Kay Neal

About Kay Neal

If you know three things about me, you can judge whether you and your listeners would be interested in knowing anything else:
1. I used to suffer from something I call the Posterboard Syndrome. Here's where that came from: In third grade, we were given a choice of projects: make a poster, write a composition, or do some kind of hands-on thing. Obviously the poster would have been the easiest thing, but I had no idea how to get the materials for that. I didn't even know the word posterboard. It never occurred to me that I could ask someone. I wrote the composition, of course, because I had paper and pencil and words.
I have mostly broken free of the Posterboard Syndrome, in which the sufferer cannot imagine the possibility of getting from Point A to Point B, but I occasionally have to rouse myself out of paralysis.
2. Because my eighth-grade English teacher pressured me, I took Latin in high school. I was terrified starting off, but I worked hard and I came to love it. I was really good at it!...for a while. Things got more complicated, and I was less good, and finally I was overwhelmed. After three years I staggered to the exit. However, I always appreciated the things about language, including English, that Latin had taught me, and I always had in mind to come back and get on top of it. Decades passed, and I finally did manage to come back to Latin. I ended up going back to university for a second bachelor's degree--this one in classics--and a second master's degree--this one in Latin.
I did this not to indulge a whim, but because I had taken on a mission to get Latin out into the world. At first I was interested only in providing children, especially children growing up in difficult circumstances, with the academic tools they needed to get ahead in life. The mission evolved to include others. The mission also evolved to include finding better and easier ways for people to learn Latin, without giving up any of the rigor required for proficiency.
3. I came to realize that my mission would require me to be a marketer. I had to face the Posterboard Syndrome head-on and figure out what I would have to do to reach the people that I wanted to help and that I knew I could help. At this point, I've invested over $45,000 in marketing training, a king's ransom to me, which I mention only to get the point across that I have thrown myself into my project with everything I've got.