Kathryn Wallem
This month’s installment of our Staff Spotlight series features our Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Kathryn Wallem. As the CFO, Kathryn manages Beam Center’s money and helps us keep everything in order. Her day-to-day work includes collecting invoices, writing checks, managing budgets, and much more. Kathryn also manages the hiring process and helps us onboard new staff.
Kathryn started working at our Beam Camp back in 2008, where she served as a Camp Counselor. When asked what her first experience at Beam Camp was like, she states “I felt both at home and intimidated. I was like ‘oh this is my place and also these people are good at what they do.’ I had to learn how to not be afraid of kids, and I loved that.”
After her years at Camp, Kathryn was hired as Beam’s first full-time employee for our after school programs here in Brooklyn. Drawing from her own creative practices, Kathryn filled a variety of roles over the following years, including facilitating programs on textiles and making clothing and then moving into more administrative work. Speaking of the work we do at Beam, Kathryn explains that we help young people experience “how to be in a community, how to care for other people, how to build a culture that is new to a lot of young people that we work with. [It’s something] that is meaningful to people who are searching for something outside of their daily experience, outside of the world they grew up in.”
Outside of her work at Beam, Kathryn is on the board of a private park in Sunnyside Queens. As she states, “I am on the board of the park because it's a resource that I have access to, and I feel like other people need to have access to it…the only way to do that is to be part of the leadership of the park. I am interested in community access to land and making a difference in a place where I live.”
In addition to being a full-time employee and serving on the park’s board, Kathryn is also a mother to a 3 year old. She said, “outside of Beam I spend time with my family. I go on bike rides by myself and with my family, and I cook a lot. I do the simple things we all learned to do in COVID, enjoying our immediate surroundings, being outside, and being with the people you live with.”
We’re so grateful to Kathryn for her experience and support of Beam over the years. Thank you for being a part of the Beam team!