Six questions with... Kath Burnard
What’s your favourite way to greet people?
With friends it’s a big hug. But I’m meeting people who are unfamiliar to me, that’s where I can get a bit stuck. At a work event I’m often wondering whether to shake hands or not to shake hands? I seemed to have missed that lesson somewhere along the way. But I think a fail-safe for me is just to open with a big friendly smile.
What conversation makes you happy?
The kinds of conversations that take twists and turns. Conversations that are a bit unpredictable but that take you somewhere and make you feel something. Maybe someone surprises you with an incredibly hilarious anecdote that they’ve been dying to tell, or maybe someone opens up really authentically about a struggle they’re having, or perhaps someone speaks really fast and animatedly about something that’s getting them fired up, or it could be closely following an impassioned exchange between two people with different points of view. I wish I could find a better word for it, but conversations that feel ‘real’ make me really happy.
What conversation topic makes you nervous?
I start to feel nervous when I find myself in a conversation that’s hyper-intellectual and feel uncomfortable with difficult power dynamics or implied social hierarchy. I don’t find these kinds of conversations inclusive at all. I stop really listening to what’s being said and just turn inward. I start to panic a bit about what I’m going to say and if people even want to listen. I try not to stick around in those conversations for long if I can help it!
What makes you laugh?
Reading back over things my friends and I created when we were young. The diary entries of middle school drama, the reflections we were made to write at school camp, the games we’d make up with lots of wild rules, the notes we’d write to each other at the end of the school year. A nice nostalgic kind of chuckle.
If you could ask someone, dead or alive, anything - who and what would you ask them?
I’d ask Jonathan Van Ness (JVN) from Queer Eye if he would be my best friend.
What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
I found this question difficult to answer. I can think of really scary moments that I’ve gotten through (e.g. terrifying car journey in Albania), and big job decisions that I’ve made (e.g. starting my own business) but they didn’t really feel right. I think the bravest thing I’ve done is actually a collection of so many little brave things. The first of these was choosing to leave my home town of Adelaide, Australia over seven years ago and then there have been many more small brave actions since then that have taken me on a trajectory far away from my ‘expected’ destination. I think it’s brave to be reflecting critically about my values, my ideologies, my identity, my biases - so much of what I thought to be true, because of the world I grew up in and the messages I internalised, has radically changed. And I think it’s brave to be okay with still figuring things out.
Katherine Burnard
Co-founder Square Circle Agency