Kathy Lantry Takes ‘Being a Good Neighbor’ to New Heights In Her Professional and Volunteer Work

Kathy Lantry, President of the St. Paul City Council since 2003, is a life-long resident of St. Paul’s East Side. She draws inspiration for her professional work from her deep commitment to being a ‘good neighbor’ and ‘good citizen’ herself, and wanting to be sure that others are as well. She is a problem solver who takes a pragmatic approach and therefore is motivated to tie her values to action. For Kathy this means working to ensure that people have the resources they need to make their neighborhoods good places for all to live.

As a high-energy politician, who is always in negotiations with others to assign resources to the best programs, Kathy is always on the watch for programs that are strongly ‘results-oriented’, where staff uses money they receive from government  and others wisely as evidenced by improvements in the lives of people they serve.

One day in 1994, Kathy Lantry was listening to Nancy LeTourneau, Executive Director of St. Paul Youth Services, talk about the agency’s programs to redirect youth who are starting to get in trouble at school, at home or with the law.  Nancy’s skill as a great storyteller drew Kathy’s attention to the agency; she made an immediate connection to needs in her own neighborhood and saw in the programs Nancy was describing an excellent approach to ensuring that youth stay active, positively involved, productive, and accountable to others.   In 2003, Kathy joined the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors; in 2012, Kathy begins her two-year term as its Chair.

Kathy sees in the agency programs some of the same structures of support and accountability that she internalized growing up in a close-knit family whose lives centered on being responsible to family and neighbors and helping others, either through their faith community or in the political arena.  Kathy remembers traveling with her family to Iowa in 1968 as a young girl to work on the Presidential campaign of then Vice President Hubert Humphrey.   She received additional family inspiration for her future career in politics from her mother who became one of the first women members of the Minnesota Senate.

Kathy grew up two blocks from where she now lives with her husband and where her two young adult sons return to stay for various periods.    She has huge loyalty for her community. She sees some of the city’s challenges to handle conflicts due to diversity of culture and class in some of the tensions that resulted from rapid cultural change in her own neighborhood. One of those tensions is many young people outdoors in public spaces with little opportunity for productive activity and therefore often causing disturbances. She is grateful for the wisdom that St. Paul Youth Service’s Director of Programs, Dave Wilmes, brings to understanding how to work effectively with youth with challenging behaviors.   She wishes there were ‘hundreds of Dave’ to work with representatives of many community agencies so they could be more effective in working with these same youth.  She sees the way the organization’s program counselors work effectively with youth, particularly through the All Children Excel (ACE) and Behavior Intervention Program (BIP) as new models for helping these youth be more engaged and accountable in their communities.

Kathy enjoys her volunteer time on the St. Paul Youth Services Board of Directors because she likes ‘being part of something’.  She values the cohesiveness of the Board members to focus on mission and strategies, – the latter emphasized in new ways following the 2010 Board Strategic Planning Process.  She says Board members work well together because everyone is ‘picking up the rope and all pulling in the same direction’.  Kathy reflects on her strength as providing ‘directness’ to Board discussion and the courage to “cut to the chase” and make decisions.  She thrives on the opportunity to ‘identify the problem and seek the solution’, a process that requires both focus and creativity from everyone and providing Kathy with the opportunity to use her proven leadership skills.

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