Cat Agostinho on turning a bad situation into a positive

During a recent dawn event, Cat Agostinho, Founder of Agostinho Consulting Ltd. and Co-founder dawn, spoke about how to turn a bad situation into a positive.

After a long and successful media agency career, I started at a company where from word go, it became abundantly clear that something was not right. Cracks quickly started to show, and the atmosphere was one of a school playground which started to wear me down. It got considerably worse and I didn’t want to go to the office, I became insular and I wasn’t producing good work. I realized I had to either put up and shut up or leave.

On a personal level, it really knocked my confidence and it was only years later that I recently opened up about how much it had affected me. I think I was too embarrassed to admit how much the behavior of others had impacted my performance at work and in my personal life.

While I’d never want to experience that again, it did give me the push I needed to set up my consultancy earlier than planned and I have 3.5 amazing years under my belt now!

I’ve recently started to talk about my experience more openly (while never mentioning the company or the people) which has helped me to rebuild my confidence, and I’m starting to work with charities to try and help others prevent the same situation happening to them.

Cat has 16 years’ international experience in Digital media & marketing. Cat started her career at MGOMD, before moving to Australia to work at two digital agencies. Returning to the UK in 2004, Cat joined Starcom where she was selected as a Marketing Week Rising Star and as one of Mediaweek’s 30 under 30. In 2010, Cat moved to OMD to become the Digital Planning Director and in 2013, Cat became OMD’s Head of Digital Experience.

In 2016, Cat decided to set up her own business and launched Agostinho Consulting Ltd. Cat now works on a consultative basis with Brands, Agencies, Media Owners & Publishers. In 2018, Cat was selected as a finalist for Campaign and IPA’s Women of Tomorrow awards.

Cat is a co-founder of dawn and leads the Events team within the committee. She is hugely passionate about dawn and its development and is excited about the future for the network.

dawn is a community founded in 2009 which appeared to address the gap in the market for a free and accessible networking group, just for women who work in the digital industry. It is dedicated to inspiring and developing women across the digital industry to ensure they fulfil their potential as people and professionals. The organization is completely free and doesn’t receive any funding.