From Army Interrogator to Marketing Innovator: The Inspiring Journey of Katie Plaza

Mammel Hall – The road that Kaylin “Katie” Plaza took to become a CBA Business Maverick has been long and winding. Plaza earned a Bachelor of Science in business administration with concentrations in marketing and international business from CBA in 2022 and is on track to graduate with her MBA with an emphasis in marketing in May 2025.

Plaza grew up crabbing in the bays along the Maryland coastline. From there, her family crisscrossed the country with her stepfather’s military career, making stops in Illinois and Alaska, among other places. By the time Plaza graduated from high school, she had attended 15 different schools. Unsure of her path, Plaza knew she wanted to join the military to work in foreign policy like her stepfather, but her parents insisted she try college first. After one year in college, she left to enlist in the Army.

“I majored in broadcasting and initially wanted to be a sports anchor, but it was not for me, and I still wanted to join the military, so after that year, I enlisted in the Army as a Human Intelligence Collector or an Interrogator,” Plaza said. “I decided to add the Korean language on top of that so I would be a certified interrogator with a language piece attached to it.”

Plaza graduated from Basic Training and immediately went into Interrogation school where she graduated at the top of her class. She then went to the Defense Language Institute (DLI) and spent 2.5 years learning Korean. Plaza again graduated at the top of her class and was selected as one of only nine students to study abroad in the foreign language program at Korea University, one of the top three universities in Seoul, South Korea.

Plaza has a special reason for wanting to study Korean; her father is an immigrant from Seoul. “I grew up Korean in most aspects of my home life except for speaking the language. I had a Korean name, we went to Korean church, watched Korean TV shows, had Korean friends, but my father never taught us Korean,” Plaza said. “It was during the mid 90’s when where we were from was not very friendly to immigrants, and he didn’t want us to get bullied, so that's why I went, and I learned the language piece at school in the military.”

After her training ended, Plaza joined the Utah National Guard. She then began taking college classes at Weber State, where her passion for marketing was ignited.

“I said, forget everything I said prior to this moment, this is what I want to do with my life,” Plaza said. “I just found it so intriguing. The idea that you can drive people towards something with a campaign, or that you can look at analytics and try to figure out how to market something to a region or group of people successfully.”

From there she re-enlisted to active duty with the intention of going back to language school to learn Chinese.

“I thought I would broaden my language ability so that I could work as a marketer for Far East Asia. After six months at DLI, I began to struggle with my mental health and sense of purpose in the military,” Plaza said.

So, Plaza made some changes. She got married, transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas, for her final year of military service, and was medically retired.

“And then we moved to Omaha, and I started taking classes at UNO,” she said. “I knew I wanted to do marketing but soon realized I was experiencing a lot of burnout. And I wasn’t sure that marketing was for me anymore. I have a very strong conscience around social issues, and the idea of contributing to overconsumption and capitalism really bothered me. How could I ethically market things to people that they don’t need?” She said.

She earned her bachelor's degree and decided to pursue her MBA. During Dr. Shana Redd’s Marketing Innovation course, the students worked with Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, and Plaza found her way again.

“It was through Dr. Redd’s class and partnering with the Zoo that I realized that marketing doesn’t have to be about making people buy something, it can be about making them buy into an experience, making people become part of a brand or making them feel like they belong to something more than just them. That can include things like a community effort through the Zoo or even places like St. Jude’s that market their hospital and their mission so that people will donate to them,” Plaza said. “It showed me that I don’t need to focus on marketing to people to make money, but that I can focus on doing smaller community marketing to bring social help to people because that is really important to me.”

After she graduates and begins working in corporate marketing, she hopes to innovate more than just creative marketing campaigns for social awareness; she wants to innovate the workplace.

“I want to show people it is possible to be disabled, deal with mental health, and be a mother while also being a successful worker who is making impacts in the right places. I don't come from a lot, and I took a rocky path to where I am, but the thing I want people to know most is that it all comes full circle eventually, and I can't wait to use my future skills and position to bring about real changes on a community level and hopefully inside the business environment too. I want to bring change. Marketing and business are about connection. I want to focus on connecting with each other too, not just with consumers and businesses,” she said.