Episode 13: Navigating an ABM Journey with Kate Owen of Capita

In this week's episode, Capita's Kate Owen sat down with B2B Marketing's editor in chief Joel Harrison, where they discussed her growth and expertise as a marketer.

Tell us about your background – when did you become a marketer? Was it something that you always wanted to do? Or was it something that you stumbled into?

I initially started in the PR industry over 20 years ago now - working as an office assistant supporting on big film releases and events such as the Cannes Film Festival.

I moved from that role into an executive assistant position supporting C-suite and the Board at one of the world’s largest recruitment firms which then morphed into marketing and event support when I was in my early 20s as back then we didn’t have a large PR or marketing team.

Working directly for the C-suite back then so early on in my professional career helping to run company events, annual report and shareholder announcements, internal comms etc gave me such great exposure to the boardroom and different persona types as well as early insight into communications and marketing more generally and so seeking a career pathway where I could expand into this and grow further became the goal.

I moved from there to Starbucks where I worked as a Public Affairs Assistant and got to work on some exciting consumer campaigns with media and key partners such as Fairtrade Foundation, RED  and also worked across the team to support the UK press office and key internal comms events such as the annual partner conference with Howard Schultz.

After that I joined Thomson Reuters and was there for about seven years, initially as the Global Event Manager before moving into a broader European marketing manager role before being promoted to Marketing Director, leading the European campaign team across all of financial services and then moving into a global director role.