Katie Konrath - Fresh Thinker

Katie is always on the look-out for what's new. She fell in love with creativity and ideas when she was 11, and hasn't looked back since. Since Katie's college degree in Ancient Greek and Latin is completely impractical, she spends hours and hours looking out for the coolest new ideas - just to prove she understands the modern world too. She's worked with one of the world's top creativity gurus, exercised polo ponies in Malta, studied at the TRIZ Institute in St Petersburg, and earned a Masters degree in innovation from the Institute of Thinking.  Katie's creativity blog, getFreshMinds.com, was recently named a top innovation blog by Guy Kawasaki and she's a co-author of the soon-to-be-published The Age of Conversation 2.

If you're just a fan of her blog, or want to get in contact with her, she'd love to hear from you.

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Katie's Masters degree in Creativity and Innovation is from the Institute for the Design and Development of Thinking (PDF) at the University of Malta.

During her Masters course, Katie had the opportunity to learn many techniques for using creativity to solve problems and to identify business opportunities.  She become a Lateral Thinking certified trainer in Spring 2006.

In the fall of 2006, Katie worked as a traveling assistant for creativity guru Edward de Bono.  She was thrilled to learn about Dr. de Bono's methodologies firsthand and to see how he tailored his teaching to fit the needs of different audiences.

Katie's undergraduate degree, from Luther College in Iowa, was in Classical Languages.  She chose that major because she loves Greek mythology and wanted to read Homer's Iliad in its original form.  She rounded out her undergraduate experience with classes in business management, interpersonal communications, entrepreneurship, writing and improvisational theater.

As a student, Katie competed in the Odyssey of the Mind and Destination Imagination creative problem-solving programs.  During her participation in the programs, she won one Global Championship, placed twice as Global Runner-up, was awarded Minnesota's highest creativity award, and spoke at the graduation ceremony for long-time program participants.