Kate is a panelist at tonight’s Cocktails & Conversations "The Changing Environment of Online Content: Engage, Track and Measure" and the director of audience analytics and insights for the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. At the network, she oversees a team of five and is responsible for all aspects of customer and product analytics for Dow Jones & Company’s consumer digital products, including WSJ.com, MarketWatch.com, Barrons.com, AllThingsD.com and SmartMoney.com.

In transportation “I started in public relations and event planning in the container shipping industry, then moved on to marketing at NJ Transit, where I managed TV, outdoor, print and radio advertising for the railroad and bus services. Marketing software and pre-Web digital products for Dow Jones followed. I used to say I was still in the transportation industry, as I moved from shipping goods across the water, to people on trains, to ideas on what used to be called the information superhighway.”

History helps “I majored in history at Rutgers and like to think I’m a historian for our digital products. I’m not just collecting and saving the data, but finding meaning in the numbers. Instead of researching birth and death rates or bushels of wheat harvested in 14th-century Europe, I mine digital visits, articles read, comments made and search statements to draw a profile of our customers. My frustration? I cannot get all the data I want.”

Cookies “[The digital ones, are] the bane of my life, as they keep multiplying. But I enjoy eating cookies. When I bake them at home — usually chocolate chip — there’s a battle between the soft-cookie lovers and the crispy lovers. I dunk mine, so I like crispy: if it bends, it’s half-baked.”

Recharging “My boys are in college now, so I actually have downtime. Until recently, it was swimming, soccer, baseball or volleyball games or committee meetings to attend almost daily. Now my husband and I go to concerts and sporting events and enjoy entertaining. I’m also in a gourmet club, where I have to create meals of at least five courses for friends. I like to be creative with the dinner themes. A plate of Starry Night, anyone?"

If not world peace, then what? “A Mustang convertible: It was my first car, and I want one again.”

—As told to Michelle Lodge