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Bold and Brave
She was at a music festival -- primitive camping, no electricity, no running water -- when an executive search firm for the Girl Scouts managed to reach her by cell phone. Kathy Cloninger had heard the group was extending its search for a new CEO, but she hadn't applied. "I was happy running a Girl Scout council in Tennessee," she says. But the caller was direct: "Please apply."
"Computer-savvy campers helped retrieve my résumé from my home computer, update it and e-mail it to the Girl Scouts," says Cloninger, "all in a tent in a Texas meadow of bluebonnets."Cloninger, once a Girl Scout herself, got the top job in 2003. Her mission has been to "revitalize a 95-year-old tradition-bound icon," best known for camps, crafts and cookies, as the nation's premier leadership-development organization for girls.
Cloninger's career with the Girl Scouts began in 1983 when she answered a blind ad in a Denver newspaper. The position was with the Mountain Prairie Council, a group of 3,000 that was part of the national organization. She was impressed by its history of being at the forefront of social change. Founded by Juliette Gordon Low in 1912, the Girl Scouts was dedicated to offering girls the chance to develop mentally, physically and spiritually. Cloninger calls Low a revolutionary. "Her original Girl Scouts were bold and brave."
They tended children while their mothers voted for the first time in the 1920s, led relief efforts during the Depression, supported the civil-rights movement of the '60s and launched a national environmental program. Alumnae include Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Katie Couric and Eileen Collins, the first woman space shuttle commander. Cloninger rose to head Girl Scout councils in Colorado, Texas and Tennessee. She initiated the first global poverty summit, took a creative approach to programs and raised the organization's visibility.
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