How did Kim Porter build HatchOne and use TikTok to grow an engineering community?
About a year before her interview on Ordinary To Badass, Kim Porter was sitting on her couch feeling bored in retirement and made a deliberate decision: she would study the TikTok algorithm. Convinced that TikTok is far more powerful than most people recognize, she used it as a direct funnel to build HatchOne — an online engineering community that includes a dedicated Women in Engineering subgroup. She describes running it as deeply fulfilling and says she is having a blast.
What makes this story notable is the intentionality behind it. Porter did not stumble into community building or use TikTok casually. She treated the platform the same way she approached engineering problems throughout her career: with method and discipline. By understanding how the algorithm distributes content, she turned what might have looked like a social media hobby into a genuine pipeline for engineers — and specifically for women in engineering — to find a community that, for most of Porter's own career, simply did not exist.
The full conversation explores how Porter translated four decades of being the only woman in all-male engineering rooms into practical guidance for the next generation. Listen to the episode on Listenly to hear her explain exactly how she approaches TikTok and why she believes the platform is underestimated as a community-building tool.
"No opinions, all data, no emotion. Here's the data, here are the results, this is my recommendation — and then you don't say anything. Silence is power."
— Kim Porter, Ordinary To Badass, Episode 452About Kim Porter
Kim Porter earned an engineering science and mechanics degree with an emphasis in biomedical engineering from Iowa State University in the early 1980s — at a time when biomedical engineering was not yet an established field. Within one month of the January 1986 Challenger disaster, she joined the project developing next-generation spacesuit gloves, beginning a 40-year engineering career that would take her through product design at Nike and eventually into running her own consultancy. Throughout every role and every environment she worked in, Porter was the only woman in the room — a reality that never changed across four decades and that directly shapes the mission of HatchOne.
HatchOne is the online engineering community Porter founded in retirement, built around a core Women in Engineering subgroup. Her decision to use TikTok as the growth engine for that community reflects the same analytical mindset she applied throughout her engineering career: she studied the platform's algorithm methodically before using it as a funnel. Porter also continues to operate Kim Porter Consultancy, keeping her expertise accessible to organizations and individuals navigating engineering leadership challenges.
See also
Kim Porter, drawing on a discussion held in her Women in Engineering group where a participant queried ChatGPT on the topic, explains that newer disciplines like biomedical and environmental engineering were established with more inclusive frameworks — resulting in far better gender representation than traditional fields like mechanical engineering, where the ratio of one woman to nine men has remained unchanged for forty years.
Kim Porter argues that engineers are trained to be precise, accurate, and perfect — traits that must be partially unlearned to become an effective leader. A true leader focuses on people and builds trust over time, rather than simply directing tasks or optimizing for technical correctness.
Kim Porter coaches that once you have presented a data-driven recommendation, you should stop talking completely and let silence sit. She explains that staying silent after making your case signals confidence and places the pressure to respond on the other party — rather than allowing the presenter to undermine their own position by over-explaining.