With this issue, Kate Peterson begins her new role as editor of Enterprise Minnesota magazine. After three abandoned “retirements,” I am finally leaving.
Kate brings to her new role decades of experience writing about business and policy as well as a lifelong familiarity with the rhythms of enterprise — how it’s built, sustained, improved, and passed along.
Kate is hardly new to these pages. Over the years, she’s become one of our most recognizable contributors, greatly admired for work that combines an overall understanding of business with how public policy decisions coming from St. Paul or Washington, D.C. can roil factory floors or shop offices across Minnesota.
“Kate’s work distinguishes itself because of the way she blends a deep understanding of business policy and how it affects individual manufacturers’ ability to do business,” says Lynn Shelton, the vice president of marketing and organizational development at Enterprise Minnesota. “It’s a gift.”
That gift was evident early.
My professional relationship with her goes back more than three decades, to the summer of 1990, when I was managing the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. Rudy Boschwitz. Kate, then a rising senior at the University of Notre Dame majoring in economics, joined the campaign as an intern at the recommendation of her father, a management professor at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.
I quickly recognized that Kate was no ordinary intern.
Within weeks, Kate was making a significant contribution to policy research and white papers, work usually reserved for seasoned staff, not college students (whose typical role at the time would be making Xerox copies of said work).
By summer’s end, I persuaded her to take a semester off from school to assume the full responsibility of becoming the campaign’s research director. Drawing on remarkable academic rigor and a natural grasp of how policy affects real people, she helped shape information that fed into the campaign’s messaging.
That sensibility, Kate says, was honed long before her first byline.
Growing up, business was a family affair. Her parents ran a lumber business, and dinner-table conversations often analyzed inventory, customers, inflation, or the latest ripple effects of government policies.
“We always had dinner together,” she says. “It very much revolved around business and the economy. Everybody listened quietly and learned from each other.”
When her father returned to graduate school, the conversation remained the same: Business wasn’t abstract. It was personal and consequential.
That perspective explains Peterson’s particular affection for the manufacturers served by Enterprise Minnesota.
“I love reading about these businesses,” she says. “These men and women in small towns who build something from almost nothing, stay humble their whole lives, and try to figure out how to pass it on to their kids — that’s the fabric of our country. A lot of things are going away, but they hang in there. I love that the magazine celebrates that.”
Along the way, Kate assembled an impressive résumé that seems almost tailored to her new role. She started in the economics department at the IRS, spent several years on the legislative staff of Congressman Jim Ramstad, and later joined Twin Cities Business Monthly, where I was editor and publisher.
Her editorial instincts are matched by a deep commitment to family life. Peterson and her husband Waylon, a financial advisor, raised five children — now grown — all homeschooled, a path they never expected to take.
The decision came after the principal of their small Catholic school suggested that their frequent family travel was disruptive. Kate and Waylon shrugged and brought it all home.
“What’s more instructive than travel?” she says.
They never looked back.
They developed their own curriculum, continued to travel together, and discovered unexpected benefits. Younger children absorbed lessons alongside older siblings. The family spent an unusual amount of time together — and it shows.
“One of the best things about our adult kids now is how close they are to each other,” Kate says. “They know everything about each other. If I haven’t heard from one for a while, another one always has.”
Their children’s paths have been varied but purposeful. Caroline, a Purdue University graduate, works in national security in Washington, D.C. Margaret, a Notre Dame ROTC graduate, serves as a transportation officer with the U.S. Army and was recently posted in Poland. Louisa, who also graduated from Purdue, teaches third grade in Elkhart, Ind. Rose studies construction management at Purdue while participating in Navy ROTC. Adam, the youngest, is a freshman cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
With children now scattered across the country — and across branches of the military — Kate and Waylon find themselves empty nesters in their large home in rural Culver, Ind.
Their flagpole reflects the transition.
“We don’t have enough spots for Army, Navy, and Air Force,” Kate says. “So right now, it’s just the American flag.”
As she takes the editorial helm at Enterprise Minnesota magazine, close readers will see how she adapts her sensibility that has shaped every chapter of her life: an appreciation for work done well, families who build together, and businesses that endure not because they are flashy, but because they matter.
It’s a continuation of a lifelong conversation — one that began around a dinner table and now continues on the pages of the magazine she will lead.
Return to the Spring 2026 issue of Enterprise Minnesota® magazine.
