Setting The Stage For Success
Cooper Harris wanted to be a violin-playing, ice-skating Eurythmist. An unlikely profession? A childish fantasy? Words you’ve never seen in that order? Perhaps. But to doubt Cooper Harris is to miss backing the winning horse. A spark plug, a dynamo, a mover and shaker, Cooper approaches all enterprises with an enterprising zeal. She doesn’t toe the line; she crosses it with unwavering confidence. She attacks challenges and smothers them with talent, spirit, and an unshakable belief in her core.
It’s her core that should interest you. Cooper attributes much of her success (plenty more on that later) to her roots in Waldorf education. After attending kindergarten at the Atlanta Waldorf School—which her mother (and Katie Reily) helped found—her family relocated to North Carolina. Cooper went straight through elementary and middle school at Emerson Waldorf (the high school was not yet built), excelling across all disciplines in the manner of a consummate Waldorf student. And she loved every minute of it.
“I cried when I had to stay home sick from school,” Cooper told me. In my head, I thought of the beloved children’s comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, and how Calvin often feigned illnesses to skip school (although, if memory serves, he never succeeded). Clearly, Calvin didn’t go to a Waldorf school, leaving him and Cooper—on the subject of their young education—diametrically opposed.
From a young age, Cooper’s enthusiasm saw her well-suited for the stage. In 2nd Grade, she played the Archangel Michael (she still remembers her benediction lines from the play) and in middle school, the headstrong Joan of Arc. After high school, Cooper was faced with a tough decision. Accepted into a host of excellent colleges, she could have taken the traditional route of a gifted student. Instead, she doubled down on what had become a major calling for her: acting.
To the University of North Carolina School of the Arts went Cooper, determined to further her training and break into one of the world’s trickier industries. She described UNCSA as strenuous and stressful (conservatories and ballet schools do carry a certain reputation), but she willed her way through it and signed with a top agency in New York City. Reflecting on her post-secondary school experience and the challenges it presented, Cooper told me the following:
“Waldorf instilled in me a strong sense of self-reliance. Because I learned (not memorized, but actually learned) a number of fundamentals of how the world works, and my place in it, I felt capable and self-reliant. This deep-seated confidence—not that I’m perfect or correct but that I can handle what comes my way—has helped me overcome challenges that otherwise would’ve been overwhelming.”
That deep-seated confidence would continue to carry Cooper as she worked her way to Los Angeles and appeared in a number of TV shows. While acting on the show Young and the Restless, Cooper—feeling rather young and restless herself—realized she had achieved what she set out to achieve, and turned her mind elsewhere. “I spent a lot of time thinking about tech, innovation, and starting a business,” Cooper revealed. “When I wasn’t shooting or rehearsing, I’d hang out at a place called CrossCampus, a tech hub in the burgeoning LA tech scene.”
To be clear, Cooper had no background in tech—she wasn’t a coder or a Computer Science major (quite the opposite, one might say)—yet buoyed by an ability to “color outside the lines” (her words, not mine) and “see possibilities where others didn’t,” Cooper arrived on the tech scene like a thunderclap. Her entry point was through an event called Hackathon. A mecca for techies, computer programmers, and start-up wannabes, Hackathons are giant competitions in which participants descend on one location, form teams, and—under strict time constraints—attempt to create functioning software or hardware.
Many—myself included—would feel like a fish out of water at such an event. What could a TV actress offer this left-brained, male-dominated world? The answer, it turned out, was the all-important pitch. When the final buzzer sounds at a Hackathon event, teams must present their work before a panel of judges. This is where Cooper excelled. With thousands of auditions to her name, rigorous schooling in the art of acting, and formative childhood years spent on stage, such a presentation was second nature for Cooper. She and her team won her first Hackathon event, and many more afterward, and from there it wasn’t long before she founded her very own tech start-up, Klickly. In one of her first moves as CEO, Cooper hired her brother Noah, a computer engineer and Emerson alum, to be her Director of Research and Development.
Klickly, a commission-based advertising engine that helps e-commerce merchants (think Adidas, or Old Navy) run ads across the internet, has done very well. The software platform boasts 1,500 brands, hits 40 million users/month, and is supported by several well-known Silicon Valley investors (including the Head of Innovation at Google). Now, Cooper sits on Emerson’s board and looks forward to sending her future children to a Waldorf school someday. “In my childhood, I learned how to plant and grow vegetables, use tools to smelt copper, and create intricate stitching in my handwork,” Cooper reflects. She doesn’t grow her own vegetables anymore, nor does she heat, mold, and model iron hooks and copper bowls. As Cooper has come to realize, however, these tasks were less about developing the technical know-how and more about cultivating patience and forging willpower. In other words, building key, transferable skills.
“In my adult life, I figured out how to get the training I needed to become the TV actress I wanted to be,” Cooper told me. “Then I learned how to start an award-winning tech company, and how to raise millions of dollars from top Silicon Valley investors. You can’t teach young people all the exact facts they’ll employ throughout their lives. But if you can teach them how to courageously pursue their dreams and how to confidently meet their challenges—it’s priceless. It’s the most valuable gift a parent can give their child.”
If you take the time to get to know Cooper Harris, you can’t help but be impressed. And while she doesn’t parle français, command an army, or wield a sword (although this I wouldn’t put past her), I expect you’ll see in her—as I did myself—more than a little of that famed French heroine she embodied on stage all those years ago.
- written by Kaylen Alexis, class of 2015