Kelsey Ostergren's Linkedin Analytics

I am all about growth, learning, and being passionate about what I do. I do this not only in my personal life but my job. I don’t see why they should be separate. If we’re doing one thing for 40+ hours a week of our lives, why not bring our whole and best self? I am currently a consultant in a firm, where I engage with clients, assist with business development, and manage a data collection tool. I didn’t know what to expect when I joined the consulting field—I always thought I’d be a researcher/writer—but I’ve found that I like helping make others happy, feel fulfilled, and feel empowered, whether client or colleague. That has been a theme across my career—helping people and processes grow, strengthen, and improve through critical thinking and creativity. When I was a History student in undergrad, I shook off the expectation that I had to be a history teacher. As understanding people’s traditions, motives, and voices is important to me, I added Religion as another major. I studied both for the sake of learning. I met with professors after school to challenge perspectives. I read books beyond my reading list to study interesting ideas connected to my school work. I met with other religious groups to understand their traditions and perspectives and to see how they fit in with my own. This aspiration for growth and challenge has taken me through two internships, where I pursued understanding religion, violence, and diplomacy in the international scene and interfaith dialogue in the local scene. At the same time, I hustled in security operations, often working nights, weekends, and additional days on top of the internships and excelling in raising the work ethic across the team. Connecting religion, violence, security, and dialogue brought me to U.S. national terrorism prevention, where I had the honor and privilege of working with 30+ stakeholders in the Raleigh-Durham area. I listened to their challenges and priorities in the field, and worked with law enforcement to create a local vehicle to carry on the dialogue at the community level. Wanting to know more about homeland security, I entered the consulting field, and here I am. I’ve found that, here and through my career, I am all about people and bringing what I can to them to help them be the best versions of themselves—whether that is empowering them in their role, making a space for voices and sharing ideas, helping to identify priorities and goals, or simply asking how they’re doing and get to know them better.