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KatSpeaxKatherine Lockett · Speaker Check availability
Katherine Lockett speaking, microphone in hand
Katherine “Kat” Lockett Keynote · Workshop · Panel

Every broken record has a person on the other end.

I speak to rooms that have stopped listening to each other — data teams, state agencies, and leaders in the middle of a change nobody voted for. I chair an enterprise Data Governance Council for a state agency. Before that, seventeen and a half years in uniform.

Check availability See the talks

Charlotte, NCTravels nationallyIn person or virtual Keynote 45–60 minWorkshop up to half day

On the record

The credentials, before the story.

17.5

Years, United States Air Force

Security Forces → Medic

E-7

Master Sergeant, of E-9

Two grades from the top of the enlisted force

Chair

Data Governance Council

State agency · 26 members

55+

Programs under one standard

Enterprise data standards

2024

NAHDO 39th Annual Conference

National stage, technical room

A post. A patient. A state’s data. A family’s move. Same job every time — be the one who does not drop it.

I am not a speaker who studied leadership. I am someone who led airmen through things nobody wanted, then spent a decade making a state agency agree on what a word means, and found out those are the same problem wearing different clothes.

Not four careers. One habit, four uniforms.

Three rooms, seventeen seconds, unedited · [dates — Kat to confirm]

Not a headshot. Five rooms.

Anybody can look like a speaker in a photograph. What you are buying is what happens in the forty-five minutes after the introduction ends — so here are the lecterns, the microphones, and the backs of people’s heads — a pavilion, a chapel, an arbor, a room with twelve chairs in it.

Full-length footage and additional photographs available on request.

The full talk · on video NAHDO 39th Annual Conference Katherine’s segment begins at 32:55 · opens on YouTube Watch
Katherine Lockett at a branded lectern in an outdoor pavilion
Outdoor pavilionCivic program, branded lectern, open air. Rowan-Cabarrus.
Katherine Lockett at a lectern in a chapel with stained glass behind her
ChapelRaised stage, stained glass, seated audience.
Katherine Lockett speaking from a wooden pulpit under a timber arbor
Open-air arborWooden pulpit, handheld mic, no lights to hide behind.
Katherine Lockett mid-sentence, microphone raised, on stage
ChapelSame afternoon, closer in.
Katherine Lockett teaching from a stool beside a screen in a small room
Small roomStool, mic stand, slides. Twelve people, not twelve hundred.

Five rooms. Different buildings, different audiences, same job.

The talks

One signature keynote, three ways in. And what your people actually walk out with.

The keynote is the one with my name on it. The three below flex to a keynote, a breakout, or a working session. Tell me the room and I will cut it to fit.

Signature keynote

Watch Your Mouth

They said it to us as children like a slammed door. Two words meant to shrink us. This keynote steals the phrase back — not guard your tongue so you stay small, but watch what your mouth can do. Built for a mixed room: corporate, faith, community, students. Ends in spoken word, not a summary.

Your audience leaves with

  • The sentences they repeat about themselves, heard for the first time as sentences somebody else wrote.
  • One thing they have been swallowing, finally said — and the nerve to say it again where it costs something.
  • The difference between a silence that keeps the peace and a silence that keeps the harm.
A muzzle is just a microphone somebody was scared to hand you.From the closing piece

30 min as written · opens to 45 · no slides required · boardroom to ballroom

I

Bad Data Is a People Problem

For agencies, health systems, and any organization where the word “governance” empties a room. Every broken record has a person attached to it downstream. I bring that person into the room and keep them there.

Your audience leaves with

  • A way to explain governance to people who think it is not their job — without the word “framework.”
  • The three questions that surface a definition problem before it becomes an audit finding.
  • Permission to say “I do not know what this field means” out loud, which is where every real fix starts.

Keynote 45–60 min · breakout 30 min · half-day working session

II

Moving at Someone Else’s Speed

For leaders in the middle of a reorg, a migration, a merger — any change their people did not choose. Seventeen years of orders I did not write, on timelines I did not pick, with people watching my face to decide whether to panic.

Your audience leaves with

  • What to say in the first forty-eight hours, when you know less than they think you do.
  • The difference between reassuring people and lying to them, and how fast a team can tell.
  • A way to lead a change you privately disagree with, without becoming someone you do not respect.

Keynote 45–60 min · leadership offsite · panel

III

Say It So It Survives the Room

For executives, comms teams, and anyone whose words keep evaporating the second the call ends. Written for people who are tired of sending messages nobody remembers by Thursday.

Your audience leaves with

  • One rewritten message of their own — drafted, cut, and read aloud before they leave.
  • The test for whether a sentence will outlive the meeting or die in the inbox.
  • How to speak to the whole room at once without flattening it into nothing.

Workshop 90 min–half day · keynote version 45 min

Underneath the talks

The talks are the door. This is the house.

Every dataset earns its rights. Every record swears its oaths.

What you buy

Trust Intelligence

Seven pillars of trust, a maturity index, and the share of your trust surface that is currently unevidenced — stated as one number an executive can act on.

What gets delivered

First-Class Data

Five Rights a dataset earns. Six Oaths a record swears. One Verdict — a single page naming the rating, the missing Right, the first fix, and who signs it off.

How it sounds

KatSpeax

The voice layer. Keynotes, spoken word, devotionals, and the cards. Governance nobody has to translate before they can repeat it.

7Pillars
5Rights
6Oaths
1Verdict

Also from Kat

Some words find you before you’re ready.

Printable cards for the moments a store-bought one cannot hold. Written by Kat, instant download, print at home or locally. Eighteen designs in the shop.

“My First Love” — mother-to-daughter card, printable 5×7 “Stay Here” — printable love card, 5×7 “Between Us” — mother-daughter card, printable 5×7 “Run With Me” — printable love card, 5×7 “Under The Stars” — printable love card, 5×7 “Still Choosing You” — printable love card, 5×7

5.0 stars · 30 sales · KatSpeax Paper Co. on Etsy

Shop all 18 cards

For the organizer

What lands in your inbox the day you confirm.

You have forty other things to chase. None of them should be me.

The one-sheet

Talk description, learning objectives, and audience fit — formatted to paste straight into your program.

Bio, three lengths

Fifty words, one hundred fifty, two hundred. Plus the name exactly as it should appear.

Headshots

Print and web resolution, square and full crop, cleared for your use.

AV and room needs

What I need, what I do not, and what I will bring myself. Short list.

Your intro, written

Read it word for word. Nobody should have to improvise my name at a podium.

A call before the date

Twenty minutes to learn your room, so the talk arrives already fitted to it.

Katherine Lockett mid-sentence, microphone in hand
Book the woman who says the thing the room came to avoid.

Check availability

Tell me about the room.

Two minutes. I answer every one myself, and I will tell you plainly if I am not the right fit.

Opens your mail app with everything filled in.

When I am not the right fit

If you need a motivational closer who will not touch anything uncomfortable, we will both have a better day if you book someone else. I go at the thing the room is avoiding. That is the whole value, and it is not for every program.

Receipts

If it claims a fact, it carries a source.

17.5 years USAF · Security Forces → Medic · Master Sergeant, E-7 of E-9 DD-214
Chair, enterprise Data Governance Council · 26 participants Council minutes, 18 Aug 2026
Data governance and quality lead · standards across 55+ programs Employment record
Presenter, NAHDO 39th Annual Conference · 14 November 2024 Official agenda, nahdo.org