ONE OF A KIND OWNER’S PROFILE Despite coming from Hollywood and political royalty, bestselling 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 with body image, 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, that NetJets 29
