Kathy Scanlan
Managing Partner
Grandmother, Mother, Wife, Chef
Kathy likes results. Not just any results, but team achievements that make a measurable difference in other people’s lives. Clients value Kathy’s ability to get that kind of results through her dynamic and creative approach to the management of complex projects and partnerships.
Over a career spanning 30 years and leadership roles in government, nonprofits and sports, Kathy has created a long track record of excellent results for a broad variety of challenging assignments.
Kathy began her career working for the city of Seattle. After completing graduate school at the University of Washington, she was hired as a budget analyst for the City’s Office of Management and Budget under the legendary Walt Hundley. Hundley, a leader in Seattle’s civil rights movement as Director of Model Cities, was well known for his compassionate and resolute leadership. When appointed Superintendent of Parks and Recreation, Hundley took Kathy with him - leading her to four remarkable years as Director of Management for Seattle Parks.
There she fell in love with the Woodland Park Zoo, and she transferred to become Manager of Operations and Finance for the Zoo. She was instrumental in the creation of the first agreement between the Zoo and the Woodland Park Zoological Society - which 20 years later has transformed the zoo into a world class institution.
She was recruited by Mayor Royer to leave the Zoo and go to Seattle Center where she served eight years as Deputy Director, helping to bring the Children’s Museum, Intiman Theater and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School to the campus.
A strong interest in Russian people and their culture took Scanlan to the Goodwill Games as Executive Vice President in 1990. She managed an $80 million budget, 500 paid staff and10,000 volunteers in an event that featured 2,500 athletes from around the world, artists from the then-Soviet Union and a people-to-people home-stay exchange program.
Following the success of the Games, Kathy spent the next eight years in international sports, working for the Seattle Supersonics, World Cup Soccer and the World University Games in Buffalo, New York.
The culmination of her sports career was serving as President and Chief Executive Officer of USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for gymnastics in the United States. During her tenure, the women’s team received the first United States team gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, and Kathy initiated major changes in the way the sport deals with women’s health issues, in the development of men’s gymnastics and in USA Gymnastics’ involvement with its international associations.
Since returning home to Seattle with her family in 1998, Kathy has consulted on a wide variety of interesting assignments, often returning to her roots in government and in the management of nonprofits. She was one of two lead managers for the opening of the Experience Music Project and has worked on numerous assignments with Cedar River Group. These range from the Seattle Chinese Garden, to the development of financial and business plans for museums, to the creation of new approaches to performance measurement for the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Kathy graduated from Lewis and Clark College and has a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Washington. She lives on Bainbridge Island with her husband Pat, and she enjoys long visits with her two children in the Seattle area and with her grandson. She devotes herself to cooking, and she particularly enjoys taking cooking classes and assisting at a local cooking school.
