04/02/2019
And last but definitely not least, our final Women’s Leadership Spotlight in honor of comes to us from Kathy Jeavons, Executive Vice President & Interim President.
Kathy specializes in reputation management and engagement – helping clients navigate the connections between government, business and consumers. Her 25-plus years of agency and government experience includes award-winning work in communications, public affairs, issue advocacy and crisis communications for a wide range of corporate and trade association clients in industry sectors including energy, healthcare, transportation and financial services.
Most recently Kathy was Senior Vice President at Story Partners, LLC, where she where she was responsible for leading some of the firm’s most important client engagements in the healthcare, energy, and food and nutrition industry sectors. Previously, Kathy was a partner and director of the corporate and public affairs practice in the Washington, D.C. office of Ketchum, Inc. During her 14 years at Ketchum she provided strategic counsel and designed and led advocacy campaigns for a wide range of clients and sovereign governments. Kathy also served as managing director in the Washington office of Public Strategies, Inc. (now Hill & Knowlton Strategies).
Prior to her agency work, Kathy spent seven years working for the federal government in Washington, D.C. From 1989 to 1992, Kathy served as associate director for public liaison at the White House, where she was the principal White House contact for NGOs, corporations and trade associations on environmental, energy and healthcare issues. During her White House tenure, she organized and maintained a coalition of more than 200 business groups, trade associations and environmental interests to support the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, which was signed into law in 1990. She also served as a public affairs specialist at the U.S. Department of Energy, where she worked directly with business and trade association representatives and organized coalitions to support the Bush Administration’s National Energy Legislation, which passed in fall 1992.
Kathy serves on the Advisory Board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and is also a former member of the board of the Public Affairs Council. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Kathy graduated from Dartmouth college with a B.A. in Art History.
Q: What women have served as your role models in life and throughout your career?
A: I’d say the woman has had the most profound impact and influence on my career is my boss from my days in the Bush 41 White House – Bobbie Kilberg. At the time, Bobbie was Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House office of Public Liaison and a wife and mother to five young children. Her ability to juggle the demands of an intense, high-stress, high-stakes job and a complicated family life was truly remarkable. Most importantly, however, it was who Bobbie showed me and my colleagues what effective leadership means. It means trusting and believing in your team and being their champion and their defender when necessary. It means giving them the support they need to have confidence in their abilities and opportunities to challenge themselves professionally. It means giving credit where credit is due and taking responsibility for when things go wrong. And it also means not taking yourself too seriously. I try to live up to the examples she set every day.
Q: How do you think the industry’s attitude towards women has changed since you began your career?
A: I wish I could say that it’s changed significantly and only for the better, but I think that would be a “PR” answer. I think because of the positive experiences I had early in my career at the White House with a strong female role model I probably wasn’t as exposed as others to the challenges so many women faced back then. I never really felt I was denied opportunities because I was a woman. That said, I think what still needs to change is for women to be better at supporting each other.
Q: If you could go back to your early 20s, what advice would you give yourself about entering the workforce?
A: Be more confident and assertive and less deferential.
Q: What book, TV show, or podcast have you been binging recently?
A: My TV show binge is “Secret City” on Netflix. It’s like the Australian version of “Homeland,” – it’s about political backstabbing, government intrigue, national security and terrorism – only more sophisticated and less prone to “jumping the shark.”
