At 30, after just eight years on the job, Katie Murphy Khulusi is the director of loudspeaker development at Meyer Sound. That makes her the youngest director at that pioneering pro audio company, which was founded in 1979. She started out as a test engineer in 2017, but since has acquired “many hats” at the company — and apparently, she’s not done collecting that proverbial headwear, including serving on various boards and showing up at classes and workshops to share her expertise.
Inspired by Music
Khulusi grew up in Chicago, where music was part of her upbringing. She played oboe in the orchestras and participated in school musicals at Saint Ignatius College Prep in Chicago. Coming out of high school, she wanted to go into film music and be a studio session musician. “Film music was just my favorite,” she says. But excelling at math, she ended up at the University of Southern California, majoring in electrical engineering and minoring in music recording.
In addition to performing in the Concerto Chamber Orchestra and singing in a choir, she joined the school’s technical events staff. “I ended up spending most of my time working as an audio tech for the school’s performance venues,” and she came out of school as a “jack of all trades” type. “The cinema people were just into cinema, yet the P.A. people could cross over with installations and pretty much everything else.” She also found that the student-run audio department was a “safe space” to learn and work.
One of the school’s venues had a Meyer Sound Galileo Galaxy system, and her training included learning to operate it. When she was close to graduating and looking for a job, she considered Meyer Sound, thinking that working there “would be cool.” They did as well, and hired her as an acoustic test engineer, so she moved out to the Bay Area where Meyer Sound is based. And into the deep end she went.
Sink or Swim
“It was hectic,” Khulusi says, of her first days at Meyer Sound. “Going from engineering school to being on the operational side of a manufacturer with such high standards was stressful. I went from that ‘safe space’ to the real-world dynamics, and that was a bit of a pressure cooker.” But she never had any doubts about the move, and in the end, it was really just a “mental switch” for many similar school-to-IRL workers, going from the theoretic concepts of a classroom to being in a shop looking at gear that you have to get “working by 4 p.m. so it can go out on that truck” — and having to solve that buzzing problem in time, no matter what.
But she adapted quickly. “The main thing was that the test engineering team was there to support the end-of-line quality testing. And sometimes, there were easier tasks, like working with the R&D team to spec-out what the testing procedure for a new product would be and validate that.” Yet, other times there were fires to put out, like when all the test stations went down and needed to be brought back online.
While there were stressful moments in that first year, it was also “an incredible experience — there’s no better way to learn than being thrust into those real-world situations.”
Reflecting on her early success at the company, Khulusi says she strived to be the person who said “yes” to everything. This included being of service to the R&D team as much as she could be, which led to an offer to be a transducer engineer in 2018. There, she had the opportunity to learn the basics of transducers and driver design, and while she had a college background in electrical engineering, she notes this was mechanical situation, and the learning curve was substantial but attainable.
“Crazy Number of Sales”
The pandemic hit, and along with millions of others, she was furloughed. With her background in operations and ability to do some mechanical design, Khulusi was called a few months later to return as a utility player. “They asked me to do a bunch of different things, and that’s what I did,” she says. By May 2020, she was back full-time. “And that’s when the industry kind of exploded.” The pent-up demand for live entertainment pushed a lot of companies into high gear, and Meyer was no exception.
Next up for the company was the January 2022 launch of the Panther large-format linear line array loudspeaker, and the “crazy number of sales” kept her and the rest of the team both busy and challenged. Meyer Sound manufactures at its headquarters in Berkeley CA, yet still had to deal with some of the supply-side issues that everyone else experienced. This hectic period gave Khulusi an appreciation of the international team that she was increasingly working closer with. “We have key people in different areas of the world, and everyone was stepping up and seeing how they could get what part from where. Everybody really came together during that time, and I feel lucky to have been part of it. We made a lot of good decisions.”
During this period, Khulusi worked her way through transducer design to program management and then to director of loudspeaker development. This position gives her ownership for all loudspeakers from the engineering point of view, leading the loudspeaker team until they hand the next project off to the operations team. She is also providing support for loudspeakers that have been launched. “Plus, I do some on-site work during festivals and tours, providing support for the front of house teams and techs. This allows me to say, ‘walk me through your day and show me anything that was a pain — what is working and what could be working better.’”
A Person, Not a Commodity
Thrown on top of that, Khulusi found herself in another role — presenting at trade shows and giving talks and interviews, something she’s increasingly comfortable doing. “I can memorize a script well for an overall presentation — I don’t get stage fright, and as more of an extroverted person, I enjoy it.”
Being a young woman means she does have to quickly establish her technical bona fides, as more than once, someone has approached her, assuming she’s on the marketing or communications team. “But people are starting to be a little better about not assuming that. I might have an older male say it’s nice to see a young female doing this work, but I’m not a commodity — just a person doing my job. If I get the spotlight on me because I am a young woman, I can use that spotlight. There’s always more to do in this area.”
Khulusi emphasizes she’s grateful for all the forward-facing experiences, including when she goes overseas. She recently returned from Denmark’s Roskilde Festival — one of the largest in Europe, where Meyer Sound was the sole sound provider and there was much to do. She’s also been to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and has been attending the Integrated Systems Europe tradeshow in Barcelona for a few years now. “It’s fun and absolutely exhausting.” For Roskilde, “we had a Meyer Sound technician on each of the different festival stages, along with marketing, communications and artist relations support. [Owners/founders] John and Helen [Meyer] always come to that one as well and people love seeing them.” The crew slept on tour buses and “it was kind of like summer camp, where you’re up at 5 a.m. and then the festival goes late into the night. But it’s a really good opportunity, because I’m wearing all my hats at once and getting feedback from the audio engineers in real-time. And I get to spend time with our European tech support people, which I love.”
Sharing and Mentoring
Khulusi is also a guest lecturer and has been in front of college classrooms in addition to being on a few advisory boards. She makes it clear that women and POC are welcomed in this industry, and also that maybe you don’t need that engineering degree. “There are so many organizations that are trying to reset all of that, and this business is increasingly about learning on the job. I would love for people reading this to understand that they can reach out, find people on LinkedIn, show an interest and ask questions.”
She advocates to young people that job experience is most important, and seeking out an entry-level job in this business can work — but that means not assuming you need a Masters’ Degree or 20 years of experience. “So ask. The worst is that they could say no. And at the best, you could find yourself in a position that you otherwise might have thought you weren’t qualified for.”
Khulusi is ambitious about developing her skills and knowledge and is working with an executive coach Helen Meyer set her up with. As for her future, she is living it now. “I love the company and love working here. What I want is to get a more thorough understanding of departments I’m not involved in. I want to know more about marketing. I want to know about what business decisions are made and why. I want to keep collecting hats.”
