Kathy Turner

Position: President of The Rotary Club of Los Angeles, and founding principal of Helstrom Turner & Associates, an executive search firm in L.A.

Born: June 25, 1947

Education: Colorado State University at Fort Collins, B.A. English education, 1969

Hobbies: Collecting antiques (especially miniature lamps), walking and biking along the Long Beach shore with her husband and dining at new restaurants.

Personal: Married for 26 years

In July, Kathy Turner became the first woman president of the 88-year-old Rotary Club of Los Angeles, a service organization that counts L.A. District Attorney Gil Garcetti, Los Angeles Times Publisher Richard Schlosberg and Unocal Chairman and CEO Roger Beach among its 600 members.

It was only 10 years ago that the United States Supreme Court forced the Rotary Club to accept women as members a fact Turner, whose day job is running an executive search firm, said she didn’t know until she assumed office.

Women currently comprise 13 percent of the 400,000 Rotarians in the United States.

Turner joined the Rotary Club in 1989, after she attended a meeting that impressed her. By 1993, she was on the executive board, and she has progressed through the ranks ever since.

Now Turner is leading the L.A. Rotary Club in implementing its new service project, called the Urban Peace Initiative. Turner has been working on developing the project since last summer, when she attended a conference of Rotary International presidents. The project, still in its infancy, will involve an academic and values mentoring program at Boyle Heights Elementary Institute. Its aim is to steer inner-city youth away from crime and toward productive pursuits.

Question: Why did you join the Rotary Club?

Answer: I didn’t know a lot about the Rotary Club. I grew up in a very small town in western Colorado where they had Lyons Club, but no Jaycees no Rotary.

At the time I was working for Carter Hawley Hale and a friend of mine invited me to a meeting. I just loved the meetings, and I got to learn more about the club: the chance for fellowship and community service.

And frankly, I really needed a balance in my life. I was definitely a workaholic. And retailers which I was for 20 years before I opened this business don’t encourage their employees to get involved in the community.

It was such a large club that I kind of hung back on the sidelines for about a year, to see where I fit. Then I got really involved in the social activities group; then I got really involved in the membership committee.

So I really haven’t been involved all that long. Most of the men who have become president had been members much longer.

Q: As president, how do you plan to address the issue of membership recruitment and retention?

A: We have to make meetings exciting, rewarding and fun. It’s almost like theater: they want to be entertained. The meetings have to move and be topical and timely, and you just have to have a lot of energy and passion up there.

We’re doing speaker receptions, which have been very successful. The most recent one we had was at USC, where we had Dr. Steve Sample who’s president there and a Rotarian as host.

What we’re finding is that when our members host these receptions at their place of business and talk about why Rotary is important to them, they can also demonstrate the many aspects of Rotary. That’s very appealing, because it is an opportunity for fellowship a lot of my best friends right now are Rotarians. Both of my attorneys are Rotarians, my dentist is a Rotarian. It’s good for work. We support each other as best we can.

Q: As the first female president, do you think there’s the added expectation that you’ll concentrate on recruiting and retaining female members?

A: I think there is an expectation that I’ll work on adding diversity to our club, more female members. We already have a number of wonderful, successful women as members. Caroline Ahmanson was the first female member of the Rotary.

A lot of service organizations suffer from the misperception that they’re old boys’ clubs, and people don’t always realize that women are invited to join and that the entire membership is genuinely pleased to have them here. Everyone has been completely supportive of me since the day I joined.

Q: A number of women might feel they don’t have time between their work and family responsibilities to participate in Rotary functions. How do you plan to address that?

A: Time is so precious to all of us; we all lead fast-paced, busy lives. Effective management requires constant prioritization. It’s also a process of maturity we learn as we live. The responsibilities of this presidency have probably added about two or three hours to my days, but it’s so richly rewarding. I get back far more than I give. And I don’t have any children, which probably helps, and I have a wonderful, supportive husband.

Q: Does it bother you that much of the attention you’re getting is because you’re the first female president?

A: I’m (just) trying to be the best president I can be. And I don’t feel that I’m being held to a separate standard (by the members), although I do feel that they are holding me to a high standard.

Q: What intrigued you about the Urban Peace Initiative?

A: Our international president read a CNN poll last year that said one out of four people who live in urban areas will be impacted by crime. And as the population in these large cities continues to grow all the time, this is a problem that affects everyone. This is really a project that’s relevant and timely to our members.

Q: How’s the L.A. Rotary Club going to implement this program?

A: We’re going to get to the kids early, kindergarten through fourth grade, before they have a chance to start modeling the aggressive behavior they’ve seen.

We’re doing academic and value mentoring at the Boyle Heights Elementary Institute. In order for kids to participate in the program, the parents have to agree to be part of this program. So the parents get training: you can’t really mentor a child, then send them back to an abusive home where the parents know nothing about nurturing or conflict resolution. If you teach their parents the critical learning elements, that empowers them as well as their kids.

Then the third part of the model is to create incentives to keep kids in school. You find very often that these kids have dropped out of school, and their expectation is not to go on to college. Many of these kids are very intelligent, but they need the right training and support.

This is a big project. I sound a little bit like Pollyanna. I know it’s not going to be easy. This has been a year in the planning, just figuring out what we’re going to do. And typically, Rotarians or anyone who gives money to community service projects want to know, “OK, what’s the program?”

So I have been willing to say this is not business as usual. We’re going to have to slow down, be more thoughtful, think about how we can change behavior, and get these programs to work together.

Q: A year from now, when your term has ended, what do you want to be remembered for?

A: That we took a major step forward in seriously looking at what we can do to make a difference in making our city a more peaceful place.