Keeping Up With Kara

While growing up, Kara Duffy, B.A. ’03, MBA ’04, and her family moved so frequently that she is never quite certain how to respond when asked for her hometown. Yet, that doesn’t bother her a bit. She thinks it is perhaps the lack of a predetermined path that strengthened the entrepreneurial spirit she has felt since the day she was born.

Now living and thriving in Costa Mesa, California, Duffy has turned her passions and energy into a business — a few of them, in fact. Duffy is a small business consultant and personal coach, co-founder of a nonprofit, and owner of Powerful Ladies,  a community organization committed to providing women the tools they need to be powerful in all areas of their lives. Each of her jobs is a labor of love and none of them she would change.

“All of the work I’m doing allows me to give insight and provide tools to make people’s dreams come true, and that makes me really happy,” Duffy states.

In addition to being a recruited field hockey athlete, Duffy chose Clark University as an undergrad mostly because of its entrepreneurial success stories. “I liked that it had so many people who started their own business and went on to do cool things,” she says, “as well as for its international and high academic reputations.”

Despite her uncertainty about choosing a major, Duffy found herself selecting more and more business classes as she neared her senior year. With her high academic achievement, she was told she would qualify for the rigorous fifth-year MBA program, offered through the University’s Graduate School of Business (GSchool of Business). She decided to apply, knowing she had a heart for entrepreneurship and a mind for business, as evident by “side hustles and businesses [she] started before Clark and as a student.” Duffy also realized that GSchool of Business’s encouragement of entrepreneurship and impactful leadership made their MBA a perfect fit for her.

“The program continued the message that you can create whatever you want by being curious, doing the research, looking for problems to solve and creating something different than the status quo,” she states.

One business Duffy started while a student she named, “Organizational Bliss,” simply because organizing was something she truly enjoyed. She realized she could earn money helping others get both themselves and their spaces more structured. Working with the mantra that “a clean, minimized, and organized physical space can have an impact on one’s mental and emotional spaces,” Duffy did not have to look very far to find customers. She found projects with her peers and even her faculty. Current GSchool of Business management professor, Donna Gallo, asked Duffy to assist her and remembers vividly how much effort she put into her work.

“My husband and I were doing a renovation project at our house and Kara designed the entire closet we were adding. She was amazing!” Gallo explains. “Kara was always very self-driven, self-motivated, and supportive of her classmates. I’m so proud to see all of the incredible things she has been doing since she left Clark.”

With her MBA in hand after graduating, Duffy began working in the footwear, apparel, and accessories industry, moving up the career ladder with such notable companies as Reebok, Puma, and DC Shoes. All the while, she approached her corporate positions as an entrepreneur, helping colleagues and her employers solve problems and plan strategically. Duffy co-founded Hello Possibility, Inc. while still working full-time at Quick Silver, the parent company of DC Shoes, but grew a bit restless devoting the majority of her attention to her corporate job and little to her entrepreneurial work. With the itch to grow her personal businesses, she reversed that scenario.

“My focus is on my businesses and clients now, but I haven’t quite left the footwear and apparel industry altogether. As a consultant, I still work with some of those brands, as well as new footwear and apparel startups. In addition, my newest business is a brand with a full e-commerce site of its own,” she states.

Duffy is certainly keeping busy. Hello Possibility is an organization that provides assistance to non-profit startups and businesses that want to outsource their charitable giving. Through Kara Duffy Consulting & Coaching, she assists small businesses, start-ups and individuals looking to grow their business, establish greater goals, and plan for their financial future. Most recently, Duffy finds herself immersed in Powerful Ladies, which just launched a new website and podcast with the same name.

“I’m so excited for our launch expansion and love the community that’s being created,” Duffy says.

Duffy credits Clark with growing her confidence, her curiosity, and her understanding that if there is something to fix or a way to do business better, she can be the one to do it. Duffy uses these qualities every day, in how she lives and in the work she does with Powerful Ladies. Too often, she says, she encounters people who think they don’t have the abilities to take action toward betterment personally or professionally, who say, “I can’t.” It is partly why she started both Hello Possibility and Powerful Ladies in the first place.

“I’ve been surprised at how many people think they’re not capable of something, and I’ve also been surprised at how many things I considered common sense that are not common sense to every person or business,” Duffy states.

Along her career path, she has learned other things, too, particularly noting the harm of making business decisions based solely on ego and emotion, versus decisions made with logic and strategy. She feels fortunate to have received a strong foundation at Clark and GSchool of Business which helped shape her confident business mindset.

“GSchool of Business also helped me prepare for my career because even though it wasn’t a large school, we were held to the same standards and expectations as the bigger, more well-known schools,” she adds. “My professors were able to give us individual attention and taught us to take on the world by being informed, scrappy, diligent, and resourceful.”

Duffy continues to live life with a curious, enthusiastic, forge-your-own-path approach. She enjoys encouraging people of all ages to mold their future into something that fits their passions – be it in business or in life – and then watching them take action and succeed.

“I love to make things – brands, products, strategies, teams, solutions. I love to simplify the process and bring joy back to peoples’ lives at work or home. I love to meet people, hear their stories and connect them to others. Today I get to do all those things,” she states.  “It’s fun, it’s hard work, and it’s interesting. And why do something if it’s not interesting?”

By Meredith Galena
Communications Specialist, Academic Adviser
Graduate School of Business, Clark University