Where Are They Now: Katherine Allen
The Where Are They Now series revisits students whose careers were shaped by the generosity of What Starts Here campaign and Texas Exes donors.
In 2018, then-student Katherine Allen, B.A. Plan II ’19, was featured in a What Starts Here campaign video. She was brimming with the kind of excitement that comes from knowing the path ahead is wide open. As a Forty Acres Scholar, she found the support she needed to dream big and the confidence to pursue it. She had a knack for spotting unmet needs and coming up with creative solutions, including co-founding Genesis, a pre-seed capital fund for UT student entrepreneurs.
The inspiration for her next venture came from an unexpected place: sorority recruitment. Frustrated by a process she found paper-heavy and prone to letting good candidates slip through the cracks, Katherine decided to find a solution. That idea evolved into Flo Recruit, which she co-founded with Atreya Misra, B.S. Electrical Engineering ’18, as a hiring platform that gives law firms smarter tools to recruit talent. As students, the pair won first place and $20,000 at DisrupTexas, a “Shark Tank”-style pitch competition hosted by the McCombs School of Business’s Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship, the largest cash-prize pitch contest for undergraduate students in Texas.
Katherine was also a mechanical engineering major in the Cockrell School of Engineering and had completed every requirement for that degree but one course when she chose to join Y Combinator, one of the country’s top startup accelerators, with Flo Recruit rather than stay to finish it.
That same year, the Austin Business Journal named her to its Inno Under 25 list, which highlights Austin’s top young innovators. Katherine now serves as CEO of Flo Recruit, which has since raised millions in venture capital and partnered with many of the nation’s top law firms and law schools. She’s stayed connected to UT along the way, returning to campus as a mentor for McCombs’ Executive Mentorship Dinner, where students pair with accomplished alumni for career guidance.
“We started Flo Recruit while we were students at UT, and it gave us the chance to take a risk early. The education and support I received as a Forty Acres Scholar gave me the confidence to go for it, and that experience has shaped how I approach building and leading today.”
Katherine received a Texas Exes Dallas Chapter Forty Acres Scholarship, supporting UT’s premier full-ride, merit-based scholars. The Forty Acres Scholars Program pairs that support with academic, leadership, professional and cultural opportunities within a close-knit cohort, the same kind of support Katherine credits with shaping how she builds and leads today.
Find out how you can open doors to a world-class education for Longhorns like Katherine.
