Katlin Neese became a member of the Women’s Business Center of Fayetteville at CEED in March of 2018. She began her career with the WBC as a part-time Business Consultant and is now the Director. She manages the Women’s Business Center program by focusing on the overall needs of clients as well as the team.Katlin was born in a small town in Pennsylvania. She began her college education focusing on fine art and held a variety of jobs one of which was tattooing and selling her artwork. After relocating to North Carolina years later, Katlin decided she wanted to pursue a degree in marketing and sales where she felt she could combine her love of business with creativity.
During this time, she became interested in creating her own business. She designed a product and set up an e-commerce business to learn the prototyping and manufacturing process. She then started focusing on social media marketing as a side project and spent time promoting local small businesses. Becoming part of the team at the WBC was a perfect fit for Katlin’s interest in business and promoting small businesses specifically.
While Katlin’s skill set is in marketing and branding, she has grown during her time at CEED to be proficient in business planning and a variety of other areas.
Creating businesses and exploring ideas has helped prepare Katlin for what she does at WBCFay. She has had a variety of experiences while setting up her businesses and has learned a lot along the way. Katlin feels that from her experiences she is able to put herself in her client’s shoes and help them problem-solve. For example, she designed her product she realized that she loved to create things but she didn’t want to be the one to sell them. She wanted to keep creating other things. In this experience, she learned first-hand that not everyone wants to necessarily run their business. There are some people who want to create something and let someone else run it or sell it. Every business and business owner is unique. Katlin feels that experience has allowed her to help clients navigate how they want their business to function and how to achieve that.
Katlin teaches a variety of classes such as Business Planning, Artrepreneur, and Ice House Entrepreneurial Mindset training. She is often part of the business plan reviews with clients and specializes in helping artists and those creating handmade goods to structure a profitable business.
WBCFay Director
910-323-3377 Ext. 1009
