{"id":14388,"date":"2019-01-04T11:12:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T11:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/?p=14388"},"modified":"2023-07-06T16:55:26","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T16:55:26","slug":"alumni-profile-kat-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/news\/2019\/01\/04\/alumni-profile-kat-sweet","title":{"rendered":"Changing the world through bikes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/181109c-005.jpg\" alt=\"Kat Sweet\" class=\"wp-image-25831\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Kat Sweet \/ Marc Studer photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>By Douglas Esser<br>\nKat Sweet, an athlete who competed in skiing and downhill mountain bike racing, attended college off and on when she wasn\u2019t shredding the slopes. By the time she reached the University of Washington Bothell, it was her seventh college. All she wanted was to finish her degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sweet entered the School of Interdisciplinary Arts &amp; Sciences with 20 years of experience as a mountain bike competitor and coach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEverything I studied turned into being about the bike. I didn\u2019t even mean to do it. It just happened,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s what I value in life, but for me the bike isn\u2019t just about having fun, it\u2019s about making change in the world. So it was cool to see it come together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sweet received her degree in Society, Ethics and Human Behavior in 2011 and then started her own mountain bike coaching business \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/sweetlines.com\/\">Sweetlines<\/a> \u2014 with an interactive, interdisciplinary approach she\u2019s still using.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m trying to change the world through bikes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Biking as education<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Education easily intersected with life for Sweet. In a project-development class, she designed a Mary Jane style bike shoe for clipless pedals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For an American culture class that explored the influence of rapper Tupac Shakur, Sweet\u2019s group created a scraper bike \u2014 an art bike, painted in his favorite colors black and gold, showing a gun shooting out lyrics. That class also inspired a scraper bike program Sweet ran with the Cascade Bicycle Club for kids living in low-income housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In an entrepreneurship class, Sweet learned how to do research, think about an elevator pitch, and start and grow a sustainable business. She put the lessons to work at Sweetlines. Its mission is to empower young people (especially girls), build confidence and create community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Biking as a profession<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Sweetlines summer camps train about 250 kids a year. Classes are held at Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park, a King County park at Issaquah. Hiring eight to 10 coaches for the season, Sweet tells them to use an interactive style of teaching that she learned from UW Bothell. Instead of saying, \u201cHere\u2019s how you do it,\u201d they say, \u201cWatch me and tell me what you see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Using the book \u201cPackaging Girlhood,\u201d Sweet asks girls at camp to examine gender roles and how they are marketed. \u201cThat was all inspired by a class at UW Bothell,\u201d Sweet said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sweetlines also hosts events, such as the Sugar Showdown friendly competition and Sweetlines Junior Racing for girls aged 8 to 16 who compete in downhill racing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m trying to provide opportunities for women to showcase and elevate their riding,\u201d Sweet said. \u201cIt\u2019s really inspiring for people to see these young girls coming up who don\u2019t have the same barriers I had: \u2018You\u2019re a girl; you can\u2019t do that. You\u2019re not as strong as a boy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These girls aren\u2019t getting those messages, Sweet said. \u201cThey\u2019re saying, \u2018We can do this, and we\u2019re going to do it our own way.\u2019 It\u2019s really fun to watch them progress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Biking as inspiration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Sweetlines produces its own videos and marketing through social media. \u201cWe\u2019re building our own global community of people who see what we do and are inspired by what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still biking herself, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/KatSweetAthlete\/\">Sweet<\/a> also is a brand ambassador for sponsors. She recently served as a guide for a group of six who traveled with their bikes to Peru. Then, she went on to Colombia to scout trails for a future tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sweet appreciates UW Bothell for a style of teaching and learning that \u201creally catered to people like me who don\u2019t do well in lectures, who are not memorization-based learners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She received not only a degree but an approach that infuses Sweetlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTo have a school where everything is interactive, where you had an interdisciplinary look at every topic, has absolutely helped my business be something greater than just about bikes,\u201d Sweet said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s about how we can change the world through bikes, by looking at things differently, making things interactive, getting feedback from coaches,\u201d she said. \u2018We\u2019re constantly growing and changing because of that. I learned so much of that at UW Bothell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/kat-riding.jpg\" alt=\"Kat Sweet on bike\" class=\"wp-image-25832\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Kat Sweet riding \/ courtesy photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A downhill mountain bike racer, Kat Sweet received a degree in Society, Ethics and Human Behavior and then started a mountain bike coaching business with an interactive, interdisciplinary approach she took from UW Bothell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_is_archived":false,"_archived_contact_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[209,202,200],"tags":[260],"school":[],"class_list":["post-14388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-campus-news","category-profiles","tag-women"],"acf":{"related_links":{"toggle_visibility":false,"link_1":null,"link_2":null,"link_3":null,"link_4":null,"link_5":null},"highlight_box":{"toggle_visibility":false,"title":"","content":"","button":null,"button_style":"angled-purple-button","button_screen_reader_text":""},"contact_type_1":{"toggle_visibility":true,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"contact_type_2":{"toggle_visibility":false,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"social_media":{"toggle_visibility":false,"facebook_url":"","instagram_url":"","linkedin_url":"","twitter_url":"","youtube_url":""},"blog_archive_sidebar_visibility":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - 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