Smith Club of San Francisco
and Marin
Alumnae Profiles
Kathleen Hussey Cardinal '56
Spring 2003
Profile by Sarah Cross Mills '66
Part I
In November of 2000, at The Metropolitan Club in San Francisco, Katie Cardinal welcomed several hundred Smith alumnae to “A Celebration of Smith Women – Sophia’s Legacy: The Status of Women in the New Millennium”. Five alumnae panelists, leaders in their fields, engaged the audience with lively discussion and responses to questions. Katie had a larger context in mind when she proposed an event for all three Bay Area Smith Clubs: she wanted to honor every Smith woman’s use of her education, each individual’s immeasurable influence on society that Sophia Smith knew a college education would empower. Katie has a deeply felt experience of Smith as “alma mater”, which Webster’s translates as “fostering mother”, and the idea for this symposium, co-sponsored with The Alumnae Association of Smith, was one of many ways Katie has been guided by her desire to help fulfill Sophia’s legacy.
The panelists and moderator, a professor from the college, prepared for the symposium via teleconference calls. The audience could feel how the developing relationships and advance sharing of information made for richer dialogue. Whether or not Katie suggested it, this collaborative way of working is a hallmark of her own leadership style, one that fits naturally with every other aspect of her warm and caring personality.
Surprisingly, leadership is not something with which Katie has always identified herself, even though she’s remembered as “a rising star in Smith government circles” by a fellow alumna. It may be her natural modesty, combined with the models of leadership she’d witnessed, that kept her from seeing herself as a leader until she was asked to be President of the Junior League of San Francisco. She has always identified herself with a passionate concern for the condition of women and girls in our society, a motivating force in her life for four decades of volunteer work. Katie’s personal experience when she separated from her “alma mater” and looked for meaningful work in New York City would shape her future and lead her into accepting more and more responsibility until she could acknowledge her true leadership roles.
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Part II - Transforming the Junior League
Katie says she felt a silent sense of outrage in 1956 when she discovered that most female college graduates could find only secretarial work, while males entered training programs in finance, banking, and publishing, programs closed to women. A true daughter of Smith, she was angered by society’s lack of respect for its women and its cultivation of a myth that women would be fully satisfied as wives, mothers and homemakers. As a young wife and mother herself, following a few of years in writing and editing jobs, Katie was certainly happy enough in her role, but a feeling of disconnection from the larger community led her to join the Junior League in Brooklyn, where she found challenging opportunities to work with other young women in an inner-city school and a half-way home for mental patients. Being able to make choices within an organization that sought to develop women’s potential and to improve communities appealed to Katie. The Junior League apparently did not buy into the prevailing myth of the time, as it held to its belief that women could be a powerful force for change in society.
In 1966 when Katie and her family, now numbering four, moved to San Francisco, the Junior League again offered connection with other women interested in contributing to their community. Immediately Katie found herself on the Board, as editor of the newsletter. Motivated by the League’s concern with helping to meet the needs of society, Katie took on more responsibility. She chaired a project working with New York’s Children’s Television Network, creator of “Sesame Street”, and KQED, which had just begun broadcasting the innovative program. League members met with mothers in low-income neighborhoods to help them learn ways they could use the program to support their children’s early learning experiences.
While working on this project, Katie solidified her passion for seeing society reach a place of balance where women’s voices would be fully integrated into all aspects of life. With this clarity and an appreciation for her own cooperative style of working, Katie was ready to assume leadership of the Junior League of San Francisco when the invitation came, although she had not expected it at all. Adding this responsibility while the mother of three children, the youngest only a year old, was a major step. She thrived, however, on having to think about harmonizing all the parts of a large organization.
Her synthesizing mind began to reveal to her something about the basic workings of the League that she couldn’t reconcile with its true purpose and function. With her desire to see the expansion of women’s roles throughout society, she thought that the League operated in certain ways that limited women. Katie is grateful that she had the opportunity as President to articulate her perceptions and to strengthen the League’s role as a place where women could learn and develop valuable skills.
One symbolic representation of the changes Katie initiated was the decision to invite only women to speak at League meetings. There would be no more men with patronizing attitudes speaking to what they seemed to think were privileged women with primarily a social function. Because of the innovations in her one-year term as President, Katie was invited to serve for a second year. It was gratifying to know many women who took the skills they developed through League projects to positions on boards of numerous community organizations. One art Katie herself mastered while President was taking risks. She was frequently called on to speak extemporaneously, and she believed so strongly in what she was saying, that not always feeling safe became secondary to the importance of having her voice heard. She also grew to value being a creative thinker, where previously she’d believed that working in organizations demanded a different kind of mind.
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Part III - Becoming president
After leading the League so successfully for two years, Katie, aged 40, had reached the upper age limit for League members. The personal strength gained from developing her talents and knowing that people liked working with her would prove critical in helping her face the sudden family crisis of her 14 year-old son’s cancer diagnosis. He lived for another eighteen months before his death dropped Katie into a despair that removed her from the flow of her life for a couple of years. Being asked to serve on the board of Children’s Hospital helped re-engage her mind and heart. Only women could serve on the board, a policy held since the hospital’s founding; during Katie’s tenure, men were asked to serve because the board felt it important to include members of the medical staff. After seven years, Katie became President, a position she held for another seven years before being the first Board Chairperson of California Pacific Medical Center, an institution created by merging Children’s Hospital and California Presbyterian Medical Center in 1991. Katie oversaw the work of a community taskforce that designed the merger and the tireless efforts of the new Board when faced with
Board when faced with serious financial challenges. Her investment in the hospital’s mission and her sense of resphonsibility for its integrity, along with her Board leadership talents, brought the merged facility back to solid ground. While President of these hospital boards, Katie shared her expertise with Bay Area non-profits in areas of board responsibilities, organization and development, board/staff relations and strategic planning. Smith tapped her talents in 1990, and Katie served as a Trustee for five years and a delegate to Five Colleges Incorporated. For the past four years, she’s been a Board member educating people in the Bay Area about the work of the NOW (National Organization for Women) Legal Defense and Education Fund. The Fund is involved with many issues relating to improving the lives of women and girls through legal advocacy, public policy development, and education.
Katie is currently on the board of the International Museum of Women, scheduled to open on a waterfront pier in San Francisco in 2008. The board chairperson is quoted in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, saying, “The museum is an opportunity to give women a voice and value the same way we give value to men.” The sentiment behind these words is just what has motivated Katie throughout most of her life. Wanting her life to matter and figuring out for herself how to achieve that by living her life around what she values, Katie has been a model for many women. She has shown how one woman can fill significant positions where her voice and experiences are included in important decisions. Although too few women hold decision-making roles today, someone such as Katie will continue to inspire others on the path toward full equality and a more balanced dimension of our humanity.
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