Deacon Spotlight: Kate T. Parker
9/4/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
The Deacon Spotlight is a biweekly feature which will catch up with Deacon alumni who've moved into their professional careers.
By Wake Forest Athletic Communications (@DemonDeacons)
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Kate T. Parker has one message for girls across the country: figure out what your passion is and dive into that 100 percent.
Parker, formerly Kate Crowley, grew up playing soccer. The sport is where she found who she was. It taught her how to work hard, how to focus and how to determine her own self-worth.
So, when it came time to play collegiately, Parker chose Wake Forest.
"I wanted to use soccer to help me get the best education that I could," said Parker. "Honestly, that was not my original intention, it was my parents' intention, but looking back I'm so glad they kept pushing me to look at Wake Forest."
Parker enrolled and became a member of the inaugural Wake Forest varsity soccer team in 1994.
"My freshman year was the first year of Wake Forest varsity soccer. There were 18 girls that all loved soccer as much as I did. They were all very focused, very competitive and it was the first time in my life I felt like I was home," said Parker.
Parker graduated in 1998 with a degree in communications and a goal to work in television. She moved to Atlanta, Georgia where she found a job at CNN as a video editor. From there, she produced commercials at an ad agency until she had her first daughter. That's when Parker found a new passion.
"Like every parent, I took thousands and thousands of pictures of my kid," said Parker with a laugh. "After working at an ad agency with art directors and editors, my taste level was really high but my skill level was not. So, I learned how to shoot and edit photos on YouTube."
Parker, who describes herself as goal driven due to her years in athletics, told herself that to get better at photography she had to shoot every day. After shooting countless family photos, weddings and commercial portraits, Parker was invited to show her work at a gallery.
"The gallery wanted me to find 20 of my best images that told a story," said Parker. "Looking through the thousands of images I had taken, the twenty best photos were the ones of my girls and their friends. The strongest ones were the ones where the girls were being their messy, silly, sassy selves."
However, not a single photo sold at the gallery show. Out of frustration, Parker packaged her photos and sent them to a few blogs that she followed.
But in 2015, Parker's hobby turned into something more. Her "Strong is the New Pretty" photo series went viral. Her photos were seen on CNN, the Today Show, social media platforms and more. Publishers began contacting her and by March of 2017, "Strong is the New Pretty" was published as a book.
"I was really excited to have the opportunity to turn the series into a book," said Parker. "The original set of images really only showed girls that were athletic. It was just one kind of strength. I wanted the opportunity to show girls that show strength in a different way."
To find that strength, Parker began traveling the country, shooting over 200 girls in various ages, activities and locations, including Wake Forest's campus.
She attributes her passion for promoting female self-confidence and self-worth through her photos to her playing days.
"I had something special as I was growing up that kept me out of that self-doubt phase. I got my self-worth from being involved in soccer and being around the other girls," said Parker. "My goal with this project was to encourage these girls to believe in themselves and to figure out what makes them happy and feel alive."
Even today, Parker loves the direction that women's soccer is going and the strength it gives young girls.
"I took my daughters to the Wake Forest vs. Georgia game in Athens. At the end of the game, there was a line out of the stadium of these little girls that wanted the players' autographs. It's awesome for these young girls to have positive role models in college athletics."
Years after her playing days are over, Parker still reflects fondly about her time at Wake Forest.
"I think Wake Forest does a great job of focusing on the who the player is as a person and their development into a good adult and citizen off the field," said Parker. "It was just an amazing experience and I am so thankful to have been a part of a team, especially a team at Wake Forest. I'm always so proud to say that I went to Wake Forest."
