Kathy Beeck founded the Boulder Film Festival with her sister, Robin, in 2004. They started the organization in 2004 and had the first festival in February 2005. Before that, the duo made movies together, Kathy the producer and Robin the director, and they traveled around and attended film festivals. They decided Boulder was the perfect place to start a film festival so they decided to do it together. Kathy worked at Wild Oats in marketing for eight years. In 2004 she quit and put all her energy and effort into the founding of the festival. And she’s been doing it ever since!
Kathy is a wonderful woman. She is one of my role models and I look up to her. This interview seriously changed my life and has changed my mindset on my post-college career. Before this, I felt like there was a big unknown after graduating CU, paired with a lot of anxiety and stress because of this unknown. And tons of pressure from my parents and just society’s stigma of what college means during and after. And within these four years, you need to figure out exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life and you have to learn it all in college. Kathy showed me that this isn’t true. She encouraged me to travel and follow my dreams and do what I love and don’t be tied down by anything. College isn’t everything, and you learn more through experiences over time. I left this interview feeling totally refreshed and confident. A huge weight has lifted off my shoulders and I feel ecstatic about the journey that I have ahead of me.
Kathy achieved great success by following her heart and being patient. She traveled and didn’t settle down until she found her passion, the film festival. She explored and discovered herself and never stopped until she felt fulfilled. She continued to learn and develop herself and her skills as she got older and grew into a person who founded her own organization! Why settle for something you don’t love, when you can create your own organization.
“I love it. There’s so much flexibility. You work harder than ever when you are head of your own business or organization or non-profit, because you want to do it. You want to get up in the morning and you’re excited to go to work – it’s just easier than – I worked at a company for eight years and it wasn’t my passion, I didn’t want to get up and be at work at 8am. I was always like ‘ughh’. But this is just so much better because it is my passion. It’s great.”
- Kathy Beeck
Towards the end of the interview, I posed the question, “Have you made any mistakes that you can share with me and what have you learned from them”. At first she couldn’t think of any specific mistakes, so we skipped the question and went back to it. After pondering for a bit, she finally came up with an answer. She said to follow your gut. Your gut is right most of the time, and you have to trust yourself. Kathy said she had done this once while they were selecting films. One person on the selection committee argued that they didn’t like a specific film, and even though Kathy disagreed, she decided to drop the film. It went on to be an amazing film and Kathy regretted not going with her gut.
Kathy gave 2 pieces of advice that are good for any student with graduation in the near future. First, she said to travel, and argued that that is the most important thing for a young person to do out of college. She said to travel as much as you can and explore everything. Get different jobs and learn different things through those experiences. Always be learning, and take seminars when you can about things you are interesting or things that you would help your professional development. She had lived in a bunch of different places; Russia, D.C., Alaska, to name a few. She didn’t buy her first house until she was 42! Her other advice was to do what you love. She knew it was a cliché but she stands by it. She said that all her jobs before BIFF she felt as though she was working up to something, and she finally found that once she founded BIFF.
“Take your time to find it (your passion), and it’s out there, but don’t settle forever for something that isn’t great.”
- Kathy Beeck
