDx Chief Digital Strategist. At that time I was a Stay at home mom with our two young boys. While he traveled the globe going to events, I would watch along at home, or on a few occasions, accompany him to TEDx events. We were bought in fully to the TED community and enjoyed those years very much. When he left TED he took over the license for TEDxOrlando and I enjoyed working with him to plan those events. Flash-forward a number of years, I became Executive Director of a women's business center at a university and applied for a TEDx license to host watch parties of the TEDwomen conference. This will be my third year hosting TEDxFloridaTechWomen and I am so excited to return home and bring all that I learned at the conference back to the campus community.

Dancing. I was a dance major my first two years in college and on the dance team at The Ohio State University.