Katie Stotter

Who is Katie Stotter?

Katie Stotter is a London-based strategy leader with 15+ years of experience in strategy, innovation, and transformation work. In her
professional life, she’s described her sweet spot as turning insight into actionespecially in messy, ambiguous situations where there
isn’t a neat checklist waiting to be followed. In parallel, she’s also built a public creative identity as a cartoonist and illustrator,
known for humorous drawings that capture everyday behaviors and workplace realities without being mean about it.

That “two-track” reputation (serious strategy + playful illustration) isn’t a gimmick. It’s a practical way of thinking: strategy is about
making sense of complexity, and cartoons are an extremely effective way to make complexity less intimidating. When those skills meet, you
get work that’s both sharp and accessiblelike someone brought a whiteboard marker to a complicated meeting and actually used it for good.

Quick snapshot

• Known for: Strategy leadership, writing on work culture and change, and cartoons/illustrations.
• Current role (publicly stated): Senior Strategy Director at CI&T (London).
• Creative output: Cartoons, illustration projects, and the book Love is Wild (a cartoon take on wildlife courtship habits).
• Public service: Trustee on the board of Pancreatic Cancer UK.

Katie Stotter’s strategy work

In plain English, strategy work is the job of answering: “What’s actually going on here?” and “What should we do next?”without getting hypnotized
by shiny distractions. Katie Stotter has described her work in strategy, innovation, and transformation, and she’s emphasized working well in ambiguity
and across multidisciplinary teams (think: design, data, development, marketing, and leadership all in the same room, all speaking their own dialect).

Her publicly listed experience includes working across sectors and with a wide range of organizations. On her portfolio site, she lists brands and
institutions spanning tech, healthcare, entertainment, education, and the public sectoran indicator that her strategy approach is meant to travel well.
When you can move from a telco problem to a healthcare challenge to a media/entertainment brief, you’re usually relying on transferable tools: research,
synthesis, stakeholder alignment, and decision frameworks (the unglamorous stuff that makes big work possible).

What “turning insight into action” looks like

“Insight” is only useful if it changes behavior. In practice, that can mean:

• Clarifying the real problem (not the loudest symptom in the room).
• Setting constraints so teams can be creative in the right direction.
• Choosing trade-offs openly instead of pretending everything can be top priority.
• Making the work legible to the people who need to approve it, fund it, build it, and use it.

If that sounds obvious, congratulationsyou are emotionally prepared for leadership. For everyone else, a good strategist is basically a translator,
part detective, part therapist, and part person who says “Let’s define ‘success’ before we build a thing that can’t possibly succeed.”

A specific example: the “good questions” approach to briefs

One of the most practical public examples tied to Katie Stotter’s work is a mini-series about asking better questions to create better briefs.
The premise is simple: good questions create clarity, challenge assumptions, and help teams align on what they’re actually trying to accomplish.

The series highlights questions like:
What’s the real problem we’re solving? and Why do we need to solve it now?
That kind of questioning might feel like slowing down, but it often prevents the classic “fast sprint into the wrong direction” problem
which is impressive cardio, but not great strategy.

Writing and thought leadership

Katie Stotter also publishes writing that sits at the intersection of work culture, change, and practical strategy. On her site, she points readers to
series like Good Questions and The Future of Work, along with other pieces that pull apart how organizations actually behave when they’re
under pressure (which is, frankly, when they show their true personality).

The Future of Work: focusing on what actually changes

“The future of work” can be a magnet for vague predictions and trendy buzzwords. A more useful angleone that appears in her public writingis to look at
specific ingredients of healthy hybrid culture, how organizations experiment with work models, and why the so-called “new normal” is often just a story we
tell ourselves to feel calmer.

That style of writing tends to be most valuable when you’re in the middle of decisions: leadership debating return-to-office policies, managers trying to
keep teams connected across distance, or organizations wrestling with inclusion and belonging in a hybrid environment. The goal isn’t to “win” remote work
vs. office work. It’s to design a system that doesn’t quietly punish people who aren’t in the room.

Strategy writing that stays close to reality

A hallmark of useful strategy writing is that it gives you language you can reuse. Not jargonlanguage. For example:

• “This is a to-do list, not a brief.”
• “Let’s go upstream: what’s the real problem?”
• “We need progress that feels tangible and manageable.”

Those kinds of phrases sound simple, but they change meetings. They also make it harder for teams to hide behind vague agreement while still disagreeing
in secret (a common corporate hobby).

Cartoons, illustration, and why humor belongs in serious work

On the creative side, Katie Stotter is known for cartoons and illustration work that capture human behaviorespecially the little rituals and coping habits
that appear when life gets strange. A widely shared example is a set of lockdown-themed cartoons that map out “types of people in lockdown,” using humor
to describe behaviors like sudden baking, plant obsession, DIY spirals, and general cabin-fever energy.

The style is playful, but the function is serious: humor is one of the fastest ways to create recognition. When people say, “That is painfully accurate,”
they’re usually also admitting, “Okay, you understand what’s going on.” And understanding is the first step to changing anything.

Illustration as a strategy tool (not just decoration)

In many organizations, strategy lives in slide decks that feel like they were assembled by a committee of sleep-deprived rectangles. Cartoons can act as
a shortcut to shared meaning. Instead of arguing over abstract definitions, teams react to a concrete image: “Yes, that villain is absolutely our biggest
obstacle,” or “That’s exactly what our user feels when we make them reset their password for the seventh time.”

One public example tied to her work describes using cartoons to personify “villains” (barriers) in a projectturning invisible friction into something
a team can point to, name, and plan around. It’s a clever method because it makes problems feel less personal and more solvable. You’re not attacking a
coworker’s idea; you’re teaming up against The Scope Creep Kraken.

What her public creator blurbs emphasize

On creator platforms, she’s described as a London-based cartoonist who enjoys drawing round animals and quirky life moments. That might sound like a small
detail, but it’s actually a brand promise: the work will be light on its feet, observant, and friendlyeven when it’s pointing out something ridiculous.

Love is Wild: the book that blends science, comedy, and cartoons

One of the most searchable “Katie Stotter” projects online is Love is Wild, a short cartoon book about the weird and wonderful courtship and mating
habits of wildlife. If you’re expecting a dry encyclopedia vibe, you’re in the wrong forest. The point is to make nature’s behaviors memorable through humor
and illustrationbecause your brain will forget a fact, but it will remember a cartoon.

Importantly (especially if you’re reading this with a sandwich in hand), the tone is described as fun and a bit “gross” in the way nature can benot graphic,
not explicit, just the kind of playful honesty that reminds you: animals are not here to be polite. They are here to be effective.

Why this kind of project works

• It lowers the barrier to learning: People who don’t seek out “wildlife biology” content might still read a cartoon book.
• It’s sticky: Humor makes facts easier to remember and share.
• It’s a signature blend: The same skill that helps explain business complexity can explain natural complexity.

In a world full of content that takes itself very seriously, a project like Love is Wild is also a reminder that educational work doesn’t have to be
stern to be smart. Sometimes the best way to respect your audience is to make them laugh while you teach them something.

Trustee work and advocacy

Beyond strategy and creative work, Katie Stotter is publicly listed as a trustee at Pancreatic Cancer UK. Trustee roles generally involve governance,
oversight, and helping steer an organization toward impactless “show up for a photo” and more “make decisions that hold up when things get hard.”

In her publicly shared trustee bio, she connects that work to personal loss in her family and a determination to use her skills and experience to drive
meaningful change. That context matters: it frames the trustee role not as a résumé bullet, but as a long-term commitment tied to real stakes.

Dancing, doodling, and the creative brain in motion

Katie Stotter’s public profiles also reference dance (including solo jazz) alongside cartoons and strategy. On paper, that seems like three unrelated
hobbies stapled together. In practice, it’s a coherent creative system:

• Strategy trains structured thinking: patterns, trade-offs, and decisions.
• Cartoons train compression: expressing an idea in the simplest possible way.
• Dance trains iteration: you try, you adjust, you repeatwithout the shame spiral.

That last point is underrated. A lot of adults stop learning because they’re allergic to being bad at something in public. Dance doesn’t allow that.
You have to be awkward on the way to being good. That mindset is also how good strategy gets built: you draft, test, revise, and keep your ego out of it.

What people and teams can learn from the “Katie Stotter” blend

Even if you never write a strategy deck or draw a cartoon, there are practical lessons in the way her work shows up publicly.

1) Use humor as a tool, not a distraction

The point of humor isn’t to be “funny.” It’s to create recognition fast. Recognition creates alignment. Alignment makes action possible.

2) Ask better questions before you chase better answers

Great briefs don’t start with solutions. They start with clarity: what problem, why now, what’s been tried, and what constraints are real.

3) Make the invisible visible

Whether you’re naming a project “villain” or sketching a user’s frustration, turning abstract problems into concrete objects makes them easier to solve.

4) Keep ethics close to innovation

When strategy touches emerging technology, the question isn’t only “Can we build it?” It’s also “Should we?” and “What responsibility do we have to users?”
That ethical framing shows up in public descriptions of her interests and speaking.

FAQ

Is Katie Stotter primarily a strategist or a cartoonist?

Publicly, she’s both. Her work and writing emphasize strategy leadership, while her cartoons and illustration projects build a parallel creative footprint.
The interesting part is how those two skill sets reinforce each other.

What is Katie Stotter known for online?

Search results commonly surface her strategy work (including articles about work culture), her cartoons shared on major platforms, and Love is Wild,
a cartoon book focused on wildlife courtship behaviors.

Where is Katie Stotter based?

She is publicly described as being based in London, UK.

Experiences inspired by Katie Stotter (and what they teach you)

You don’t have to be Katie Stotter (or even know how to draw a convincing circle) to borrow the useful parts of her public “strategy + cartoons” approach.
Below are a few real-world experiences people often have when they try similar methodsalong with what those experiences tend to unlock. Think of this as
a practical field guide for anyone who wants clearer thinking, better collaboration, and fewer meetings that feel like they could have been an email
(and also: fewer emails that feel like they should have been a meeting… okay, we can’t perform miracles).

Experience #1: Running a “good questions” kickoff

Picture a project kickoff where the first 20 minutes are not spent debating solutions. Instead, you write four questions on a board:
(1) What’s the real problem? (2) What’s the history? (3) Why now? (4) What solutions are already on the table?
At first, people squirm. Someone will try to jump ahead to “the answer.” Someone will say, “We already know this.”
But as the room starts answering honestly, you’ll notice something: half the team has been solving a different problem. Not maliciouslyjust quietly.

The experience usually ends with a tighter brief, fewer assumptions, and a shared language for trade-offs. You may also discover that your “deadline”
is actually a “preference,” and your “must-have feature” is actually a “legacy expectation,” and your “obvious user need” is actually something nobody has
validated since 2019. Congratulations: you have just saved your future self from screaming into a pillow.

Experience #2: Drawing the project “villains”

Try this: ask your team to name the barriers that repeatedly ruin good work. Not peoplebarriers. Give them ridiculous villain names if it helps.
“Captain Approval Loop.” “The Scope Creep Kraken.” “The Data We Don’t Have.” “The Stakeholder Who Appears Only at the End.”
Then, sketch them. Badly. Terribly. The worse the drawing, the safer everyone feels participating.

The experience is surprisingly powerful: it turns vague anxiety into specific obstacles. Once you can point to The Approval Loop, you can design around it:
earlier sign-offs, clearer decision owners, smaller experiments, or a pre-mortem to surface concerns before they become sabotage. Teams often report that the
mood changes instantlyless blame, more problem-solving. Humor becomes a pressure-release valve, and suddenly the hard conversation is easier to start.

Experience #3: Using cartoons to explain a complex idea

If you’ve ever tried to explain a strategy to someone outside your department, you know the pain: their eyes glaze over, you panic, you add more words,
they glaze harder. Now try compressing the idea into a single-panel cartoon concept. Not a masterpiecejust a visual metaphor. For example:
a customer standing in front of six “reset password” doors. Or a team pushing a boulder labeled “process” uphill while someone says, “Let’s add one more form.”

The experience teaches you what your strategy is actually about. If you can’t draw the problem, you may not have defined it. If you can draw it, you can
usually communicate it fasterand communication speed matters when decisions are expensive. People remember pictures. They share pictures. They rally around
pictures. A cartoon can be the shortest path from “I kind of get it” to “Okay, I’m in.”

Experience #4: Building a creative habit alongside a serious job

Another “Katie Stotter” lesson is the permission to be multi-dimensional. Many people assume you must pick one identity: serious professional or playful
creative. In reality, building a small creative habit (sketching daily, writing short reflections, practicing a dance routine, or making tiny comics)
often improves professional performance because it trains iteration and observation. You become better at noticing patterns in behavior, better at admitting
what isn’t working, and better at trying again without drama.

The experience isn’t always glamorous. Some days your output will be nonsense. That’s fine. The point is consistency, not perfection. Over time, you’ll
likely feel more confident in meetings, more willing to ask the “basic” question that saves everyone time, and more able to communicate ideas in a way that
doesn’t require a 42-slide deck. Your coworkers might not know why you’re suddenly clearerbut you will.

In short: the experience of combining strategy thinking with creative expression tends to make people braver, sharper, and more human at work. Which is a
pretty solid return on investment for a couple of doodles and one well-timed question.

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