From Practitioner To Global Expert

Katrina’s journey began in hands-on IT roles where she saw, up close, the gap between what IT thought it was delivering and what people actually experienced. Traditional frameworks promised best practice, yet service desks were overwhelmed, users were frustrated, and reports looked “green on the outside, red on the inside” – a dynamic she later described as “watermelon reporting.” These early experiences pushed her to question accepted wisdom and to search for approaches that honoured both operational stability and human reality.

Over time, she moved from practitioner to consultant, trainer, and advisor, helping teams across industries rethink how they designed and delivered IT services. In the process, she became recognised as a global expert in IT service management, invited to share her perspectives on stages, podcasts, and executive forums around the world. Her work consistently challenges leaders to look beyond compliance metrics and ask a more uncomfortable question: “Is anyone’s experience actually better?”

Humanising IT™: A New Agenda

That question became the seed for Humanising IT™, the experience framework Katrina co-created to bring human-centred design principles into the core of IT service management. Rather than discarding established practices, Humanising IT™ integrates design thinking tools with familiar ITSM structures, enabling organisations to keep what works while reimagining how it feels. The result is a practical approach that helps teams understand user needs, redesign services around real journeys, and measure success through experience as well as efficiency.

Humanising IT™ is not just a methodology; it is a call to reset the agenda for IT service management globally. Katrina’s work argues that frameworks alone cannot teach teams how to listen deeply, interpret human signals, or make trade-offs that balance stability with empathy. By providing concrete techniques and language, Humanising IT™ gives IT leaders a way to bring empathy into governance, not just into workshops.

Author, Educator, And Storyteller

Katrina’s ideas reached an even wider audience with her book “Humanising IT,” which has been described as a breakthrough in connecting ITIL-style practices with user experience and human-centred design. Written from the perspective of someone who has lived the realities of service management, the book offers an accessible, relatable way for teams to see themselves in the stories and then act differently. Its success has positioned her as an award-winning author and a sought-after reference point for organisations wanting to modernise IT without losing control.

Beyond the page, Katrina is an active educator and speaker who shares her thinking through podcasts, keynotes, and interviews. Whether talking about “IT, stop jumping into solution mode” or explaining how to avoid misleading performance dashboards, she combines humour, candour, and clear examples to make complex topics easy to digest. This ability to translate between executive, technical, and customer perspectives is one of the reasons she is frequently invited to guide senior leadership conversations.

Entrepreneurial Leadership With HIT Global

As Co-Founder and Director of HIT Global, Katrina has built a business dedicated to helping organisations adopt Humanising IT™ at scale. HIT Global works with clients around the world to redesign IT services, coach teams, and embed experience-focused ways of working into everyday practice. Under her leadership, the organisation operates as both a consulting partner and a learning community, sharing stories, tools, and experiments that demonstrate what human-centred IT looks like in real life.

Her entrepreneurial path reflects her willingness to step outside traditional roles in order to have a broader impact. Rather than staying within a single company, she chose to work across sectors and geographies, giving her insight into patterns that transcend any one industry. That vantage point has allowed her to identify recurring challenges – such as rigid processes, lack of empathy, and misaligned measures – and then design interventions that can be replicated globally.

Recognition And Global Momentum

Katrina’s influence is reflected in the recognition she has received across the tech community. She has been profiled as a distinguished entrepreneur and nominated for international honours such as the Women in Tech Global Awards, where her work is highlighted for its impact on the evolution of IT service management. Her peers frequently point to her as the leading global expert in the space, noting not just her technical depth but her commitment to making IT more humane.

This recognition extends beyond awards to the growing momentum behind the Humanising IT™ movement. Communities of practitioners share how applying Katrina’s ideas has helped them improve employee experience, reshape service desks, and rebuild trust between IT and the business. As conversations about digital employee experience and AI continue to accelerate, her perspective – blending technology, empathy, and strategy – is increasingly seen as essential, not optional.

A Frontier Leader For 2025 And Beyond

Being featured in the 2025 Frontier 100s is a natural next chapter for Katrina Macdermid. In a world where organisations are racing to adopt new tools and platforms, her work is a reminder that technology only creates value when it respects the humans it is meant to serve. By challenging established norms, building practical frameworks, and elevating the voices of users and frontline teams, she is helping to redefine what “good” looks like in IT service management.

Katrina’s story is ultimately about courage – the courage to question legacy models, to design with empathy, and to hold IT accountable to the experiences it creates. As organisations navigate the next wave of digital transformation, leaders like her will be critical in ensuring that progress is not only fast and efficient, but also human.