Isabel Hinojosa ’24
A&E Editor and Chive Editor
Kristin Graham describes herself as “a very ordinary person who came to have an extraordinary life.” Graham’s path to her extraordinary life started at Lake Forest College, a place to which she accredits a lot of her success.
Graham came to LFC for this year’s Forester Day and gave a presentation called “Yes, And.” In this presentation, she shared that she comes from a military family in Phoenix, Arizona. She also shared that it was LFC’s Spike Gummere who had opened this door for her early on.
Graham and Gummere met at a college fair in a hotel ballroom in Phoenix. Graham’s parents had just split and filed for bankruptcy. She had no idea how she would be able to afford college, despite going to college out of state. Graham writes in a LinkedIn post that she told Gummere that she didn’t know that she would be able to afford to go to LFC. He told her that LFC offers lots of scholarships and aid. She told him that she wasn’t smart enough for those. He then told her, “I bet you are.”
Graham wrote in this post, “A door opened. One conversation changed the trajectory of my life.” Graham came to LFC the next year and became the first female in her family to go to college. She shared at her Forester Day presentation that she felt special for the first time in her life on campus in 20-person classes at LFC.
In her time at LFC, Graham, as an English/Creative Writing Major, stopped by the Stentor office and asked if they needed help. “I had never taken journalism classes, so I just went to volunteer because I didn’t think I was a good writer,” Graham said. “They said sure, don’t worry so much about the writing, we’ll have an editor, just go get the story.” After time, Graham became an editor, and then got to have her own regular column.
Graham shared that while she had her column, a friend that had graduated ahead of her told her that all she wanted for her birthday was for Graham to write her a story. Graham said, “It was weird to write with a purpose and the idea that this was a gift for someone. My column was usually editorial content related to the school. It was the first time it wasn’t an assignment; it was around the idea that words can be a gift.”
This idea that came to her from her friend’s request helped lead Graham to what she does now. “It was the first time someone asked me to write just to write,” Graham said. “And now I do that. I write, I podcast, but at the time it was almost like someone needed to give you permission to shine. You can’t see your own shine when you’re in it.”
Graham consistently calls herself a “recovering perfectionist.” To others with the same diagnosis, she advises, “Do fewer things better. Perfectionists want to show and collect all these little stars. They want to show that everything you give them, they’re going to do well.”
Instead, this is the advice she offers: “Really narrow down and go deep. It takes a lot of courage to go deep into something.” However, she later says, “I’m never going to say do one thing and do it 100 percent because that doesn’t leave room for other experiences. Whatever you’re starting out with, I hope that ten years from now you could be doing something completely and wildly different. Chasing perfectionism, you don’t leave room for beautiful beginnings.” Finding balance between going deep and getting uncomfortable and trying new things is key for Graham.
After LFC, Graham found the courage to dig deep and find another beautiful beginning when she applied to Northwestern University for grad school. “I took five years from LFC before I went to grad school for many reasons,” Graham said. “I didn’t even know if I could get into Northwestern. Part of it was just having the courage to apply, I just figured I’d give it a go. I had graduated and I was working, and I started to see my natural skills— communications. I started seeing that there were pathways that I hadn’t had the formal training for. I remember thinking, ‘Now I know that I want to do words for a living.’ I could write the email faster, I could do the work faster, but I didn’t know that was a skill until I was in the business world. That’s why I like when people take a break in between school because you get to try it out.”
After Northwestern, Graham’s plan was to go to New York and become a journalist. However, that plan never came to fruition because 9/11 came right when Graham graduated from Northwestern. Instead, she entered the corporate world. “When I was in corporate, that’s when I was surrounded by all this business stuff,” Graham said. “Then I realized that if I wanted to bring my words into corporate more, I should understand business more.” This idea led Graham to get her Executive MBA at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Graham has worked for many big-name companies including Expedia and Amazon. However, her most impressive endeavor has been starting her own company, Unlock the Brain, in 2021. Graham writes, “I launched Unlock to explore how brain science, psychology, and cognitive capacity can unlock our brains to improve our communications, productivity, and habits. Through interactive content, Unlock brings smart, simple solutions to busy individuals, companies, and universities on how to do fewer things better.”
Graham first learned to be an entrepreneur by being what she called an “intrapreneur.” “You do it within or on behalf of a company that you work for,” Graham explained. “I think a lot of people have an entrepreneurial skill set but are working in traditional roles or companies, so we don’t see it as an additional skill. It took a while for someone to come up with that intrapreneur idea that brings the innovation and creativity but within the dynamic of a traditional position. I really liked that because you have the stability of corporate and a paycheck, but you can also be disruptive.”
However, Graham eventually decided she wanted to do this to create a company of her own. “One of my favorite quotes is, ‘Leap and a net will appear.’ It’s all about faith,” Graham said. “Are you willing to be uncomfortable? That is absolutely what being an entrepreneur is about. But I have never felt more authentic and excited every day.”
When asked how she came up with the name “Unlock” Graham said, “I was out walking my dog one day and I literally saw the logo as it is today in my head. I think it was marinating and permeating in my brain for a bit, kind of like popcorn before it starts popping.”
Because the business launched right after COVID, the idea of Unlock also took on a whole new meaning. “When everything seemed so restricted, there was something really liberating about the idea of Unlock,” Graham said.
The idea of “the hustle” is very important to Graham as well. “What shaped me [at LFC]was how hard I was willing to work for something,” Graham shared. “Once I got there, it was how hard I was willing to work to stand out. It’s really tempting to want to watch and observe and figure things out. Discomfort is where growth is. How uncomfortable you are. That can be negative experiences too.”
Graham would want you to know that her goal is to make it to all seven continents and she has two more to go. She would also tell you that she has run three half-marathons and has jumped out of airplanes twice. These things are just as important to Graham as career successes because for her, experience and character growth is not all about work, but also life experience.
