I'm Kate Slyker, and I lead through my company, Authentic.

The name matters. It's how I show up and how I believe work gets done. Clear. Human. Real.

I'm a former C-suite executive who now works alongside CEOs, presidents and leadership teams as an executive advisor, strategic partner and fractional executive leader. My current work spans fractional CEO, CMO and COO leadership, executive advisory, market entry and brand strategy, succession and stakeholder strategy, and senior marketing counsel.

The roles vary because the needs do. What connects them is experienced judgment, an independent perspective and a genuine curiosity about what's happening before deciding what to do about it.

For a decade, I sat in the C-suite at GCI, a $1B publicly traded Liberty Broadband company, rising from VP of Consumer Marketing to become the company's first Chief Marketing Officer. I led across consumer and B2B marketing, brand, customer experience, product, communications, philanthropy and digital, managing a $20M+ annual budget and helping drive more than $100M in incremental revenue.

But the seat was always broader than the title. Enterprise strategy, transformation, culture and the operating decisions that come with a C-suite role shaped how I think about leadership today: connected across functions, not boxed inside one.

Before GCI, I spent 15+ years at Alaska's leading advertising agency, eventually serving as Executive Vice President, working across industries and with brands reaching audiences throughout the U.S.

My roots are in Alaska, an unlikely place to build a national career, which may be exactly why it's worked. It taught me to understand a place before assuming I know it. Relationships matter. Reputation matters. Communities matter. And what works in one market doesn't automatically translate to another.

The roots are Alaskan. The perspective, and the work, are national.

Today, I bring that experience to organizations that need senior leadership, a trusted outside perspective, or simply an experienced person in the room who can help figure out what comes next.

For me, authentic leadership starts with understanding people.