Who are you?
My name is Kathrien Ahn or Kat for short, and I’m an actor/writer/blogger/hip hop music freak. I grew up in the city of and on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philly is a working-class town and I grew up seeing lots of hardships and injustice which made me a weirdo. (a.k.a an actor/writer) My dad owned a few urban clothing stores in Germantown, Kensington and Center City, but after the after-effects of the Los Angeles Riots, cities such as Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia felt the repercussions. What this means is that people stopped shopping at Korean-American merchant owned stores, so you can guess what happened with my family.

Were your parents horrified that you didn’t become a doctor/lawyer/astrophysicist/anchorwoman/Computer science person?
Totally. It was my Mom’s dream that I go to Harvard and then become the next Connie Chung. (She was an old skool Anchorwoman who married Maury Povich) My Dad just wanted me to go to an Ivy League School.  Um… didn’t get accepted to any.

What brought you to LA?
Many crappy jobs later…. I found myself in LA, auditioning and then starting to book acting gigs and getting traction on my spec scripts and feature scripts. Then came the Writers’ strike which shut down Los Angeles and I needed to find a steady job. So, I ended up working at a tech start-up for about a year and a half where I learned how to blog, build online communities, make cold calls,  do PR/Marketing, do Press/Blogger Outreach, and basically making a dollar out of 15 cents.

So you left that job in the middle of an awful Economic downturn?
Well, yeah, I’m basically crazy. I listen to my heart/gut more than my brain. Previously, I’d only listened to my brain and done whatever it said. Now I realize that my gut is WAY smarter.

Ok, so you’re an actor, but how do you pay the bills between gigs?
Currently, I’m working with Myspace/Summit Entertainment as their main content producer/social media marketer for the upcoming film, “Letters to Juliet” starring Amanda Seyfried.  I was the Editor for Twirlit.com, a women’s interactive magazine that focuses on fashion/beauty/health/current events, and videos as well as creating content for Manolith, the dude site.

Are you an LA type who is always at those club places on MTV’s “The Hills?”
Negative. I’m a dork who likes to read, hang out with friends or my boyfriend, running, Spinning, doing yoga and doing work. I’m always working on something, writing, blogging, making videos, going to Scene study class, working on my voice.. guess you could say that I’m hungry. Hungry and humble…that’s how you have to be.

What are your mantras?
1) Never Give Up
2) Don’t listen to Negative People (People who Drink Haterade)
3) Work Your Ass Off
4) Surround Yourself with Positive People
5) Old Skool Hip Hop/R&B is the Best Thing Ever!
6) Love before Work. (Took me a while to learn that)

I wrote this Change This Manifesto called “How to Positive When Things Suck,” that goes into further detail on how to deal with crappy circumstances.

How To Be Positive When Things Suck –

Oh yeah, one last thing. I played the role of “Amy,” in the “A Benihana Christmas episode of NBC’s “The Office,” where I got to hang out with Steve Carell, Ed Helms and Harold Ramis. Um yeah. I’m the unmarked one.  I hope to go back to the offices of Dunder Mifflin one day.  Hey, you never know!

And just wanted to embed one of my all-time favorite songs in life. “Better Dayz,” by, in my opinion, the greatest Rapper/Poet of our time, 2Pac Shakur. RIP.