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By Mandy Haggerson

For the Clemmons Courier

Like many kids who enjoyed being raised in the Winston-Salem area, Katy Brookby Braden, who is now an adult and mother of her own, came home to raise her own children.

“I remember trying different sports as a child,” reveals Braden. “Each season meant a different sport. Each season would be a new friend group, new coach and a different skill set was needed. It was my happy place, Eventually I did the competitive soccer program that was then called Twin City.” 

In the many sports programs that Braden participated in, she also had different friend groups at the schools she attended: Whitaker Elementary, Cook Middle School and she graduated from Forsyth Country Day School.

“I realized while I was at Forsyth that a smaller school was a really good fit for me. I liked the student to teacher ratio which played a role with deciding where to go to college,” Braden said. “I decided to attend the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.”

While at Sewanee, Braden also continued her soccer journey by playing on the team.

“I got to meet people that I would have never met because I joined the team. So many of them were so interesting, and it made my college experience even better.”

While enjoying being a student athlete, Braden had focused on English as her major.

“I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with it. However, during my summer before my senior year, I went to intern in Washington, D.C., for the summer in then Congressman Richard Burr’s office. After that opportunity, I decided I wanted to come up there after I graduated to further my experience working on Capitol Hill,” Braden said. 

Staying true to her interests, Braden went back to the United States House of Representatives after she earned her degree in English.

“I worked for Congressman Roy Blunt in the press office and then for the Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,” Braden said. “Those opportunities were unique and interesting, and I realized that I did enjoy writing, but not quite so much the politics, legislation and bureaucratic processes.”

After gaining 2 years of experience on Capitol Hill, Braden evaluated what her passion was, and how she could best utilize it professionally.

“I decided to go to graduate school at Marymount University which also had classes at George Washington University for their master’s program in interior design,” Braden said. “It wasn’t just about designing curtains; it was a grueling 3-year degree that covered the mechanical and electrical aspects to name a few. It was similar to learning what an architect would in their program, and I realized how much I enjoyed it the minute the program started.”

While in school, Braden also had an internship in the field she was studying which helped to provide the real-world application to her coursework. 

After graduating, Braden began working with a firm that was renovating the Pentagon.

“I had been assigned to the team that was updating the portion of the Pentagon that had been impacted by 9/11,” Braden said. “It took us about 3 years to complete that project which was fascinating because everything had been the same since the 1950s.”

That project helped Braden realize she would need more schooling to broaden her career opportunities. She applied and was accepted to the Urban Planning School at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“As luck would have it, on my last weekend in D.C., I met my future husband, Mark,” Braden said. “I assumed that’s where he lived, however, I quickly found out that he came back and forth to D.C. from my hometown and even lived right down the street from my parents. It was ironic that the last weekend I was there, I actually met someone that was also from where I grew up. We hit it off immediately, and stayed in touch.”

Mark and Katy realized they had something special and continued the long-distance relationship while she was in graduate school.

“We got engaged when I had 6 months left to graduate,” Braden said. 

Once Katy and Mark got married, they started off as newlyweds in Tennessee.

“Mark was working on a campaign there, and I got a job at the Tennessee Department of Transportation,” Braden said. “During that time, I got pregnant with our daughter, Cates (10), and then Beau, our son came 19 months later. I continued working outside the home when Cates was born. However, once we had Beau, we decided that it was the best decision for our family for me to stay home with the kids because Mark was traveling so much for his job. I have loved that decision and being a mom. I love being active with them. I’m not scared to hop on the trampoline or crawl in a bounce house.

“I also have started coaching their sports teams. I am grateful for all the wonderful coaches and teammates I had through the years, that I want to give back what I was given to my kids and others. It’s important to teach them how to take a loss and win with humility. The parallels of life are endless on the field, especially with resilience.” 

If not helping with her kids, Braden is applying her career choice to her own home.

“I love doing projects in our family home,” Braden said. “Anyone can do it. It just takes time and patience, but it certainly helps if you love working and creating with your hands. There is something about working hard and seeing the results. Since our home was built in the 1920s I have to strip it down to the bare wood and take it down to plaster. From there, I smooth out the walls, sand it, rewire it, and the real work is all the stuff you don’t see once it’s done. That’s the stuff that really matters. Probably like a lot of projects and things that are a labor of love.”