Katie Brown '85 never dreamed as a Cornell undergraduate that she would someday appear as a speaker in one of her old classrooms. But despite a driving rain, Brown packed Kaufmann Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall Nov. 19 to share choice bits of career wisdom with current students.

Fresh from the success of her PBS television show, multiple book deals, a weekly New York Times column and regular appearances on Oprah and Good Morning America, she traced her journey from corporate hopeful to her unlikely success as the 'Doyenne of Domesticity for Generation X.'

Brown drew on her own experiences in becoming an entrepreneur to inspire students to consider nontraditional career paths. A well-rounded education, she emphasized, and especially the Cornell experience, provides the means to open doors to success, regardless of major.

After college, Brown trained to become a Saks Fifth Avenue buyer -- a career that did not suit her personality, she said. She then began acting classes and moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as a waitress while waiting for an acting break. There, she discovered her love of food, and she opened a catering service -- first out of her car, and then, when demand overwhelmed her red Ford Escort, from a new boutique she started in West Hollywood with a friend. Her small café, dotted with homemade crafts and antiques, became a popular local hotspot, and Brown opened a second location on Mackinac Island in her native Michigan to supplement her acting income. Then a representative from the Lifetime TV channel, who was looking for someone to succeed Martha Stewart, contacted her.

Brown said she valued Cornell's ability to push students to be their best, and to surround them with the best in every field. "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned," Brown said, quoting Einstein. "I think he kind of got it right, and kind of got it wrong. I know I have a lot of nerve trying to correct Albert Einstein. I arrange pine cones for a living, seriously."

She explained that once the specifics of education -- papers, exams, classes -- are no longer at the forefront of memory, one learns to engage the world head on. But as individuals, we are composed of everything we have done, and our education is a key part of that. "That's how I managed to get my business going from the ground up," Brown said. "And when you're running your own business, it's finals week every day."

Jennifer Wholey '10 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.