As a younger baby, Kathy Abbott spent her summers on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Her mother and father have been environmental conservationists who helped her to understand nature. Abbott additionally had two aunts who introduced her to the Cape seashores and woods. Whereas exploring the pure habitats, her aunts would determine vegetation and animals. These interactions helped Abbott to note and attune to her surroundings. 

At age 14, Abbott’s household moved to Cape Cod full-time. In her new college, Abbott enrolled in a category at Falmouth Excessive College referred to as “Cape Cod Surroundings” that targeted on horticulture, forestry, landscaping and geomorphology. 

“It was after I was taking that class that I noticed that that is what I wished to do,” she says. A line below her yearbook picture underscored her life objective: to “save a tree.”

Kathy Abbott’s street to CEO wasn’t simple

Now at age 66, Abbott is the primary president and CEO of Boston Harbor Now. Created in 2016, Boston Harbor Now is a merger of two nonprofit organizations—Boston Harbor Island Alliance and Boston Harbor Affiliation. Because the chief of the brand new civic nonprofit, Abbott oversees the Boston Harbor waterfront and the Boston Harbor Islands Nationwide and State Park.

Although she’s now a profitable CEO, the street to get there was lengthy and bumpy. Abbott says she skilled discrimination on “a number of fronts” as an overtly homosexual lady working in male-dominated conservative organizations. 

Her first encounter with discrimination occurred after her sophomore 12 months in faculty, when she tried to get a summer season job working for the Division of Public Works (DPW) in Falmouth. As an alternative of permitting her to use for a job, the DPW director mentioned to her, “We solely rent boys from the soccer group,” and instructed she “stroll throughout the road and go get a job on the recreation division as a result of that’s the place the ladies go.” 

Abbott felt the total sting of that rejection. “I’ll always remember that quote,” she says. “I used to be gobsmacked that anyone would say that.”

Previous to making use of, she had a five-week internship place as a laborer working for the Nationwide Park Service on the Minute Man in Harmony, Massachusetts. “Fortunately, I already had a job within the subject, so I didn’t really feel completely annihilated,” she says. She heeded the DPW director’s recommendation and bought a job managing the playground on the Falmouth Recreation Division. The job was a blast, nevertheless it wasn’t sufficient.

So Abbott locked in two different jobs that summer season—one as a supervisor of a neighborhood pool and the opposite because the forewoman of a panorama crew that additionally managed a greenhouse. “I might have somewhat labored for the park division, however that was a fantastic summer season,” she remembers.

Working her method up

Abbott’s first place for the Boston Harbor Islands was an internship as a park ranger for Gallops Island throughout her undergraduate program at College of Massachusetts (UMASS) in Amherst. “I did every part from choosing up the trash on the seashore each morning to giving talks and walks,” she says. Her job was a mixture of training individuals who visited the island together with implementing the rules. “ It was a fantastic expertise, and I liked it,” she says.

After graduating faculty, she labored as a park planner for the Boston Harbor Islands for 10 years. To additional her training, she acquired a grasp’s diploma in public administration from Harvard College. It was then that she had a “Goldilocks” epiphany when attempting to determine what sort of environmental authorities company she wished to work for. 

“Nationwide parks are too massive. I’d by no means be capable to make an impression or get anyplace, and clearly, municipal parks have been too small. State parks have been going to be excellent,” she explains. 

In 1991, Michael Dukakis was on his method out as governor of Massachusetts. It was an financial catastrophe, and with funding for presidency applications in flux, Abbott’s twin function because the assistant secretary and deputy commissioner for the Massachusetts Division of Environmental Administration (DEM) wasn’t going nicely. “I assumed—this was how naive I used to be—as a result of I grew up there that I’d be the perfect particular person to tackle this horrible process, not realizing what a private toll that might take. It was brutal,” she says. 

After virtually two years in that twin function, Abbott weighed her choices. “I’m an enormous believer that everyone ought to work in each sector. It makes you rather more efficient and in a position to work with one another,” she explains. “I actually wished to attempt nonprofits.”

Ardour pays off

The subsequent cease in her profession journey was as vp of applications for The College for Discipline Research in Beverly, Massachusetts, a world examine overseas program. “I hadn’t grown up with any cash. So I hadn’t actually traveled a lot in any respect,” she explains. “I bought to see the world for about 5 years operating round managing crises, as a result of that’s what we’re doing—managing hundreds of school age college students in distant, extremely thrilling locations.”

Although Abbott liked touring, she felt the urge to return working with the surroundings. “I simply missed having a neighborhood impression. I grew up doing that, and I actually missed it,” she says. 

When the Boston Harbor Islands grew to become a nationwide park in 1996, the group wanted somebody to supervise it. Abbott stepped in as the primary president and CEO of the Island Alliance.

After six years within the place, Gov. Mitt Romney’s administration recruited Abbott to create a brand new group referred to as Division of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), which might handle the state parks in Massachusetts. “I ended up with this historical past of mergers, startups and turnarounds,” she says. “Not for the faint of coronary heart.”

Certainly, issues would quickly develop into tougher. 

Dealing with discrimination

After homosexual marriage grew to become authorized in Massachusetts on November 18, 2003, Abbott married her companion of six years—a transfer “the Romney administration wasn’t actually glad about,” she says.

Nothing was overtly mentioned to Abbott about her new marriage, however she seen delicate modifications in how she was handled after her wedding ceremony announcement appeared within the newspapers. 

Regardless of Abbott being within the high 10% of state staff, Romney requested her to resign attributable to poor snow removing of the parkway. Although she sensed one thing like this is able to occur, she nonetheless wasn’t ready for it. 

“It was the perfect job I ever had. I liked it to items, and I’d in all probability nonetheless be there if issues had gone otherwise,” she says.

Romney quickly started operating for president of the US, which sophisticated Abbott’s seek for a brand new job. When she interviewed for positions, her interviewers requested why she resigned. “No one needs to rent you to be their CEO when you may need been fired by the [potential] subsequent president of the US,” she says.

Regardless of these challenges, Abbott believes the expertise formed her. “I’ve completely no regrets, regardless of the impacts that it had on my profession, as a result of it taught me how necessary it isn’t to outline your self,” she says.

Kathy Abbott turns into Boston Harbor Now’s president and CEO

She finally bought a job at Tower Hill Botanic Backyard in Massachusetts and created a number of new applications that greater than doubled the variety of annual guests. All of the whereas, she stored receiving calls asking her to simply accept the function as president and CEO of the newly shaped Boston Harbor Now. Regardless of responding “no” the primary few instances, she finally agreed. 

Abbott says certainly one of her targets as CEO is “to assist individuals perceive their impression on nature and nature’s impression on them.” She hopes the individuals in Boston will acknowledge the way in which the surroundings contributes to their social, environmental and financial well being, and certainly one of her most necessary targets is ensuring all people has entry to these advantages. 

Even because the CEO, she nonetheless goes again to her roots as a park ranger when obligatory. “The No. 1 method individuals fee their park experiences is by the cleanliness of the loos,” she says. So when she not too long ago noticed a unclean rest room throughout certainly one of her journeys, she grabbed a brush and sponge and went to work.

That will sound shocking, nevertheless it all comes naturally when ardour is at play. Abbott concurs. “Determine what you’re feeling enthusiastic about, and pursue it as a result of issues will come to you,” she says. They actually have for her.

Photograph by Arlan Fonseca for Boston Harbor Now.