Christie Kahil

Part 3 of 3: We’re introducing the entire team over at Queen City Forward. After meeting Christie meet Charles Thomas and Tori Karlek. The full team is here.

Hi! Meet Christie. Since day one I’ve been a fan. Her desire to always be learning and then taking that knowledge and educating as many as possible is so awesome. She’s always been responsive and available whenever I’ve had questions or issues whether it’s answering it herself or pointing me in the direction of the right person to talk to. That’s awesome. People like her are an invaluable resource. More importantly i’ve made an invaluable friendship through it all. She’s awesome.

Also, Her answer to question six has me concerned. This is some mad science gone wrong that creates a creature which puts humans a spot down on the food chain. Yikes… pretty scary. She wants to pet it’s mane. Bad plan.

What are you most passionate about?

That’s a hard question because i’m passionate about a lot of things. They all connect in my head but maybe not on paper. I’ve always been really passionate about the arts. That’s a life long passion. I’m also very passionate about learning. That’s my other life long passion. That’s played out in my personal and professional life. I’ve always been trying to both help people express their creative spirit as well as learn to their capacity. I love teaching people. I love watching people learn. I love that light bulb that lights up when people learn things. That’s just amazing to me. Part of that creative energy goes into creating new ideas and how new ideas can really impact and change our world in profound ways. Sometimes in ways that we aren’t even aware of right away. The ideas that people can get from such simple things… art, life, a process behind a craft that can then have incredible, profound impact on the way we live is really amazing to me.

What absolutely frustrates you?

I guess what frustrates me the most is when people have the opportunity to do something positive. When they have the opportunity to move forward. When they have the opportunity to make things better around them and they don’t. Whether it be being polite or just listening to someone or whether it’s just failing to educate themselves before making a decision that impacts others or thinking through what they’re or doing or how they might impact others around them. Those careless decisions that people make. That’s what really makes me angry. You could do something that could make people happy or make the world a better place but instead you chose to be negative or angry or mean.

What is your greatest indulgence?

It always feels like an indulgence and I know it’s not but it’s feeding that creative spirit. Whenever I take the time to do something artistic or something creative I always feel like i’m indulging myself and I know that it’s really not. For me that’s really fundamental but I still have to say that it feels like an indulgence sitting down for a couple hours and being creative. Other than that… wine.

What’s your least favorite trait about yourself?

I can not remember names to save my life and it is the most frustrating thing to me. I will meet someone and by the time they have finished their introduction to me I will have forgotten their name. Then I spend the rest of the conversation trying to get them to repeat it because I can’t remember it and feel really bad. That is horribly frustrating especially when later on when I want to tell someone about an awesome person I met but I can’t remember their name. I’m not sure what’s wrong with my brain.

If you had visitors in town and had two hours to take them anywhere in Charlotte where would that be?

I would have to say that it would be one of a couple cool walkable places here in Charlotte. Like NODA or South End because I believe they really embody what we want to be as a city. So if I only had two hours I would take someone there, eat, get coffee and walk down the street. Have conversations. Really just ensure they get the experience. It’s the best way to see the city and it’s people.

Joanne asked if you could combine two animals what would they be and why?

I’m a huge Godzilla fan so if you could take a really cool lizard but make him fuzzy. Combine a Lion and an Komodo dragon it would be awesome. Really scary… but awesome. I’d want to pet it’s mane.

You can find Christie on Twitter @cartistk.