Netjets US Winter 2023

ONE OF
A KIND
OWNER’S PROFILE
Despite coming from Hollywood and political royalty, author Katherine
Schwarzenegger Pratt has found success based not on her family’s
fame but for rocking what she’s got—namely a knack for writing books
that amplify kindness and empathy. // By Heidi Mitchell
MAIWENN RAOULT / THE NEWYORKTIMES / REDUX / LAIF
PICTURE YOURSELF in college. Those consequential latenight
chats, and so many more about nonsense. The friend
groups you moved in and out of. The different identities you
tried on and discarded like seasonal fashions. The quest to
find yourself, your passion, your confidence.
If that was you, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt was
everything you strived to be. She comes from famous stock,
sure—her father Arnold is the decorated Austria-born
bodybuilder/actor and former two-term governor of California,
and her mother, Maria Shriver, is an Emmy Award-winning
broadcast journalist and author (and, of course, a Kennedy)—
but she has always been grounded and, since becoming an
adult, completely self-assured. Case in point: After struggling
for years with body-image disorder, she landed an internship
with Dove during the brand’s “Campaign for Real Beauty”
launch. “I was blown away by the campaign itself, but also the
impact that it had on women of all ages, backgrounds, shapes,
and sizes. I found it to be so refreshing,” says the mother of two
daughters, Lyla and Eloise. “I became really passionate about
the subject and did a lot of research.” Unlike the rest of us
college froshes, she turned that deep interest into a New York
Times bestseller, “Rock What You’ve Got: Secrets to Loving
Your Inner and Outer Beauty from Someone Who’s Been There
and Back.” She was all of 20, but she had found her calling.
Sort of. Newly graduated and without a clear career
decision, Schwarzenegger Pratt looked around and noticed
many of her fellow Trojans were equally uncertain about their
next steps. “And I was like, we can’t be the only ones who
don’t know exactly what we want to do,” she recalls. She put
her feet back on the path she’d previously paved, and coldcalled
successful people whose careers she admired and asked
them for interviews. British adventurer Bear Grylls, tennis star
Serena Williams, musician John Legend, TOMS Shoes founder
Blake Mycoskie, fitness guru Jillian Michaels, and others
replied, and those thoughtful biographical stories laden with
advice became “I Just Graduated ... Now What? Honest Answers
from Those Who Have Been There,” composed by a 24-yearold
woman still questing. Her goal, she says, was for young
graduates to believe that, instead of college and the period
after being scary and daunting, they could reframe those
formative years as an exciting time to figure out who they are.
“I felt like the message was, you can have different jobs by the
time you’re 30 and that’s OK,” she says. “It’s about being open
to figuring out what it is you want to do and how you want
to spend your life. Your work is important, so spending some
time to figure out what it is you’re passionate about, and also
feeling comfortable enough to say, ‘I can start here and then I
can pivot and switch’ is also important.”
And then she, too, pivoted. “After that my passion switched
to animal rescue.”
Growing up with celebrity parents, Schwarzenegger and her
three siblings had a remarkably normal childhood. Except for
the menagerie of animals. “Both my parents grew up on farms
and they definitely had this desire to have the four of us kids
understand the responsibilities of taking care of animals,” she
says. “I grew up riding horses and I was always at the barn. We
rescued this pig and two dogs and some rabbits and then a
miniature pony, so animals were always part of my childhood.”
It was on one Thanksgiving break after graduation that
Schwarzenegger Pratt and her sister, Christina, stumbled
upon a grooming facility in need of temporary parents for
its pups. The young women volunteered, and from then on,
Schwarzenegger Pratt was smitten with the idea of adoption.
When she received a call about a puppy, called Maverick,
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