Built on experience.
Focused on people.
I stepped away from my career for two years to focus on becoming a mother. When I came back, AI had changed everything. Most of the leaders I spoke to were either overwhelmed by it or overconfident about it. Very few felt genuinely prepared. That gap is what I work in now.
With 18 years across marketing, PR, sales and people and culture, including lululemon, the Australian Fashion Council, and leading marketing agencies, I've seen transformation succeed and fail. I understand how departments actually work and where AI can genuinely fit into each of them. That breadth matters. It means I do not arrive with a generic framework. I arrive with an understanding of the pressures, the workflows, and the human dynamics that are different in every function. Whether an organisation is working out where to start with AI or accelerating adoption in a team that already has governance and tools in place, the challenge is always the same. The difference between AI adoption that sticks and AI adoption that does not is rarely the technology. It is always the people.
As Founder of hum[ai]n, and previously CMO and then CEO of The Square Wave, I built this practice around a simple belief: AI adoption is a leadership and culture challenge, not an IT project.
If that is the conversation you are trying to have in your organisation, hum[ai]n is built for it.
“I was very deliberate about the kind of AI expert I wanted in the room. My clients are senior hospitality professionals, not tech people, and I needed someone who could meet them where they were. That search led me to Kate. She delivered a genuinely engaging, practically grounded session that had a room full of commercially sharp, experienced professionals leaning in. She read the room beautifully, made complex ideas feel immediately accessible, and left people feeling excited rather than overwhelmed. If you are looking for someone to help your organisation navigate AI in a way that actually brings people with it, Kate Russell is the person I would call.”
