CMU Alumna earns prestigious SUCCESS Magazine 2024 Women of Influence award

CMU Alumna Katherine Warnock ’04 is one of fifty female leaders to be given SUCCESS Magazine’s 2024 Women of Influence award. The award spotlights extraordinary women whose contributions consistently inspire and transform lives while transcending boundaries across diverse industries and communities. 

Warnock is vice president of original content for the television series The Chosen, which started as a crowd-funded project and has since amassed over 600 million episode views. The program also has more than 10 million social media followers.

Warnock recently told The Christian Broadcasting Network that her time at Central Michigan University started her on the path to finding her faith.

As a 20-year-old undergraduate, she was on the nationally-ranked CMU track and field team. One of her teammates invited her to a Spirit-filled church. Warnock, raised Catholic, said to CBN, “It was beautiful. There were people worshipping demonstratively, speaking funny languages. At the time, I didn’t know what I was experiencing but I later learned it was the Holy Spirit, and I never looked back.”

After graduation, she briefly spent time as a high school teacher when she says God called her to the mission field. During one mission trip to Africa, she says God indicated to her that she was needed in Hollywood.

For the next 14 years, Warnock found herself in a variety of different professional roles in content, creative, marketing, and branding-based leadership spanning film, television, digital, editorial, fashion, and social enterprise. 

Warnock has worked with elite brands, from Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Sony to Ford, Aerie, and Gillette, with a goal of positively affecting culture through purposeful, anchored, community-driven media.