43 Katie Fussenegger: connector, memory maker

Katie Fussenegger serves as Executive Vice President of the Kentucky Derby Museum, where she helps lead one of Kentucky’s most iconic cultural attractions with vision, creativity, and a deep love for the stories of the horse.

Before joining the museum, Katie spent more than a decade as President & CEO of ShelbyKY Tourism, where she built a reputation for innovation, collaboration, and community impact. She’s a proud University of Louisville graduate and holds her CTIS certification through Indiana and Purdue Universities.

Katie has held leadership roles across the state and beyond, serving as chair of the Kentucky Tourism Industry Association & KY Bourbon Horses & History Region, President of the Kentucky Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus, and twice as President on the international stage of Skal International Louisville. She’s also a graduate of Leadership Kentucky, Leadership Louisville, and Leadership Shelby.

Her work has earned her recognition as one of the Lane Report’s Top Women in Business, Louisville Business First’s 20 People to Know in Tourism & Hospitality, recipient of the Way to Go Woman in Leadership Award by Today’s Woman Magazine, and a 2024 Forty Under 40 honoree by Business First, chosen from over 600 applications.

A passionate advocate for tourism, hospitality, and community growth, Katie brings both strategy and heart to everything she does. 

Kentucky Derby Museum

https://www.derbymuseum.org/

https://www.instagram.com/derbymuseum/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/kentucky-derby-museum

Connect with Katie on Instagram @CocktailsandTeacups

Kathie’s note: You know how some people just remind you of sunshine? That’s Katie Fussenegger. Always happy, always smiling. I met her on a fam trip (which stands for familiarization, not family) with three other freelance writers in the fall of 2019. We toured a Saddlebred farm in Shelby County, a pumpkin patch and several other tourist attractions, and had some fabulous meals and camaraderie. I still think about those people and places!

Writers Rotation intro/outro recorded at Dynamix Productions in Lexington, Kentucky.

Transcript

Katie [00:00:00]:
I'm Katie Fussenegger. I'm a connector at heart. Writing is how I process ideas and invite others into the vision.

INTRO [00:00:08]:
Hi, welcome to the Writers Rotation podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Stamps. I love words and writing and people and talking. So I'm talking to people who write all kinds of things in different professions. It's a Writers Rotation.

Kathie [00:00:24]:
Katie! How's the tourism biz these days? How's Kentucky tourism?

Katie [00:00:33]:
Well, you know, tourism in general is in a new wave of thinking. Travelers are making decisions with less planning. We're seeing, and Kentucky is feeling that as well. The museum especially. We are starting to see our motor coach groups because  group sales business obviously is a good portion of the business that we do besides leisure and international travel. Those folks would plan two and three years in advance. And while some of them still do, we're seeing bookings that are coming in like 30 days in advance, which is just crazy to me. So tourism went from a very steady, like, progressive, easily planned atmosphere to a little bit of chaos, I'm starting to feel, in the last couple years post-Covid.

Kathie [00:01:24]:
And this is the Kentucky Derby Museum.

Katie [00:01:26]:
Yes, that's right. I've switched gears a little bit, going from president of ShelbyKY Tourism, which I feel like was a lifetime and a good lifetime, almost 14 years there. To now, I have been with the Kentucky Derby Museum as the executive vice president six years, which is crazy wild.

Kathie [00:01:45]:
Where are you from? What did you major in? Horses, all that.

Katie [00:01:50]:
Okay. So I am from Kentucky originally, actually from Simpsonville, which is in Shelby County. I actually still live here. We built a house in 2018 and absolutely love what is known as the Saddlebred Capital of the World. But I traded in my Saddlebreds for Thoroughbreds. But before that, the path getting here was a little tricky. I didn't come out saying I want to work in tourism. I actually set out in for a career in medicine. And when I say medicine, I did flip the switch a little bit. While in school, I went to the university and graduated from the University of Louisville with a bachelor's degree in communications. And I will tell you, I wanted to be a forensic scientist. And then that pivoted after studying the body and the amazing things that our body does and how we react to different climates postmortem, that fascination then went to teeth, which is crazy. So I was going to be a dental hygienist. And then somehow I decided, you know, I can't talk to people if I have my hands in their mouth. 

Kathie [00:03:04]:
They can't talk to you, but you could talk to them.

Katie [00:03:06]:
That's right. But they're not going to talk to you. So then I decided, you know, I love people, I want to be with people. I took a wild internship at ShelbyKY Tourism in college, which then moved into working with the Louisville Tourism Bureau. And  I love working with teams. I love trying to figure out different revenue streams and strategy. And culture is really important to me. So tourism just happens to be at the intersection of that dynamic all the time. So that's where we are.

Kathie [00:03:42]:
That's so cool. Okay, tell me about the Kentucky Derby Museum. How big is it?

Katie [00:03:47]:
So, the Kentucky Derby Museum, we just celebrated our 40th anniversary last year and we started as part of Churchill Downs. So long, long time ago. And in its origin we were a one-room museum actually on Churchill Downs proper. And several, the way I understand it, several community bankers went together and decided that the Kentucky Derby needed a historical spotlight and that transformed from a one-room museum to now being a completely, I'll say autonomous, loosely, because we're still on Churchill Downs property. However, we only own the postage stamp of land to which our building sits upon. So once you go out our doors, you're on Churchill Downs property. But we wouldn't be the Kentucky Derby Museum without Churchill Downs, obviously. So we are the caretakers of the of all things Kentucky Derby.

Katie [00:04:45]:
We not only get to do the tours of the beautiful property at Churchill, we also have two floors of exhibits that go all the way from telling the importance of the Kentucky Derby not only to Louisville, but Kentucky, moving through to little known horses you might have heard of like Secretariat. And how all of the people that work not only with the horses, but on the backside, female jockeys and what they were able to accomplish, really, we touch all the pieces of history as it relates to the Kentucky Derby and horse racing. And I think it's pretty cool. We actually have a live exhibit on our property as well, which features a retired Thoroughbred in partnership with two different retired Thoroughbred foundations and our resident mini mighty Aristides, who we call Ari. So he is quite the dynamic guy.

Kathie [00:05:47]:
Wait, I was today years old. I was this minute years old when I learned how to say Aristides. It's Aris-TIDE-eez.

Katie [00:05:54]:
Aristides, yes. Mighty Aristides.

Kathie [00:05:57]:
Oh, I didn't know that. Aristides was the first winner of the first Derby in 1875.

Katie [00:06:03]:
You've got your Derby history.

Kathie [00:06:04]:
You want to play Kentucky Derby trivia?

Katie [00:06:06]:
No, I don't.

Kathie [00:06:09]:
There are so many. I've researched it over the years. I think to this day, there's only one… They call it the greatest two minutes in sports. Northern Dancer was the only one that won it in two minutes flat.

Katie [00:06:21]:
That's right. Kathie, I'm so impressed.

Kathie [00:06:24]:
The first jockey, I know was Oliver Lewis. He was from Lexington. Oh, Run for the Roses, they didn't start that phrase until 1925.

Katie [00:06:33]:
That's right.

Kathie [00:06:33]:
The first Derby was on a Monday.

Katie [00:06:36]:
That's correct.

Kathie [00:06:37]:
Did you know that? Of course you know that. That was May 17, 1875.

Katie [00:06:42]:
Isn't that wild?

Kathie [00:06:43]:
It wasn't called Churchill Downs until 1883. And it wasn't the first Saturday in May until 1932.

Katie [00:06:51]:
I was getting ready to say, you know that it wasn't always the first Saturday in May. A lot of people don't realize that. It is also the longest running. Let me think about how they say this, it’s the longest running sporting event in the nation. Oh. Do you know what the second longest running sporting event is?

Kathie [00:07:11]:
Ooh. Would that be baseball? World Series?

Katie [00:07:14]:
The Westminster Dog Show.

Kathie [00:07:17]:
Oh wow. The Westminster Dog Show.

Katie [00:07:21]:
Yeah. But the Derby has lived on for 150 years, so not many sporting events can say that.

Kathie [00:07:28]:
That's amazing. When did you first fall in love with horses?

Katie [00:07:31]:
Oh, gosh, I was about 18 months old. So my family has always owned an amount of property. I wouldn't call it a farm. We're not farmers, we're hobbyists.  And our family has always owned horses for a long time. And when I say horses, they're hobby horses. At 18 months old, I got on my first pony, which for anybody that knows anything about horses, that is a smaller version of a horse. And was on a lead line with my grandfather, and from that moment on, you couldn't get me off of a horse. I started riding competitively. American Saddlebreds. I believe I was three and a half, four years old. So I looked like a tiny little flea on the top of a giant horse.

Katie [00:08:19]:
And I rode competitively for about 10 years and then decided, you know, friends and boys, all of those things, were more exciting. So I got out. But now, of course, I work on the ancillary side of the horse industry. And it's something that I feel very impassioned about in Kentucky, and Kentucky should be very proud of our horse population. And what a wonderful brand to be known for as the commonwealth.

Kathie [00:08:48]:
I know. So your collateral and all of your materials, written material, website, brochures, all that kind of stuff, I'm assuming translated into a bunch of different languages?

Katie [00:08:58]:
So we currently have just a couple of languages. Our most prominent visitors are typically from Canada, Mexico, so Spanish and French. We do see a good amount of visitation from the UK. Of course they speak English, so that's easy. And Germany and France are kind of the next rung down. So we have translation services available not only in written form, but we provide a translator to you with 24 hours’ notice. And we're really proud at the museum, we've tried to make sure that we're accessible to all.

Katie [00:09:35]:
And we've done a great deal of work with a committee of our team working to ensure that those can come and enjoy. Whether you need a quiet space to take a break, we do have a quiet space available for our friends that need a little extra time. We have a low vision map available, so everything's just enlarged. And then we have braille  maps available for our visitors as well. And I'm really proud of a project that I got to work on with our team back a couple years ago, I guess for Derby 150. Out most loved exhibit is called Riders Up. What that means is the opportunity to experience what a jockey experiences on top of a horse.

Katie [00:10:25]:
And so it's highly interactive. You hop up on the platform, you're on this giant horse, you have buttons to push to make you go faster or slower, and you can kind of lean back and forth, right or left. But one of the cool things that we did is our fifth horse is ADA accessible, so you can take your wheelchair or your stroller up. And that is one of the opportunities for all of our guests to get to enjoy. And we're really proud of that project.

Kathie [00:10:54]:
That's very cool. So it's not just the, what do you call that when you put the head thing, the headphones on? VR. Virtual reality.

Katie [00:11:02]:
No, it's not VR. You actually have an individual screen in front of you. And we've made it kind of look like what you would see at the racetrack. You experience your horse, but you can look up and, you know, the parents and the friends can all look from behind and there's a giant screen just like there is in the infield. And so all of the fans get to participate as well as the jockeys.

Kathie [00:11:26]:
Wow. Where do you park Derby weekend?!?

Katie [00:11:29]:
Oh, Derby weekend.

Kathie [00:11:33]:
They let you down from a drone or something?

Katie [00:11:36]:
You know, I will say that Churchill has done a great job in the last few years of trying to ensure that guests can get to the facility easily. And the shuttle system is something that staff even utilizes to get on site, you know, if you're one of the lucky few that have a parking pass. But for the rest of us, we, we park off site at the Expo Center.

Kathie [00:11:58]:
What kind of communicator are you? What's your preference? Email? Phone? Text? Smoke signals?

Katie [00:12:05]:
Well, I still am a lover of like writing things down. I'm a to-do list maker. So for me, writing is not only doing our board reports or trying to create vision documents or framework or whatever, but that has to get out. I have to disseminate that pretty quickly.  And I need to make sure that what I'm writing is very clear to our team, if they don't understand the vision document, there is no vision. So I've kind of transitioned to a digital written word, if that makes sense. There's this wonderful device out there and I feel like I should get some kind of royalty from it because I feel like I've sold so many of them. It's called a Remarkable.

Kathie [00:12:53]:
I was going to say, is it the Remarkable?

Katie [00:12:55]:
Yes. Yes. So I write everything down. I feel like I don't know where the science is in this. Someone once quoted it, I wish I could find it. I feel like there's some science behind writing something down, but it imprints in the brain.

Kathie [00:13:08]:
Yes, and the hand-eye coordination and the brain and all that.

Katie [00:13:12]:
So you're familiar. And I feel like when I write that down then it's more than likely going to happen. But what that means when I write something down, you know, historically speaking you'd have to make a copy of it. You have to go back and type everything up. With the Remarkable, you can just hit the translate-to-text button. I can send that document out to my team and then like immediately we're all on the same page. So as far as communication goes, I do everything written down, then two different calendars to make sure that I'm where I'm supposed to be, and then just trying to communicate effectively.

Katie [00:13:51]:
You know, communication creates clarity. And one of the biggest things about making sure that the team hits their KPIs, that they're generating revenue, that they're ideating and we're visioning together is, it's coming together. Writing to me is vision. I'm able to get all of the ideas out. You're able to get everyone on the same page and collaborate and then turn that around into a real working system. So all of the above, to answer your question.

Kathie [00:14:23]:
It's so complicated these days. It's crazy.

Katie [00:14:27]:
Well, and also trying to learn a million different systems because tomorrow it might be something different with technology.

Kathie [00:14:33]:
Oh, all the software that just completely changes and it's crazy. And then work from home, work in the office, back and forth. Oh, I left it here, I left it there. But the cloud (yay).

Katie [00:14:43]:
Exactly. That's the beauty of the cell phone, at least most of these apps. And that's what I love about Remarkable. You can find your notes on the website, you can find it on your app, or you can find it in your device. It's pretty cool.

Kathie [00:14:58]:
What did reading and writing look like when you were a little tyke?

Katie [00:15:02]:
Oh, gosh. I'll tell you, I haven't always been a lover of reading. Growing up, I don't know how many kids like in school, of course, there's not a freedom of choice. You don't get to read what you want to read. You have to read the content to learn. So I will say that I didn't fall in love with reading until in my 20s, and I've done the Gallup Strengths Finder. I don't know if you're familiar with, like, these personality tests. I feel like I've done all the personality tests, but that particular one, my number one strength is input. And what that means is I need to input as much data into my brain and information as possible. I constantly strive for that. So what better way to do that than to read?

Kathie [00:15:47]:
That's right.

Katie [00:15:49]:
So now I read literally everything I can get my hands on. And for writing… Writing was what I had to do in school. Again, I kind of had that same thought process throughout, even somewhat in college. Just school essays, all the journaling, ideation for the project, that kind of stuff. But now writing for me is strategy. It's how I get the framework out to the team. It's how I create clarity and alignment. And, you know, I think the thread in this is, I've always used words to organize ideas. As a kid, it was those stories and the journaling and so on. But now as an adult, it's strategy.

Kathie [00:16:38]:
That's amazing. And the big whiteboard. The murder board on the TV shows and they put up all the Post-its and do all the writing.

Katie [00:16:47]:
That's me. I'm a visual writer. I need to have it thrown all at the wall and I'm sure my team hates that because I do have a whiteboard behind my lovely office. There's a giant whiteboard and it's filled with stuff.

Kathie [00:17:01]:
And then they make a paint that you can do an entire wall.

Katie [00:17:05]:
This is like a sticky. It's actually pretty cool. So if it doesn't need to be on there anymore, I haven't drilled holes in the wall, it just sits sticks up there. It's pretty neat.

Kathie [00:17:12]:
Oh, that's interesting. What kind of feedback do you get from visitors to the museum? Like, are there reviews that are written online? Do you ever get personal emails or anything?

Katie [00:17:24]:
You know, I have to say, as far as feedback goes for the museum, one of the coolest things is, we interact with all ages and all demographics and we get the privilege of receiving feedback in a variety of ways. We have Google reviews, Yelp reviews, the traditional TripAdvisor things that of course help other guests make decisions on if they want to come visit us. We also have the opportunity to receive emails and contact forms on our website. But I think the most precious thing that we receive, pretty regularly actually, is a handwritten note. And I'm a firm lover and believer of the handwritten, the power of the handwritten note. I think that everyone should take five minutes, post any kind of interaction that was meaningful to you in your life and document that and let the person that you interacted with know how much that meant to you. And so frequently that's the writing that we get from our guests  seeing Churchill Downs or coming to the Kentucky Derby Museum. For many people, the Kentucky Derby is a bucket list item.

Katie [00:18:37]:
Coming to the museum might very well be the only way that they experience that bucket list adventure. So trying to make sure that they are able to hop on the tour, that means the most to them because they're going to get to see a part of the grounds that is hallowed earth for them, or getting to see that artifact that. Actually we just had a visitor last week. He brought in a torch that matches exactly the Olympic torch that we have in the museum. And those are the kind of things that we get a lot of opportunities to kind of cherish and share that story with our workers, with our team that they know how an interaction may have impacted them. That's the kind of stuff that we love to read about and receive. And, of course, we wouldn't be here as a museum without writing.

Katie [00:19:35]:
So so many of our exhibits, I mean, the text that you read, the way that history comes to life, a good portion of that is through placards that you are able to read the stories and so on. And so, writing for a museum and a cultural institution not only helps train our team members, but it also brings the stories to life.

Kathie [00:19:56]:
What do you. This is one of my favorite questions. When you meet somebody new and they ask, what do you do? What's your answer?

Katie [00:20:02]:
Usually I say, I am a memory maker.

Kathie [00:20:06]:
Oh, my goodness.

Katie [00:20:07]:
And they look at you, like, really funky. I think they don't even know how to process that. When I say I'm a memory maker, I get to help lead teams that focus on every touch point of the customer journey for a bucket list experience. And when we do that really well, which nine times out of 10 we do, they go home with a memory that lasts a lifetime. So I'm a memory maker.

Kathie [00:20:36]:
Love it. What's on your bucket list?

Katie [00:20:38]:
You know, your bucket list changes as you get older. Obviously, you check things off and that evolves. But I really want to go back to Europe, specifically Italy. So I know everybody's like, oh I want to go to Italy, but it means something to me. My husband is Italian, and his grandmother literally came from Italy. And so we have so much of this family history that I'd love to see in person. Definitely Hawaii is still on my bucket list. Have not been there.

Katie [00:21:09]:
And I want to go on an African safari. I am not a natural girl. I do not camp. You know, Holiday Inn is camping for me, so this a huge stretch, but I would love to do that. I think seeing the majesty of these animals…  you know, I get to work with majestic animals all the time. They, of course, are not prey. Like we would be over there. So that would be, I think, one of my top items.

Kathie [00:21:35]:
Katie, thank you for being on the podcast. This was so much fun.

Katie [00:21:38]:
Kathie, it's so good to see you again. And, you know, you always make conversation so easy. And thank you for letting me share a little bit about the Kentucky Derby Museum and my life in tourism. It's been fun. 

OUTRO [00:21:51]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Writers Rotation. Like and subscribe for more. And remember, writing is a marketable skill. Smiling is a remarkable skill.