Kathy Palokoff is the CEO and Founder of CUSTOMERicity™, a women-owned company that helps businesses and non-profits engage employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders. By focusing on the power of customers, CUSTOMERicity develops and executes marketing, communications and community building strategies that increase revenue, build brands, retain employees and find investors for organizations that are making a difference in the world.

Prior to forming the company in 2001, Kathy spent her career assisting businesses) as a marketing executive, public relations director and strategic planner.  She worked for Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the world’s leading creative organizations, for more than a dozen years as an account planner and vice president of public relations, and also served as a vice president of client relations and vice president of brand development for three Internet companies. She has taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Nazareth College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and continues to be active as a mentor to business owners. She also invests in businesses that do good including Joe Squared, award-winning restaurants in Baltimore that are helping change the urban landscape.

Kathy is a two-time Athena Award finalist. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from West Virginia University; a Master in Public Administration from the State University of New York at Brockport; and has completed all doctoral coursework in Technical Communications and Rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation's oldest technological university. She and her husband live in Rochester, New York, and have five sons and a daughter.