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Q&A with Katie McCoy Dubow '00
Share a little about your career and what you've done since completing school.
I never thought I’d say this, but my career brought me home. Eight years ago I moved back to PA to help my mom run Garden Media Group, a public relations business she started in 1988 in Kennett Square. Home was never a place I thought I’d settle when I was at Tower Hill. Like many of my friends, I went to another state for college and afterward moved to NYC. Thanks to some connections from home, I worked for many years at CBS in TV broadcasting, hoping to make it as a side line reporter. As you can see, that career wasn’t the path I chose, or it didn’t choose me. After thinking my TV career kaput, I transitioned to a role in marketing at Liz Claiborne, which I just loved. But, as I got older, I wanted a place to settle down. NYC was not it for me. The Brandywine Valley looked more and more interesting – and boy has it been. Since moving here I have taken over Garden Media Group and finally landed that TV career on QVC for Cottage Farms.
Why do you do what you do?
The passion for marketing is in my blood. It showed up in my Tower Hill homework and as my major. But marketing for gardening is so different than any other job. Gardening brings people joy and can be the savior of our planet. I get to promote planting trees or digging in the soil. Some days my job takes me to the best private gardens in the world, or presenting trends in a faraway country, or on TV! I do what I do to keep the legacy my mom started alive, pass a viable business on to my two daughters and get a plant on every window sill!
What are you passionate about at work?
I most love helping people along their journey from brown thumb to green. So many of my friends, from high school and beyond, tell me they can’t grow a thing. I love getting them one plant and watching the fear of gardening turn into an obsession. I love learning more about plants and how they work. I love that my industry is at the forefront of sustainability and my clients are making a difference.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
I still see many of my Tower Hill friends regularly – and since moving home have met people in younger (James Cartmell!) or older (Dan Weintraub) classes I never knew in high school! I love running into alumni I lost touch with at The Queen or while canoeing down the Brandywine. I practice Bikram Yoga (not as much as I’d like to) and of course, I garden.
What was your experience like at Tower Hill?
I came to Tower Hill in 10th Grade. I was the new kid. Many of my peers had been together since they were five. Yet it wasn’t hard to break in. I was welcomed with open arms. Tower Hill was the hardest school I had attended yet. I was challenged, but not made to feel inadequate. I was surrounded by a lot of greatness but I was supported. I was encouraged to try new things. I was in a play, remember our act, Pam Jennings? Dr. Atkins, Mrs. T and others in the drama department were creative geniuses I had never been exposed to. Being smart and creative and raising your hand in class was cool, for the first time. I loved it.
How do you feel that Tower Hill influenced your life and career?
One of the biggest things I gained from Tower Hill was confidence. I was not a number. I was not a small fish. I counted and I had a voice. That voice has taken me places I never dreamed of. I also gained a curiosity about the world from my teachers and peers. I was able to meet and interact with people from all kinds of backgrounds, especially our class of 2000 exchange student, Anne-Dorthe. Tower Hill’s reputation stands strong. When I tell people around here where I went to school the reaction is always the same: “Wow.”
