Willy Walker:
It is my great pleasure to have Katie Higgins Cook join me for this leadership summit here in New York City and to join us for a live edition of the Walker Webcast.
Katie, welcome.
Katie Cook:
Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here, Willy. I don't get to New York often, but I can definitely say this is one of the best-dressed rooms I've ever been in. And too, probably one of the most powerful female rooms that I've been in. Thank you so much for having me. Definitely happy to be here.
Willy Walker:
You're a true pioneer. Coming from a military family, both grandfathers being pilots, a father who was a pilot. What made you need to go into aviation?
Katie Cook:
Actually, I would say I was inspired to a life of service from my paternal grandfather. I called him Bucky. My father's side of my family came from Sweden, and Bucky was a second-generation American. His family literally came over with nothing. And within two generations, his service to the military brought our family from nothing to upper-middle class. So we really instilled this idea of service and giving back to a country that had given my family so much. We truly lived the American dream.
One of my cousins works for the Institute of the Blind. One is a social worker.
And my brother and I both went into the military. When I was in high school, I knew I wanted to give back in some way. I didn't know if it was a firefighter, police officer; I even considered the nunnery at one point. But I wanted to have children, and they tend to frown upon that. So ultimately, led me to the Naval Academy and then to military service. I did know that I wanted to be in the sky, if that was the path that I chose. I went into the Naval Academy with a goal of becoming a pilot, and luckily it worked out that way.
Willy Walker:
So you didn't apply to West Point?
Katie Cook:
I did. I actually applied to West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy. I got into all three and chose the Naval Academy, the right path.
Willy Walker:
Would your dad have ever forgiven you if you'd gone to West Point?
Katie Cook:
I think he would have. I mean, I think there would have been, obviously, the rivalry. But I will say my father attended the Naval Academy in the class of 1981. The first class of women was 1980. He saw basically what women went through being the first or being the few as you're going through. And I know we're going to talk about that further as we go down this conversation.
But when I decided to go to the Naval Academy, he cried, not because he wasn't proud of me, but he had this apprehension of what it was going to be like as a woman at the Naval Academy. Luckily, we've come a long way since then. When I went, the Naval Academy was 20% women. We've made a lot of strides there. But he was concerned. He was scared about it. And I think he would have had the same apprehension no matter which service academy I went to. But he knows that I ultimately landed in the right place at the Naval Academy.
Willy Walker:
In the first class in 1976, there were like five women?
Katie Cook:
Correct.
Willy Walker:
So your dad was the following year. He was there when there was just such a small cohort.
Katie Cook:
Correct. Yep.
Willy Walker:
And did he give you any advice as you headed to Annapolis? I mean, by the time you got there, it was 20% women. But still, 1 in 5 is not exactly equal representation.
Is there anything that he said to you as it relates to doing this, be careful of this?
Katie Cook:
I wouldn't say gender dynamics-wise he gave any advice. It's a little bit hard when you're a white man to kind of put your shoes in the experiences of other people. But I will say he instilled in this idea that I could do whatever the heck I put my mind to. He didn't say that there were going to be barriers. In fact, he encouraged me if there wasn't someone that looked like me or wasn't someone of the same demographics, that I could be the first. He never even assumed that there were proverbial barriers for me.
And I think that's what caused me to go the path, the reason I'm talking to you today, going down the path as the first female Blue Angel pilot is because I never really saw it as a barrier. I never really saw it as “Hey, there isn't somebody that looks like me, I can't pursue this,” because my dad never put any obstacles on me in the first place or any restrictions on me in the first place.
Willy Walker:
Did you know when you were at Annapolis that you wanted to come out and be a naval aviator?
Katie Cook:
Yes. I knew I wanted to be a pilot right away because, I mean, I'm a third-generation pilot. I kind of had it in my blood. Like you have families of doctors, I just happen to have a really cool lineage that I kind of follow. But I thought I wanted to be a Navy jet pilot. That's what I thought.
And when I was at the Academy, I got exposed to the Marine Corps because, if you didn't know, about 25% of all commissioned graduates from the Naval Academy go to the Marine Corps. And I got exposed to a couple of Marine officers. And then during my summer training, I got exposed to enlisted Marines.
And when I tell you that they are some of the most professional people that I've ever met in my life, they really truly embody this idea of honor, courage, commitment. They knew their jobs and their roles down pat. And I knew if I wanted to be the best version of myself, that old adage of like steel sharpens steel, though, leading individuals like that would make me the best version of myself. And I wanted to be exposed to that. I wanted to learn from them.
Ultimately, I chose a little bit of a deviated path and went to the Marine Corps.
I will tell my mom about having a heart attack. As you can imagine, I went to the Academy in 2004, graduated in 2008. We were in the midst of Operation Enduring Freedom. My father had served in it. My mom was freaking out that I was going to have to deploy. Not to mention that my little brother actually followed me to the Academy. There were both of us. And fast forward a couple years, we were actually both deployed at the exact same time. My mom was really freaking out then.
But the Marine Corps ultimately, I would say, aligned more with my values. Not that there's anything against the Navy, but at the time it aligned with my values. And I still pursued aviation in that path. I obviously wasn't a jet pilot. I selected C-130s, which is a very large aircraft with four engines. If you've ever seen the Blue Angels perform, I flew Fat Albert. That's her name, if you are aware of the show. And I was a little disappointed, I would say. I would say in the back of my mind, I really wanted to do close air support. When I was in flight school, I actually almost got into a plane crash. We were flying formations, is what we call it. I was learning how to fly with another airplane.
And I was a new pilot, or a boot pilot, as we like to call it. I was a new pilot. I had never flown instruments, which means I didn't know what any of that stuff meant, really, in the glass cockpit. I could look outside, and I could point the airplane where it needed to go. But as far as using the instruments to fly, I was not proficient in that. We were flying as a two-ship and ended up soaked in weather. We were in a thunderstorm. My instructor said take my controls, I give him the controls. And I'm looking outside because I don't know any better.
That's how I fly, VFR flying, is what we call it. I don't know the instruments. I'm looking outside and I see a hole, I mean a gap in the clouds. I'm like, oh, okay, that's what he's doing. He's flying over there. Well, what I didn't know is he had gotten the leans.
If you're ever familiar or you've heard anything about the leans, it's where you get disoriented because there's no clear horizon that you can see. Thank goodness I was looking outside because we broke out of the clouds and all I could see were trees. What had happened is we ended up 90 degrees angled, by 30 degrees nose low, going straight towards the ground.
I luckily was looking outside because I didn't know any better and was able to grab the stick as hard as I could, pulling it into my stomach. We actually over-G'd the plane, over-sped the plane, and they pulled the black box later. And by the time that we had recovered the two-ship, we were 50 feet above the ground when we recovered.
We got very, very close to almost getting in an accident. There was a lot my instructor had to go back through the instructor rag, is what we call it. They had to go back through training. But at the end of that, I basically scared the crap out of myself and was like, I don't want to go fast. I don't want to shoot weapons anymore. I just want to give gas. I just want to go low and slow or high and slow and just give gas. That's why I decided, hey, C-130s were the choice for me.
C-130s are very competitive in the Marine Corps. There's only three squadrons, so they only select 12 pilots a year. I luckily got one of those positions due to my performance in flight school. But I would say in the back of my mind, it was still like I really wanted to do close air support. I really wanted to be like my dad and support those Marine sailors, allies, soldiers on the ground. I did have a little bit of disappointment.
Well, fast forward, I get to my airplane, the C-130, and we actually have a variant called the Harvest Hawk, which is a C-130 that shoots Hellfire-derived missiles. And I happened to land right in the pipeline and got selected for this platform. When I deployed, I actually was on this platform, and we fired more munitions than all other big swing assets combined.
I do believe that everything happens for a reason. And for me, I was still able to pursue this mission of close air support, even though I didn't end up selecting jets. I know that was a very long answer to your question.
Willy Walker:
You covered a lot of ground there.
Katie Cook:
I did.
Willy Walker:
On that one, though, when you were in Afghanistan, you were called in to basically rescue a Marine unit that was trapped on enemy lines. Some of you may have seen the movie back in 2013, Lone Survivor. That's very analogous to what Katie did as far as her rescue mission for this group of Marines.
Talk about that, because, I mean, you clearly won that type of exposure to combat. You picked a different route, and all of a sudden, boom, whatever, five years later, you're right in the thick of things.
Katie Cook:
Yep. Essentially what happened here is I was supporting the Marines in Helmand Province. You guys have probably heard about that on the news. My C-130 can orbit for about 13 hours, and so that helps set up, like, situational awareness of what's going on.
Willy Walker:
What's the longest you can stay in the cockpit? It can stay up there for 13 hours. You can't be flying for 13 hours.
Katie Cook:
No, I can't.
Katie Cook:
You can't. They don't have the same stuff as, like, timing out, like commercial pilots do.
Katie Cook:
Yes, there is, like, timing out, and there's, like, the amount of hours that you can fly in a month. But in a war zone, you can get a waiver for anything. I don't mean to be flippant about that, but I have flown more than 100 hours in a month or whatever the requirements were. But you can fly longer than 12 hours at a time, but then they really care about your crew rest on the back end, that you're not doing kind of back-to-back missions and you have that stacked-up fatigue.
But this particular incident you're talking about, so before you actually deploy, we have these things called work-ups, and that's where you do all of your mission sets in a safe environment before you go overseas and someone's shooting at you while you're trying to do those same missions. For me, it was close air support. It was giving gas. It was dropping flares.
We have really bright flares that can illuminate about a kilometer's space that people can see. We drop people and things out the back of an airplane. We do all these mission sets in-country before you go overseas to do them.
And I was not originally scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan, but there was a pilot who actually popped for a heart murmur about six weeks prior to deployment, and they needed to swap him out. And they were like, who can do this training in six months in a six-week period? And because of some of the other stuff that I had done in the squadron, I built a reputation, and they selected me to do that. As a result, I had never shot a missile before I went to combat, which is crazy. I had practiced it. I knew how to do it, but never had an actual missile come off the rails and go anywhere until I was in combat. My very first time doing that is this story that you're talking about.
Willy Walker:
Does that feel like firing a gun? In other words, I think many people here have had the kickback that comes from firing a gun. Do you get that when you launch that missile off the plane?
Katie Cook:
Not in my aircraft. The C-130 Harvest Hawk had a sensor on one side, and then they had a Hellfire rack with four Hellfires on the other side. When it comes off, you can hear it, but you don't get any kind of jerk or anything in the airplane.
Willy Walker:
And then do you get to track?
Katie Cook:
Oh, yeah.
Willy Walker:
So you've got a monitor in front of you that sees whether you hit your target or not?
Katie Cook:
We have a sled, what is called a sled in the back, and there are two fire control officers, and they have a tracker. They're in the bay of the airplane. They're tracking it, they're lazing it and getting it all the way in. We also have the ability to GPS track.
Willy Walker:
And do you have to be thinking about whether it hits or not, or the moment it goes, you're thinking about the next part of the mission? In other words, are you sitting there saying, we're going to have to loop back if we hit it, or is it just, I need to keep going on this run, and it's up to them to track whether we were successful or not?
Katie Cook:
It's a little bit of both. That's the best part about being in a crew-driven weapon, is what we like to call it. The two fire control officers are making sure that the missile is actually hitting its target.
I'm making sure we're not hitting anything as we're flying, and that we can set ourselves up for a reattack if we have to. We're talking to the people on the ground to make sure that the effects that we see on the monitor are the effects that they need on the ground. It's a little bit of both.
But I would say, obviously, the first concern is safety of the aircraft and safety of the people aboard. That's what, as the pilot in command, you're kind of worried about, and then someone else is talking on the radio, then someone else is lazing, and so that's what makes it such an effective weapon system.
Willy Walker:
And you have to drop to a lower altitude to launch those missiles, and that puts you in harm's way more significantly than just cruising?
Katie Cook:
Staying, like, completely...
Willy Walker:
This is not off the record.
Katie Cook:
Right, exactly. So I'm not going to say anything secret or anything like that.
Willy Walker:
There’s not a child and house rules here.
Katie Cook:
Right, exactly, yes. No, so I would say we have an altitude that we operate at that's pretty standard. You can go lower, you can go higher, but we tend to train at a certain altitude. That keeps us out of the danger range of some weapons. When I was in Afghanistan, I was out of the range of dangerous weapons. Some of our other more advanced adversaries, you would not.
Willy Walker:
I just want to pause for two seconds. I get tickled listening to such an accomplished woman talk about these types of things that typically you'd only hear a man talk about. For all you've done and your service to our country, but just to hear you talk about these things that typically would be some guy being like, why don't we do this? It's really quite something, all the accomplishments that you've had. But I've interrupted you on your story.
Katie Cook:
No, you're okay. You're okay. These Marines were in Helmand Province.
It was a squad worth of Marines, and they were pinned down by a three-man PKM team, which is a machine gun, on top of a building. We were just kind of on an ISR mission. It's just an intel mission, so we were just kind of bebopping around and giving people a readout of what was going on in the area. No real requirements at the time.
Willy Walker:
Just burning fuel.
Katie Cook:
Just burning fuel, looking around, collecting intel. And then we get a tip or a troop in contact, so that means that the controller calls us and says, hey, we've got some Marines that are in contact. It could be Marines. It could be sailors. I've shot for all different kinds, but in this case, it was Marines. They start giving us space. It's called a nine line, so it gives you where you need to go, who's getting shot at. It kind of tells you exactly where you need to position the airplane to be able to shoot. As soon as we hear that, oh, a troop's in contact, you're like max blast, trying to get over there. You're typing in everything in the computer to make sure that you get the right coordinates and all this stuff. And as we're talking to the Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC), he's the guy on the ground that's actually getting shot at with these other Marines, you can actually hear the rounds on the radio, like tick, tick, tick, hitting behind them. You can hear explosions like RPGs hitting them down.
Willy Walker:
Lone Survivor is not far from what they were dealing with.
Katie Cook:
Lone Survivor, yes, he was being chased and pursued by the enemy. My guys were not “behind enemy lines.” They were where they were supposed to be.
They were on their patrols, and they got attacked while they were on patrol, if that makes sense. They're getting shot at. He clears us for two-by Hellfire.
We're in our orbit at an undisclosed altitude. We're in our orbit, and we get cleared to turn in. We turn in.
We fire two-by Hellfire, and it goes dead silent. I didn't even realize that I was holding my breath at the time until I got the crackle of the radio that said, like, good hit. Threat's been neutralized, whatever. You're finally let out this time, and you're like, okay, they're good, they're good. Literally on to the next mission. Literally, we'll get a next call that's like, okay, these people are our troops in contact. And you're like, oh, and you have to go to the next one. Your heart doesn't even really get a time to calm down. But this is the very first time that I have ever sent anything off the rails. It's very memorable to me. It's also memorable because, flash forward six months. I'm on my second deployment.
I'm in Spain this time. On this deployment, I ultimately, in a couple months, will go and evacuate the embassy out of South Sudan when it was being overrun in early 2014. But in the setup to that, so reverse back, I'm in Spain.
I'm in a bar like any good pilot. And I'm talking to some people, and a guy comes up behind me, and he was like, hey, did you fly field 02, which is my call sign in Afghanistan? And I said, I did. And he's like, I was on this patrol with this squad, and I was pinned down by a three-man PKM team. And he starts telling me this story back to me. And he's like, I recognize your voice from the radio.
I still get chills when I tell that story because I joined the Marine Corps because I wanted to support those allies, those service members, those Americans on the ground. And I actually can put a face with a name. A lot of people who do close air support, who do that mission set, don't necessarily get to meet the person that they actually shot for. And I just so happened to do it. It was really cool. And Harrison Ford actually picked that story up and told it.
And it's on a video on YouTube if you want to go see it. Take a look at Harrison Ford. He even knows who I am.
Willy Walker:
What gave you the thought to try out for the Blue Angels? You were a valedictorian of your high school class. You go to the Naval Academy. You come out. You've served in combat. And now it's like, well, let's just see if I can be the first woman ever selected by the Blue Angels.
Where does that come from?
Katie Cook:
That thought of, I want to be the first woman to be a Blue Angel literally never crossed my mind, ever. It never crossed my mind.
Willy Walker:
There have only been 298 Blue Angels in the history of the Blue Angels. Blue Angels have been around for over 70 years, and there are less than 300 pilots who have served as a Blue Angel. This is as elite a corps as you can possibly get to. You clearly knew that no woman had ever served.
Katie Cook:
No, I didn't.
Willy Walker:
You just took it then paid.
Katie Cook:
Reverse back, why did I even apply? There is a guy that I served with in my squadron. He was an instructor when I was a student. We went through together. I built this reputation in my community, my C-130 community, and he was on the Blue Angels at the time. Reached out and said, hey, I think you should try out for this. And I was like, no. I want to fly in combat. I want to continue to deploy. I want to do all this. And it was really my mom who was like, you have been deployed so much so.
And I'll give you an example. I was deployed so much in 2013 that I had to pay zero taxes because I appeared to be under the poverty line because I was in a combat zone for so long. My mom was like, can you just try to do something stateside for a little bit? I was like, OK, well, I don't typically in the Marine Corps, when you do something stateside, it's like it's on the ground. It's a non-flying tour. It's still cool, but it's not flying. And if you're a pilot who doesn't want to get out of the aircraft, there's only like a few and far between B-billets is what we call them. Blue Angels was one of them. I was like, hey, I could fly the shit out of an airplane. Excuse my French.
Willy Walker:
It's all good. And that's permitted. But the altitude you fly at is not.
Katie Cook:
I can tell you what I flew at on the Blue Angels. I can fly at 40 feet on the Blue Angels in a C-130 with a 139-foot wingspan and not get my wings taken away. I'm never going to be able to fly that way anywhere else. I was like, this is going to be so freaking cool. He reached out to me and asked me to apply. I did.
The application process was crazy. It's like basically a college application. I had to write essays, get letters of recommendation, show them my combat experience, all of that. Then you have to go and do an interview. And in the interview, it's a long cherry table with all of the pilots. And you can imagine their blue suits, the yellow stripes, and I'm in there in my dress uniform.
And you sit at the end of the table, and they can pepper you with questions during this interview. And for me, they had lowered the seat all the way down. I get there, and I'm like this. Because I'm smaller than anyone. Anyway, during this interview, I got a couple of questions like, oh, your dad's a captain in the Navy. I have a couple of questions about him. And then I got a question of like, well, you would be the first woman pilot to fly with the Blue Angels. How would you handle that? And my response was, I didn't know I would be, is how I answered the question.
I honestly believe the reason that I got selected for the team is because that was my answer. If I had come to the team to be like, I want this to be the Katie show. I want to pave the way for all women. Like if I had done something like that, I don't think I would have been selected because I wasn't there for myself. I was there because I just wanted to represent the Navy and Marine Corps team. I just wanted to, again, do some really cool flying and be just like every other pilot that I was interested in. It ultimately, ultimately I got to the place of, holy cow, I'm helping pave the way for some women. But I wasn't there in the beginning. It wasn't until I had met young girls throughout my time, and I could see that I was making a difference, and I was making an impact, and I could tell little boys who would say, women can't be pilots. And I could be like, well, what do you think I am? I'm standing right in front of you, to be able to show women, you can be Marines, you can be pilots, heck, you can even be a freaking Blue Angel if you want to be. That was the moment that my brain switched a little bit, like, what I'm doing is bigger than myself.
Willy Walker:
Have you carried, and I want to stay on the military experience, so I'm not moving on to your professional experience at Salesforce. But, that scene of you being at the end of the cherry table with a group of men around the table, all kind of looking down at you, you're clearly the odd one out in this room. There's not a woman in this room who hasn't felt that in corporate America.
But you're being there for what you truly wanted to do rather than what you, if you will, you didn't even know what the answer would have been if you hadn't been sort of oblivious to it.
But have you carried that into your professional career as it relates to how you walk into that room?
Katie Cook:
I would say yes. I mean, I think I'm much more cognizant of what a room's makeup is solely because I would say when I was young, I didn't have a mentor. And I was a woman. Because the Marine Corps is only 9% women.
If you shrink that down to the officers, you shrink that down to pilots, you shrink that down to C-130 pilots. There's like two of us. I didn't really have a mentor.
When I walk into a room now as an executive, I purposely look at gender dynamics, to look at who are the minorities in the room, who would normally not speak up who doesn't feel like they have a seat at the table. And I feel like it's my responsibility to at least acknowledge their voice, give them an opportunity to speak. I personally don't go into a room and have any concerns about if I'm able to talk. I'm fully on my way there. But I am cognizant about it now so that other people have a voice that perhaps maybe haven't had a mentor, haven't had that guidance when they were as they're coming up in their career.
Willy Walker:
So you get selected. And by the way, it's a vote of all, it's not like there's some admiral who sits there and picks you for it and one person has a decision. It's all the pilots who vote on whether you came in.
Katie Cook:
It has to be unanimous.
Willy Walker:
It has to be a unanimous decision that all of them wanted her to be on the team. In the process of that, you make history, and all of a sudden there's sort of a derivative impact of you making history. How do you deal with that?
All of a sudden there's a news flash. The Blue Angels have just let their first woman become a Blue Angel. That was not something you were going for, and yet all of a sudden it's thrust upon you. How do you handle that?
Katie Cook:
I will tell you, like, Katie is an introvert by nature, and so all of a sudden you're in the media, and you're having to talk to people, and you're doing podcasts and stuff. It was a skill that I had to learn, and it was a self-consciousness that I had to overcome. And I will say being the first or being the few, there is an enormous pressure, especially if you are a minority group, because you know that you are representing more than just yourself.
We'll give an example here. One woman is a bad driver. All women are bad drivers. But if you look at the statistics, 62% of car accidents are caused by dudes. And they are three times more likely to cause fatal car accidents. But one woman is a bad driver. All women are bad drivers, or all women are crazy. But when you look at it, that doesn't generally apply to the majority. Just as a kind of offshoot here, when we talk about sexual violence or sexual harassment in the United States, we hear not all men. A lot of times when men will get the, oh, he's just a bad guy, not all guys are bad. Women or minorities generally don't get that.
The pressure is very real when you are the first, or you are the few. As I was going through, knowing I was the first, I felt like I had the world of every woman on my shoulders, because if I didn't succeed, if I was not successful, the next narrative would be, are any women going to be successful in this position? And I didn't want to let a future Blue Angel down because I couldn't have it. That pressure was very real. And as I'm sure I'm going to relate to several women in this room, maybe I'm a little bit older, but as a first-born perfectionist millennial woman, I wanted everybody to like me. I was a people-pleaser, and I think a lot of people in this room probably grew up with that, and our society women tend to conform to that, this people-pleasing thing.
When I showed up, I thought if I produce excellence in everything I do, if I fly great, if I'm awesome at my PR stuff, if I inspire all of these people, everyone's going to love me, and I'm going to feel great about it. Everyone's going to be supportive. That was definitely not the case. There were people, there were women who were jealous. There were women who were mean and made rumors about me, and there were several comments on the internet that she's just going to fail, she's going to get her period and not be able to fly. Like all these things that you hear. And I was reading every comment. And I would say even to this day I struggle with wanting people to like me. But it took figuring out, it really took getting through the Blue Angels a little bit to realize, like, the haters are going to hate. And you've got to stop reading the comments, and you've got to focus on those that are there cheering for you. That little girl who's super pumped that you signed an autograph for her. Somebody that you wrote a note for, they framed it, and then they write to you three years later that they went to college and are pursuing an aviation degree. That stuff is what I had to anchor on to get through the pressure that I was feeling, that I was making a difference, that what I was doing here was worth it. That's what I had to anchor on because I could have gotten swallowed up by the negativity and things.
I still fight that battle today, and I'm really trying to live by it. I have a quote for my daughter. She's five years old. I think it's often attributed to Dr. Seuss. It says, Be who you are and say what you will. Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. I may have butchered that, but you get the sense of it. Like those that are there for you cheering in your corner, those are the people, your board of directors, that are always going to have your back and will guide you in a positive, constructive way. And those that don't, who cares.
And that was such a hard lesson for me to learn to navigate the pressure.
Willy Walker:
It's interesting your comment about wanting to be light. I was having dinner a couple weeks ago with the mayor of a U.S. city who had a pretty challenging first year to two years in office and has now really hit his stride. And I said to him, Mr. Mayor, what has made the change?
And he looked at me, and he said, I stopped worrying about pissing people off. And I thought it was so, and he just sort of said, I wanted everyone to like me in the office. I realized that if I was going to truly lead this city forward, I had to stop thinking about pleasing everyone and go for what I really believed in to drive issues forward.
And the moment he said that to me, I was like, he's rolling. He's ready to go now. You have a motherly side to you. People who have worked with you look at your motherly side, particularly in a male-dominated world, and talk about that balance between being sort of the, if you will, kick-ass, strong-willed woman that you just talked about and then also allowing your natural motherly instincts to take hold as it relates to both your leadership as well as the way you bring teams together.
Katie Cook:
Yeah. I would say in the beginning, when I was really young, a boot marine, if you will, I thought Marines had to be a certain way, like full metal jacket, yelling at people, and if you were outside the norm, you weren't going to be a good Marine. And I was told as a midshipman when I selected Marine Corps that I would not be successful because I'm not a stereotypical yelling at people.
I tried to fake it. I tried to be the yeller. I tried to hold people to knife hands and all the stuff that you see in the Marine Corps, and frankly, the Marines saw right through it. They saw that it was disingenuous. They saw that I was wearing a mask, and it wasn't building trust in teams. I was like, screw it, I'm just going to lead the way that I have learned to lead from the example of my father, from the example of some leaders that I really respect. And, yes, to your point, I've had multiple Marines instead of calling me ma'am accidentally call me mom to my face, which is kind of funny. But in reality, like, when you have a standard of leadership or a type of leadership that Marines are exposed to consistently throughout their career, and then you get a white whale, if you will, a different type of leadership, that will sometimes jar them out of the lull or the same kind of thing every day. It's a new thing.
And I don't think that weakness or differences in leadership make you a worse leader. And I'll give you an example here really quickly. I have four children. I had two of my children when I was in command of an airfield of 150 Marines, and I was the senior person there, the only woman. And after the birth of my second child, I had very bad postpartum depression.
And as a result, I had to go get help from my doctor. I got put on medication. I went through counseling. And it repaired my relationship with my son, and we're great now. He's seven years old, and we're all healthy, and it was a great decision for me.
Now, in the Marine Corps, or in the military in general, you probably heard the statistics that 22 veterans in the military commit suicide a day. As a result, we have a lot of suicide prevention training, things like that. It happens biannually. Our biannual training was coming up, and I was debating, do I tell my Marines as their commander that I had gotten help, that I sought these resources out?
I'm already the “weaker sex.” What are they going to think of me? And I made the decision, again, screw it. I don't care what people think about me. I'm going to do what I think is right. I told them that I sought help, and I'm much healthier now, and I'm not being punished in my career, and I'm able to give the best of myself to both my Marines and my son.
And literally 48 hours afterwards, I had four Marines in my office saying that they were going to seek treatment themselves because they knew I wasn't going to hold it against them. They knew that I didn't see it as a weakness. Sometimes sharing or sometimes showing a vulnerability, whether you're a man or a woman, can open the door to allow others to show that as well and maybe show that they're struggling or maybe that they need some help.
Now I see the mom thing absolutely, even in my career at Salesforce; I would say I'm vastly older than the majority of the people that are in my same vertical. I work in operations, sales strategy, and most of them are, like, data analysts right out of college, Gen Z. And then there's me, 10, 15 years older. I'm the only one with kids. And I'm like the older sister or the mom to a lot of them. And I don't think that that's a bad thing because it allows people to be a lot more vulnerable. They don't feel like they need to put up walls. They don't feel like they need to be hard all the time.
Willy Walker:
What gave you the confidence to be so vulnerable? Because hearing you talk about it, it's incredible. But it's very hard to show vulnerability in a leadership role. And particularly given all you just stacked up there as it relates to why you always felt like you had to not only be as good, but be better than everyone around you. How did you at that moment when you said, screw it, I'm just going to say it. But I'm sure that there was more to that.
What was it that gave you the confidence to be able to do that?
Katie Cook:
I, as a leader, when I was on the Blue Angels, I lost a good friend of mine in a plane crash. And the heartbreak and just the loss that you go through when you lose a friend like that in a traumatic way was life-altering. It affected the way that I make decisions, even today. And his 10-year death anniversary was yesterday.
And because suicide prevention and, unfortunately, veteran and service member suicide is such a big issue for us, I kept thinking in my mind, what would be the worst-case scenario? Worst-case scenario is I would lose a Marine because they took their own life because I didn't lean in. Because I was scared to expose my own failures, or not failures, but weaknesses in my mind. That is my weaknesses, I'm too scared of that. I'm going to do self-preservation. And that doesn't open the door for somebody to go seek help. And then, ultimately, we're facing the ramifications of losing a Marine who took their own life. That was the worst-case scenario for me.
Sometimes doing the right thing is the hardest thing. But I always tell my kids this, and I even told a woman at work this week, doing the right thing is never the wrong thing. Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing. The ethical decision might be hard, and it may impact you. In some cases, you may lose opportunities. You may lose money. In my case, I could have lost respect for some people. But ultimately, in the end, I could go to sleep at night knowing that I opened the door and did my best to help prevent the loss of a life in the future.
Willy Walker:
Leaving the military where you had this storied career, first female Blue Angel, and now, all of a sudden, you find yourself in corporate America.
Easy transition or hard transition?
Katie Cook:
It was so hard. It was so hard. Yes, so I felt like I went out like Michael Jordan on top. Like that's where I felt like I went out. And I ultimately made the decision because I had gotten to a point where I had two children. We wanted to have more children, and I felt like my work-life balance was just not working. And if I was to deploy and not watch my kids grow up, it was ripping my heart out to think about that. Now, don't get me wrong.
Willy Walker:
Insert one thing. Your husband went to Annapolis with you. Your husband was in the Navy, and your husband was a munitions sergeant in the military and deployed, correct?
Katie Cook:
My husband did not go to the Naval Academy. He's going to watch this and laugh at you.
Willy Walker:
I'm usually pretty good on my stats. That's okay.
Katie Cook:
That's okay. No, no. He went to Texas A&M. He was in the Corps of Cadets for a little bit and then dropped out because he wanted to party a little bit. But we both ended up in the same place, as you were correct. He is a SEMA 30 pilot. He's a Marine as well, and we met on the Blue Angels. The guy who solicited me to apply for the team, that was him. But we were not dating at the time.
We were actually married to other people. No, there's no scandal there, I promise. But we were married to other people at the time. He solicited me to apply, and then ultimately we ended up being on the team together.
Willy Walker:
I got you off on the transition to the private sector, but I just wanted people to know that your husband was also in the military.
Katie Cook:
Yes, yes, he was. We made the decision to ultimately go to the civilian sector. I stayed a reservist. I'm still a reservist now. I'm about two years away from retirement. Trying to finish out a long and storied career there still in the reserves. But when I was transitioning, I'll give you a quick story. I work in tech, as you guys know, and I showed up for my interview, and I was dressed like Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Full-on, hand suit, hair in a bun, and I show up in tech. They're in jeans, you know what I mean? I was like, oh my gosh, I don't even know what to wear. That was immediately what I thought. The imposter syndrome was insane . I don't know what ACV is. I don't know what AOV is. I don't know what a KPI is. What the heck is a KPI?
I didn't even know what any of these acronyms meant. I had a whole bunch of others from the Marine Corps. None of them carried over. Do I even deserve to be here? I remember my first day of work, I didn't know how to wear my hair.
Do I wear it with a pony? Do I wear it in a bun?It was just little things like that.
Now, what absolutely helped was leadership, no matter if you're wearing a uniform or you're wearing Hillary Rodham Clinton pants. Leadership is leadership. People are people. And I think there's, in my mind, two major types of leadership. There is formal leadership where you are given a rank, or you're given a title of VP, and with that comes decision-making authority. With that comes tasking authority, delegation, all those things. And then there's influential leadership, cross-functional leadership, where people don't report to you, and you need to get people on board. Let's all get in the boat and start paddling the same direction, but they don't formally report to you.
The biggest surprise in that transition wasn't that these two existed. It was the percentage in the Marine Corps. I obviously used authoritative leadership a whole shit-ton more than I used influential leadership, and that was flipped on its head when I went to corporate.
In the Marine Corps, you can say, do it because I said so. That does not go over well in corporate because I said so. Having to adjust the balance of the type of leadership that I was doing was a learning point for me. Because when you have authoritative leadership, you can compel someone to do it because they have to do it. When you are influencing someone to do that, you are getting buy-in. You are getting collaboration. You're getting to work together. You're getting this agreement between two people: this is important to both of us, not for formal reasons, but because we both see the value in this, and we're going to paddle together on it. I think that was the biggest transition for me.
I do remember another situation, and luckily I had an amazing female mentor at Salesforce, Rita DeFilippo. She was one of my first bosses in the civilian world. She had never served, but she saw the value in hiring a service member.
A lot of people think we're mad, bad, or sad. And she saw the value of what a background in the military could bring, and she helped me a lot of times translate situations that I just couldn't wrap my mind around, and I'll give you one example. I was the chief of staff to the COO of the public sector at Salesforce, and the EA of our president kept going directly to the COO about stuff, and I would get furious about it because, in my mind, it was Lance Corporal Schmuckatelli going directly to the general. When you had multiple layers of command in here, including myself, why are you going directly to him? Let me solve the problem before we escalate it up. And I would get furious about it, and I would talk to my boss, and she would be like, hey, this is not hierarchical.
We're all people. We all just have different grades. I really had to reframe my mindset of, like, she was just trying to get shit done. She was going VFR directly to the right person. It wasn't that she was trying to undercut anybody, or this wasn't viewed as disrespectful in corporate, but in my Marine Corps mind, it was. Luckily, I found this mentor that could help translate corporate speak to military speak for me.
Again, a long answer to a short question was it was rough, and I definitely had my struggles, but I luckily found some really great resources along the way, and I really try to pay that forward now.
Willy Walker:
Any tricks from either your military career or now in the private, and having four kids, and juggling careers? Are there any hacks you’ve learned from either your military career or now in the private sector that allow you to keep all those balls up?
Katie Cook:
No. I don't keep all the balls. I don't think any mom can keep all the balls.
I think there's that analogy out there. It's not my analogy, and I apologize that I don't know who to attribute it to, but the glass balls, plastic balls theory where you're juggling everything, and you need to know which balls you can drop, and you want to drop a plastic ball, not a glass ball, so if my kids have chicken nuggets every frickin' night, that's a plastic ball. Like, sorry, I'll explain to their doctor that I promise they get nutrition elsewhere, but the glass ball of, like, I didn't show up at the ballet recital and my daughter's going to remember that forever, that's something that I don't want to drop.
I loved Leah's example earlier where she's like, I brought my daughter to work. I am absolutely stealing that from you. It would be amazing, even though she's almost six, for her to be sitting in this room and seeing a room like this with all of you women in it. I'm absolutely stealing that, so thank you.
But to get back to your question, I don't do it well, hardly at all. I am still learning. I'm still trying to balance. I have an amazing partner in my husband, Dusty Cook. We don't have the traditional trad wife or whatever. I don't mean it like that, obviously. I'm not trying to poo-poo on anybody's lifestyle. That's a lifestyle that someone can choose. We don't have that in my family, obviously. But he is extremely supportive, and has been supportive of me every step of the way. We have a great village. I have a best friend named Katie, too. Her daughter is best friends with my daughter, and she leans in where I need help. My parents are flying in so that Dusty and I can go to Hawaii this week, which is great. I don't think I've had a vacation with my husband since our fourth was born two years ago, so this is going to be great. But I would say that is the answer to your question. I don't always do it well, and mom's guilt is so real.
Mom's guilt is so real, even being here. And I'm like, oh, they didn't go to swim practice this morning because Dusty was single parenting. What if they don't become the next Michael Phelps?
Willy Walker:
You were a swimmer in high school, too.
Katie Cook:
I swam through college. I was a swimmer, so I really try not to push them in the pool, but I really want to. I want them to be great, and I want them to love it the way that I love it.
Willy Walker:
I think people interpret you saying pushing them into the pool. You're saying push them as athletes.
Katie Cook:
Oh, don't worry. They complain. I don't want to go in the morning, and I'm like, get in there. Don't worry. That happens, too, physical pushing and mental pushing.
Willy Walker:
You're talking about bringing your daughter into this room, and it makes me think about my son Charlie is here, and it makes me think about the learning by osmosis that all of our kids get by just being around us, listening to conference calls, watching the way we behave in life, whether it's getting to the swim practice or whether it's hearing you on a conference call in the car talking to the office. My question to you is, which Katie do you want them to hear, the Katie of the military or the Katie of the private sector?
Katie Cook:
I don't think there are two different Katies. I think one informs the other. I will say, like, I definitely curse a whole lot more when I'm with my Marine Corps unit than I do when I'm on a conference call with Salesforce. That being said, I do have a reputation for dropping the F-bomb occasionally on Salesforce, and I'm like, oh, sorry. But they generally forgive me for it because I produce good work.
But I would say, more importantly, I want them to know about prioritization. I want them to know that they are the most important thing to me. Even though I'm on the phone in the car with them, driving and swimming to work, I'm just trying to be as efficient as possible at that moment. It's not that they're less important to me and that work is more important and that I'm not fully focused on them. I'm just trying to be efficient so then when they are at swimming, I can watch them in the pool and cheer them on and do all that stuff when I'm not on a conference call. I want them to know that I'm doing all of this. I did my military service. I'm doing these talks. I work every day at Salesforce because I want to give them a better life. I will say my children continuously check me in such a good way.
My daughter the other night was like, mom, you didn't read me a bedtime story, and I'm still typing away on my computer because I have something due. You didn't read me a bedtime story. She will remember that. She will remember that I didn't go tuck her in because I needed to send my forecasting report two minutes earlier than when reading a freaking Berenstain Bears book. Take the time to read the damn Berenstain Bears book. Because they will remember that. Your boss is not going to remember that you spent two extra minutes sending a report.
Willy Walker:
One quick thing on that, and then we're going to wrap up. Do you ever sit there and think about the importance of what you did in the military? And then sit there and think about that report you're supposed to deliver at Salesforce and say, look, this isn't saving freedom around the world. This isn't the greatest thing. Put that down and go. When I was in the military, I had to do that.
Katie Cook:
Yes. I think it's a superpower for me, though, because when everyone else in my organization is freaking out because we're going to miss by this amount, or our forecasting accuracy was off, literally my response on multiple occasions has been, no one's dying. No one is dying. And I don't mean to be hyperbolic or anything like that, but I often give people that reality check of like, yes, I know this is the most important thing in your life right now, that your forecasting accuracy was not great or our pipe coverage is not 3.5, it's 3.0 or whatever it is.
No one is dying. Take a beat. You get to go home to your kids tonight. You get to make dinner, even if it's damn chicken nuggets, for your kids tonight. And let's just put that in perspective. And I would say even as difficult as it is, 90% of the decisions that we make, we can back out. It would be painful, but you can back it out. There are some decisions in combat that you cannot take back. That's what I like to, when my team is getting crazy and we need to level set back to the calm. And don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't stress out about my forecast accuracy. I do. I want to be good at my job, and I want to teach people to be good at their job too. But you've got to reframe the problem sometimes when people are freaking out. Nobody's dying. Let's level set this.
Willy Walker:
Katie, first of all, thank you for being here. Second, thank you for your service. Thank you for your grandfather's service, your dad's service, your service. And I think all of us are looking forward to seeing your three boys and your daughter all graduating from the Naval Academy. Katie Cook, thank you.
That's really special and great. Thank you, Katie, so much. Thank you all for coming. We're going out here for a reception and then off to dinner, so thank you all. And thanks for the content. And Katie, thank you for being here.
And Leah, thank you for all of your comments. Thank you.
