Alumna Profile: Karen Gentleman '77

After growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the early 1970s, Karen Gentleman ’77 thought her Midwestern-ness would stick out at Wellesley like a sore thumb.

Now, 36 years after she began as a student, Gentleman has taken the reins of the organization whose mission is to extend the widest possible embrace to all Wellesley women—from Iowa to Ireland to India—and nurture their lifelong connection to each other and to the College: the Wellesley College Alumnae Association.

Gentleman has served in a series of volunteer roles at Wellesley stretching back 25 years, at the club and class levels, and most recently as a member of the WCAA board. “The only opportunity, which I didn’t have any dream of thinking could happen, would be to return as the president,” she says. “So when that call came, I was just amazed and so deeply honored and thrilled.”

Gentleman begins her tenure at a time of dramatic change for the College. As these changes unfold, she says, the association must do two things simultaneously—continue its core mission of fostering connection among Wellesley women across generations, while also re-imagining how best to strengthen those ties and nurture new ones.

“There is lots of great energy within the Alumnae Association, and we’ll need that moving forward,” says Gentleman, who replaces Laura Daignault Gates ’72 as WCAA president. “These are challenging times . . . when we have to be really focused on our core services.”

Technology, Gentleman says, will play a critical role in delivering more streamlined services to more alumnae—a priority the Association is well-positioned to tackle under executive director Susan Challenger ’76, who came to her post last year with 20 years of experience in high-tech.

“We’ll never completely change the way we connect with each other, because we all value the traditions of reunion, we love the magazine. So those things will remain,” Gentleman says. “But the technology, I think, will be a wonderful complement to that.”

Gentleman lives in Indianapolis and runs her own market-research firm, Gentleman Associates. Her track record in market research will help advance two equally important goals: raising the association’s visibility to a broader range of alumnae and understanding what alumnae need and want most from the WCAA. In the mid-1990s, Gentleman helped Wellesley’s Center for Work and Service address these same issues with a major study that captured the career choices and needs of alumnae, allowing the CWS to focus its mission and improve services.

“I’m a facilitator,” Gentleman says. “I listen. I take in feedback from lots of different sources and assimilate it, and try to help people understand, What does all this information mean? What should we do?” As she leads those conversations, the goal will be not only to help strengthen the ties alumnae have to one another and to their College, but to increase their understanding of how the Alumnae Association itself works.

“I think alumnae need to understand more about what the association does, because it is much, much broader than reunion,” Gentleman says. “It doesn’t just happen by magic. The magazine is a lot of work. The Alumnae Achievement Awards, which bring such joy to the winners and pride to the College, that’s a lot of work.”