Member since October 2026
Alicia Watkins is a speaker, researcher, and author whose work explores pattern recognition, human behavior, systems thinking, and the connections between seemingly unrelated fields.
With more than 11 years of experience across technology, procurement, business operations, cybersecurity consulting, and creative production, Alicia brings a cross-disciplinary perspective to understanding how people, processes, and organizations work.
As Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at KSec, a cybersecurity consulting firm, she works across business operations, vendor relationships, procurement, financial processes, client coordination, and organizational systems. Through her work with KSec, she has supported organizations including NYU, City Tech, Apple Bank, Chase, Dashlane, Atypical, and Bloomberg.
Her professional experience also includes LRN, where she began as an IT intern and took on significant responsibility for running the IT department, and Electric, where she worked as a Procurement Analyst. At Electric, she identified more than 100 previously delivered orders that had not been recorded as received, helping the finance team recover more than $40,000 in previously unbilled orders. She also worked with technology suppliers to negotiate pricing, secure discounts, and coordinate expedited deliveries.
Her journey has included exploring opportunities in criminal justice, with an interest in becoming a detective and pursuing paths such as the FBI or CIA. She has also worked in modeling, acting, commercial productions, and user-generated content (UGC), including creative projects through Upwork. After leaving Electric, she pursued creative opportunities and developed a TikTok audience of more than 70,000 followers and 1.2 million likes.
Alicia holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from Purdue Global University, with an emphasis in Crime Scene Investigation. Her academic background, professional experiences, and curiosity about the world have shaped her interest in understanding what happens beneath the surface.
Across these different environments, she began recognizing a common thread: an interest in understanding how things work, questioning assumptions, and connecting ideas across disciplines.
Through her developing Pattern Shift™ framework and The Pattern Room, Alicia explores how recurring patterns emerge, why familiar problems persist, and how people and organizations can recognize when a situation calls for a different response.
She brings together ideas from psychology, history, technology, design, culture, and human behavior to help audiences make connections, think critically, and look at familiar challenges from new perspectives.
Alicia is also an author and is currently working on her second book.
I'm passionate about learning, discovering connections, and sharing what I uncover with others.
I enjoy exploring unfamiliar subjects, understanding how different fields operate, and recognizing how ideas from one area can help us make sense of another. I'm especially interested in the patterns that influence human behavior, workplace dynamics, and the systems we rely on every day.
I believe there is value in looking beyond the obvious explanation. Sometimes the detail we've overlooked, the assumption we've accepted, or the connection we've never considered can change how we understand a problem.
Through my work and speaking, I want to make these ideas accessible and useful. I enjoy helping people ask better questions, think more critically, and recognize connections they may not have noticed before.
My goal as a speaker is to share that way of thinking with audiences and give them new perspectives they can take back into their work and everyday lives.
Finding the Missing Link Between Procurement and Finance
Sometimes a meaningful discovery starts with something that doesn't look right.
While working as a Procurement Analyst at Electric, I was reviewing outstanding orders after completing several purchasing cycles. I noticed that orders from previous months had been delivered to customers but had never been marked as received in the system.
This created a gap between procurement and finance. Although customers had received their orders, the finance team had no record confirming delivery, which meant the company could not invoice them.
I went back through more than 100 orders, verified the deliveries, and updated the records so finance could reconcile the information and bill the customers.
The finance team later confirmed that more than $40,000 in previously unbilled orders could be invoiced.
It was a practical example of how one overlooked step can affect multiple departments and an organization's ability to collect revenue.
It also reinforced something I have carried across my career: sometimes the problem isn't where everyone is looking. You have to examine how the pieces connect to understand what's actually happening.
This is the kind of thinking I explore through Pattern Shift™: understanding what is happening before deciding what to do next.
My curiosity began when I was a little girl. As I got older, that curiosity took me in many different directions.
I explored different jobs, industries, and interests while trying to figure out my purpose and where I fit. My experiences included criminal justice, technology, procurement, business operations, creative production, modeling, acting, and design. At times, it felt like I was moving from one unrelated path to another.
Eventually, I started to recognize a common thread. Even when the work changed, I was drawn to understanding how things worked, learning new subjects, asking questions, and making connections between things that didn't initially seem related.
The fields were different. The questions weren't.
What once felt like a search for the right career began to look like a broader journey of discovering how I naturally think and what I wanted to contribute.
Today, The Pattern Room and Pattern Shift™ bring those interests together. They give me a way to explore the connections between human behavior, systems, and the experiences that shape how we understand the world.
We often approach problems as isolated events. We respond to what is happening in front of us without considering the history, assumptions, relationships, or recurring behaviors that may be contributing to it. But what changes when we stop looking at individual events and start examining the connections between them?
Drawing on her cross-disciplinary experiences in technology, business operations, creative work, and human behavior, Alicia explores how pattern recognition can change the way we interpret situations, approach problems, and make decisions.
Audiences are encouraged to look beyond the immediate explanation, question what they may be overlooking, and recognize how a different perspective can reveal possibilities that weren't visible before.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize the difference between an isolated event and a recurring pattern.
Ask better questions before accepting an explanation.
Connect information across different experiences and disciplines.
Consider how a change in perspective can lead to a different response.
Target audience: Corporate audiences, business professionals, entrepreneurs, leadership groups, professional associations, general conferences
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
Not every recurring problem requires the same response. Sometimes we're dealing with a pattern that continues to repeat. Other times, we're experiencing a transition that requires us to adapt to changing circumstances.
This talk introduces the central question behind Pattern Shift™: Are you in a loop, or are you in a transition?
Alicia explores how confusing the two can lead people and organizations to repeat ineffective responses, resist necessary changes, or try to solve the wrong problem.
Audiences learn to examine the circumstances around a situation, recognize what may be repeating, and consider whether the next step requires interrupting an established pattern or navigating a genuine transition.
Audience takeaways:
Understand the distinction between a recurring loop and a transition.
Recognize when familiar responses are no longer effective.
Examine the circumstances influencing a situation.
Make more intentional decisions about what needs to change.
Target audience: Professionals navigating change, leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, career development groups, women's professional networks
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
The first explanation isn't always the complete explanation.
When something goes wrong, it's easy to focus on the most visible issue and move immediately toward a solution. But overlooked details, untested assumptions, and contributing factors can change how we understand the problem.
Drawing on an investigative perspective influenced by her criminal justice education and professional experience, Alicia explores the importance of examining evidence, asking better questions, and considering what may be happening beneath the surface.
This talk encourages audiences to slow down their conclusions, investigate what they are seeing, and approach problem-solving with greater curiosity and critical thinking.
Audience takeaways:
Question assumptions before accepting conclusions.
Identify details that may have been overlooked.
Separate visible symptoms from possible contributing factors.
Approach problems with curiosity rather than immediate judgment.
Target audience: Business professionals, operations teams, project managers, leaders, entrepreneurs, technology professionals
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
A team can have capable people, established processes, and the right resources and still struggle to produce the results everyone expects.
Why?
Sometimes the problem isn't a person or department. It's the way the parts interact.
Using the analogy of a musical ensemble, Alicia explores how individually capable components can produce an ineffective outcome when their relationships, coordination, or overall arrangement aren't working together.
Drawing on her experience in technology, procurement, and business operations, she examines how to look beyond individual performance and consider the larger system shaping the outcome.
Audience takeaways:
Distinguish individual performance from overall system performance.
Recognize how relationships between departments and processes affect results.
Look beyond isolated failures to examine the larger arrangement.
Consider where coordination, communication, or structure may need to change.
Target audience: Corporate leadership, managers, operations teams, organizational development professionals, cross-functional teams
Level: Intermediate
What can we learn when we recognize similar patterns across seemingly unrelated fields?
Ideas don't always stay within the industries or disciplines where they originate. A concept from technology might help explain a human behavior. A historical example might reveal something about a modern organization. A principle from design might offer a new way to approach a business challenge.
Alicia explores the value of cross-disciplinary thinking and how examining different fields can expand the way we understand familiar problems.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize connections between seemingly unrelated subjects.
Apply ideas from one discipline to better understand another.
Expand problem-solving beyond familiar industry perspectives.
Develop curiosity as a tool for innovation and discovery.
Target audience: Entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders, creative professionals, technology professionals, interdisciplinary conferences
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
The Pattern Shift Bundle combines self-reflection tools with personal analysis to help you recognize and break repeating life loops. It pairs an instant-download guide with a custom-written breakdown tailored to your life.
Get StartedFinding the Missing Link Between Procurement and Finance
Sometimes a meaningful discovery starts with something that doesn't look right.
While working as a Procurement Analyst at Electric, I was reviewing outstanding orders after completing several purchasing cycles. I noticed that orders from previous months had been delivered to customers but had never been marked as received in the system.
This created a gap between procurement and finance. Although customers had received their orders, the finance team had no record confirming delivery, which meant the company could not invoice them.
I went back through more than 100 orders, verified the deliveries, and updated the records so finance could reconcile the information and bill the customers.
The finance team later confirmed that more than $40,000 in previously unbilled orders could be invoiced.
It was a practical example of how one overlooked step can affect multiple departments and an organization's ability to collect revenue.
It also reinforced something I have carried across my career: sometimes the problem isn't where everyone is looking. You have to examine how the pieces connect to understand what's actually happening.
This is the kind of thinking I explore through Pattern Shift™: understanding what is happening before deciding what to do next.
My curiosity began when I was a little girl. As I got older, that curiosity took me in many different directions.
I explored different jobs, industries, and interests while trying to figure out my purpose and where I fit. My experiences included criminal justice, technology, procurement, business operations, creative production, modeling, acting, and design. At times, it felt like I was moving from one unrelated path to another.
Eventually, I started to recognize a common thread. Even when the work changed, I was drawn to understanding how things worked, learning new subjects, asking questions, and making connections between things that didn't initially seem related.
The fields were different. The questions weren't.
What once felt like a search for the right career began to look like a broader journey of discovering how I naturally think and what I wanted to contribute.
Today, The Pattern Room and Pattern Shift™ bring those interests together. They give me a way to explore the connections between human behavior, systems, and the experiences that shape how we understand the world.
We often approach problems as isolated events. We respond to what is happening in front of us without considering the history, assumptions, relationships, or recurring behaviors that may be contributing to it. But what changes when we stop looking at individual events and start examining the connections between them?
Drawing on her cross-disciplinary experiences in technology, business operations, creative work, and human behavior, Alicia explores how pattern recognition can change the way we interpret situations, approach problems, and make decisions.
Audiences are encouraged to look beyond the immediate explanation, question what they may be overlooking, and recognize how a different perspective can reveal possibilities that weren't visible before.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize the difference between an isolated event and a recurring pattern.
Ask better questions before accepting an explanation.
Connect information across different experiences and disciplines.
Consider how a change in perspective can lead to a different response.
Target audience: Corporate audiences, business professionals, entrepreneurs, leadership groups, professional associations, general conferences
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
Not every recurring problem requires the same response. Sometimes we're dealing with a pattern that continues to repeat. Other times, we're experiencing a transition that requires us to adapt to changing circumstances.
This talk introduces the central question behind Pattern Shift™: Are you in a loop, or are you in a transition?
Alicia explores how confusing the two can lead people and organizations to repeat ineffective responses, resist necessary changes, or try to solve the wrong problem.
Audiences learn to examine the circumstances around a situation, recognize what may be repeating, and consider whether the next step requires interrupting an established pattern or navigating a genuine transition.
Audience takeaways:
Understand the distinction between a recurring loop and a transition.
Recognize when familiar responses are no longer effective.
Examine the circumstances influencing a situation.
Make more intentional decisions about what needs to change.
Target audience: Professionals navigating change, leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, career development groups, women's professional networks
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
The first explanation isn't always the complete explanation.
When something goes wrong, it's easy to focus on the most visible issue and move immediately toward a solution. But overlooked details, untested assumptions, and contributing factors can change how we understand the problem.
Drawing on an investigative perspective influenced by her criminal justice education and professional experience, Alicia explores the importance of examining evidence, asking better questions, and considering what may be happening beneath the surface.
This talk encourages audiences to slow down their conclusions, investigate what they are seeing, and approach problem-solving with greater curiosity and critical thinking.
Audience takeaways:
Question assumptions before accepting conclusions.
Identify details that may have been overlooked.
Separate visible symptoms from possible contributing factors.
Approach problems with curiosity rather than immediate judgment.
Target audience: Business professionals, operations teams, project managers, leaders, entrepreneurs, technology professionals
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
A team can have capable people, established processes, and the right resources and still struggle to produce the results everyone expects.
Why?
Sometimes the problem isn't a person or department. It's the way the parts interact.
Using the analogy of a musical ensemble, Alicia explores how individually capable components can produce an ineffective outcome when their relationships, coordination, or overall arrangement aren't working together.
Drawing on her experience in technology, procurement, and business operations, she examines how to look beyond individual performance and consider the larger system shaping the outcome.
Audience takeaways:
Distinguish individual performance from overall system performance.
Recognize how relationships between departments and processes affect results.
Look beyond isolated failures to examine the larger arrangement.
Consider where coordination, communication, or structure may need to change.
Target audience: Corporate leadership, managers, operations teams, organizational development professionals, cross-functional teams
Level: Intermediate
What can we learn when we recognize similar patterns across seemingly unrelated fields?
Ideas don't always stay within the industries or disciplines where they originate. A concept from technology might help explain a human behavior. A historical example might reveal something about a modern organization. A principle from design might offer a new way to approach a business challenge.
Alicia explores the value of cross-disciplinary thinking and how examining different fields can expand the way we understand familiar problems.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize connections between seemingly unrelated subjects.
Apply ideas from one discipline to better understand another.
Expand problem-solving beyond familiar industry perspectives.
Develop curiosity as a tool for innovation and discovery.
Target audience: Entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders, creative professionals, technology professionals, interdisciplinary conferences
Level: Beginner–Intermediate
