Meet Kasia Katza | Polish writer, Tech girl and Farm enthusiast

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kasia Katza and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kasia, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I am Polish who moved to Colorado less than 2 years ago. The move has been supported in a many ways by my company Google, where I work more than 8 years. Colorado is beautiful, nature is amazing, people are the most genuine and inspirational I have ever met, but it all is not enough to be fully happy when you are far away from your home country, when you speak your native language maybe 10-20 % in day usage.

2 things have led me to the path of starting my own sort of business:
1) I have been missing Poland, Polish language so I started to write in polish books for children, however the stories are about animals living in the USA, so naturally they were shared with Americans who loved the stories, so I ended up translating some stories to English. The stories (to be precise poems) are written in places close to my heart: Boulder, Colorado mountains, Nederland, Florida, where I see animals and write the funny stories about them.

2) I have been fascinated by farm life in Colorado. My ultimate dream is to create a nature-powered and community-driven village, where we can live in sustainable way with Earth. I didn’t want to wait until the moment I would have my own land, until we build a first house, until I have an expertise in raising goats, chickens and being full-time farmer, because it will take years of hard work and dedication. I wanted to learn and inspire others to chase their dreams, so I started to volunteer a lot at friend’s farms in Colorado and sharing my lessons at social media channels and in the future on my web-site.

I truly believe that everyone has a unique path of heart to discover, that our lives could be filled with passion, purpose and dedication. Sometimes we know what we want to do for entire our life since childhood, but in many cases there are a lot trials behind finding your love of your life in terms of marriage, career, business, hobby, dream home etc. No matter how long does it take to fullfill your dreams , it is worth to try again and again despite struggles, challenges and circumstances playing not in your favour. I want to share kind words of support and encouragement by my books, social activities in order to inspire and make people to believe in their dreams.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Since age 15 I have been working as German teacher and interpreter in the school, where I learned German. It contributed organically to the fact, that I have been investing in other languages in order to fluently use: German, Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, Slovenian. My family set up, teachers were encouraging me to invest in languages skills and naturally let me to the path where I could use them.

I got Master Diploma in International Relationship in Warsaw and since that moment started to work for small/medium businesses helping them to expand their services/products to foreign markets. I established as well my own company for teaching languages and interpreter services, but once the company has been launched, Google scouted me and offered a position at Customer facing role. I did’t know much about IT, Tech, Google products, not even about coding, tech solutions, but I have been fluent in Russian and German, so I got an opportunity to work either for Russian or German market, while I choose Russian. Until this moment of my career I would say that everything was going smoothly: growing client base, winning government grant for woman-owned SMB, first great business partnerships..

Since joining Google I realised that it would be a bumpy road for me to become successful professional. At Google you are surrounded by a lot of very very smart people, with unique backgrounds, world-best class education, so it is quite easy to get Imposter Syndrom. It took me years of dedication to overcome many of my fears and challenges. One of the greatest was public speaking fear. I needed to learn how to run presentation, record educational webinars, have a speech on the 1000 people conference and this all should be provided not in my native language Polish!

My lessons learned along the way:
a) find what is your zone you want to stretch and dedicate time (sometimes years) to achieve significant changes. Here is an example: running data analysis was never something appealing to me, even I learnt and needed for my roles at Google, but public speaking was something calling me despite the fear raising in my body, I knew that this is my path to go
b) build your support group and rely on it. As i have mentioned before, that God has only our hands to help and I have been blessed to meet people who were supporting me in many way on my career journey at Google, i.e. making dry run for upcoming presentation until I am smooth, correcting my speeches until it is perfect, smiling to me at room when I have been anxious delivering the speech, but I could feel that someone believes in me and wishes all good

Now I feel that it is time to give back to the world. So every time when I have new people coming to our Team, Office, struggling with on-boarding (Hello, Imposter Syndrom!) I am making sure that I am that person holding their hand. I guess, that at certain point it has not been enough for me to share only on company level, so I started my social media, where I am trying more in broad way to inspire and motivate people.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
This is my favourite question because I am always a local patriot of the place where I live. I would invite you one day to have a walk on a beautiful middle -century town Wroclaw, Poland where I have been living before coming to Colorado, but it would be next time..,
I live in Boulder, a city established by Germans and having still this german vibes, so we might take bikes and ride on Saturday morning to Boulder’s farmer market, where we go to get the best cappuccino at Silver Canyon coffee stand and chat with this cute and lovely lady, who always remembers her customers by names and their orders. What a lovely way to start a day! Next to the stand of Silver Canyon coffee there is another one from bakery “Moon Racoon”, where they sell the best cardamon knots and other pastries. Owners of the place went on the trip to Europe and come back inspired by French and Italian bakeries so now we all ended up tasting Colorado owned but European like fresh croissants and pastries. Yummy! Since we have cappuccino and cardamon knots we can walk around the market, buy fresh flowers, bread at Dry Storage and cheese at Tim from Colorado Farm House Cheese Company. Tim and his business partner are famous for their goat and cow milk cheeses which are always delicious. Later I would recommend to go to mountains: Nederland is cute and nice for picnic at lake or just for a quick hike. For the lunch I would go there in Nederland to Crosscut Pizza place and for afternoon if you are not tired I would go to Balto Lavender Farm to help with their flowers fields, where they grow organic lavender and having bees. It has been a busy day, so we need to have a good dinner. Here depends on what you would like to have I would take you to Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse because it is unique place, which it has been hand-made by 40 artisans from Tajikistan. It would be a wonderful day!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I believe in butterfly effect, where everyone and everything is connected and somewhat shaping each others. We are all products of our parents, families, society, world around. My list of people, organisations, books would be very long, because all of them contributed to the person who I am now. But first things first, I am thankful God, Creator of Life to give an opportunity to live my life and giving me all the talents I am having or still discovering that I could have. God works thought people and that’s the only hands God has, so I am thankful for my family who always supported me to be creative, open-minded, curious and independent. The older I grew, the more I understand now the perspective of parents, grandparents and their wisdom flowing to the children. Now growing up in a friendly environment is one thing, but another thing is to keep the space for future growth and development. It is like with the plant, the seed could grow into a strong and healthy sprout, but it would be nothing if you put on sand or rocks. My safe base of further development was my husband who provides a lot of space for creativity flow, career growth, farm life dream building. He is a wonderful partner for any kind adventure is waiting next.
Career at Tech has been shaped by many people and those people know how grateful I am for their kind words, believe in me, when I was not believing in myself, mentoring me when i have been lost and providing support when health problems were making me thinking to quit Google. I had been lucky to have wonderful managers, as they truly cared about me and our Teams and supported me in becoming confident professional, successful Program Manager and Product Expert.
In terms of writing stories and books I am grateful for our English teacher Lydia, living in Florida who were telling me to write when I didn’t understand what and how to wrtie. Somehow she saw something in me and started to tell that I need start writing. Another friend, called as well Lydia has been a host for our multiple vacations in Florida, where my writing is very abundant and where book has been born. Lydia, my Florida friend, has been traveled to us to Colorado and each time she is around, my writing flow is unstoppable. This is a example of butterfly effect, where you could create a space, relationship, provide needed support which will develop your projects in many different ways.

Last, but not least there is a list of American friends, who are hosting me and my husband at their farms, allowing us to learn, work or volunteer on small and big projects. I am grateful Tim from Colorado Farmhouse Loveland for introducing me to cheesemaking, goat farming, I am blessed to meet Chris and Jenn, owners of lavender organic farm Balto in Boulder, where we can work with bees, flowers and animals.

That’s just a quick overview of people that were providing mentorship, support, encouragement. I am grateful for all of them and everything I got.

Website: https://www.kolebkadobrychbaj.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kasia_katza/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007303788946

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kasiakatza

Image Credits
All the image are mine