Kate Kolody designs the moment a customer decides.

A Buying Decision Architect based in Santa Barbara, California, she has spent nearly two decades studying why people buy — and why they walk away. She founded VESNA®, a Montecito agency that finds where premium fashion, wellness, and beauty brands lose their customers’ decisions and wins them back. She founded Elix Fióra, a global platform for emerging premium fashion houses, and Santa Barbara Guide, a city app for the place she calls home. She also created and hosts The White Room, a quiet, long-form interview series with people who make complex decisions for a living.

Before her own companies, Kate launched her first startup at 22 and spent more than eight years leading product design at IPBD Group, building SaaS platforms and digital tools for Xerox, Barilla, and Chrysler. She trained as an artist in Moscow, where her early work was exhibited, and holds a Master’s in Design & Fine Arts — a background that still shapes how she sees commerce: as a structure that can be designed.

140 Strategies That Drive Buying Decisions is the system behind all of it.