Head of BC’s Board of Trustees to women: Promote yourself in ‘the right way’

By Greg O’Brien
Special to the BIR
The surname and resume in stereotypical Boston circles, where once Irish were admonished not to apply for jobs and women were relegated to second-class status, paint a conflicting picture in a man’s world:
McGillycuddy, as Irish as they come, former executive vice president of FleetBoston Financial, with a list of achievements the envy of any board room, and currently the chairwoman of Boston College’s Board of Trustees, the first woman to hold the position in the school’s 150-year history.
Now add in some New York street smarts.
Move over, boys. You’ve just met Kathleen.

Kathleen M. McGillycuddy, a woman who has focused more in her life on “producing the goods” than on gender prejudice, didn’t just shatter the glass ceiling; she demolished it. McGillycuddy, who retired in 2003, was a key executive in elite Boston banking circles for nearly 30 years during the rough and tumble days of consolidation. At FleetBoston Financial she led the integration and growth of consolidated Fleet and BankBoston’s high net worth business clients’ with more than $50 billion assets under management. Previous to that she was executive vice president and executive director for Global Treasury for BankBoston and executive vice president of Corporate Treasury for Bank of New England.
Suffice it to say that her journey was a safe and productive passage in seas that were at times patrolled by barracudas. She set a gold standard for women in the workplace.
“You always have to keep an oar in the water,” she said in an interview. “Keep your head up and your ambitions well understood. You need to be deliberate.”
McGillycuddy has always been purposeful, lessons learned early in life from her late father Michael, who worked as an Avon executive at 30 Rock in Manhattan. “I grew up innocent to gender prejudice,” she says. “I always imagined that I would have an interesting career. My dad taught me to ignore restrictions based on gender, to rise to the occasion and keep my dignity.”
By any measure, McGillycuddy is one of the most dignified and accomplished Boston banking executives in recent memory. At FleetBoston Financial, she helped successfully consolidate two banking institutions with 57 offices across eight states, creating a new management team; streamlined business practices; and cut expenses by 40 percent. At BankBoston, she oversaw the treasury for an $86 billion global financial services company, and earlier at Bank of New England, she planned and completed the consolidation of more than 20 banks throughout New England to a single-portfolio function of management, sales, and trading.
“I’ve always believed your work should speak for itself,” she says, sounding a bit like her parents. “You need to produce the goods.”
Michael and Mary Ellen (Maloney) McGillycuddy, both first- generation Irish Americans (Michael was born in the Bronx, Mary Ellen in Brooklyn), produced the goods themselves: a high achieving set of four siblings—two girls and two boys. The family comes from good working class stock, the McGillycuddys hailing from County Mayo, and the Maloneys from small towns in central Ireland where they raised horses and farmed.
“My mom was at the helm at home; she set high standards, and expected us to live up to them,” she says. “My dad was a gentleman’s gentleman,” she adds. And he was one “heckuva” golfer, regularly shooting in the high 70s and low 80s. “Golf was a very important part of my father’s life. Growing up we had periods of silence on Saturdays and Sundays while he watched a golf tournament on television.”
A soldier in Patton’s Army in the North African, Italian, and Normandy campaigns, Michael McGillycuddy was disciplined in every way, and instilled that same sense of a purpose in his children, most notably through education.
Born and raised in the metropolitan New York village of Suffern, across the Tappan Zee Bridge from Sleepy Hollow, Kathleen, now 63, was marinated in Catholic education— first at Sacred Heart School in Suffern, then at the private Mount Saint Vincent Academy in Tuxedo Park, and finally at the Newton College of the Sacred Heart, which became an integral part of the Boston College family in the mid 1970s. After graduation and a stint as a computer programmer for the John Hancock Insurance Company, she earned an MBA at Babson, furthering her studies in finance.
At Newton College, McGillycuddy majored in economics, a natural segue for someone with such a logical and mathematically orientated mind. “I chose economics,” she says, “because it was a mix between a practical application and a complicated mathematical discipline, a blend of the rigid with a practical side.”
The definition suits McGillycuddy perfectly. She sees herself more of a blend of the two than rigorously Irish or solidly woman. In retirement, she lives in Newton with her husband, Ronald Logue, a retired State Street Corporation executive. McGillycuddy has no children; her husband has two from a previous marriage. In 2008, they established the McGillycuddy-Logue Center for Undergraduate Global Studies at BC to promote innovative international learning for undergraduates.
Boston College has been, and is, an essential element in McGillycuddy’s life. A trustee since 2002, she is co-chairwoman of BC’s ongoing “Light the World” $1.5 billion capital campaign to fund academic programs, financial aid commitments, student formation initiatives, and campus construction projects. She also is founding co-chairwoman and current chairwoman of BC’s Council for Women of Boston College, which has as its mission supporting women as leaders and influential participants in the university community.
Of all her significant achievements, McGillycuddy is most proud of her leadership role in opening previously locked professional doors for women. “The path I chose was very much a man’s world…I was the young girl they gave a job to, and I managed to work my way to become head of treasury of the Bank of Boston, which at the time was the premier banking institution in New England.”
Did she have to bang heads along the way?
“You have to have your wits about you, actively manage your career, and when opportunities arise, go for it. Be smart and know what you are doing. I tell young woman that they need to be a bit of a self-promoter in the right way. It’s not flag waving; you just need to ensure that your accomplishments are understood. Finally, you should align yourself with a sponsor, someone ahead of you with influence and who knows your capabilities… You have one life. You can’t live it for a cause, and you can’t live it the way someone else wants you to live it. You have to live it they way you think you should live it, the way you want to live it.”
For her part, McGillycuddy is optimistic about the future role of women in the workplace. “The advancement has been evolutionary and generational,” she says. “There is no magic wand, but there is optimism. And that is good. Companies, I believe, need to change more in the way they do business, and provide greater opportunities for gifted women. Success ought not to be gender focused.”
The word “dignity” seems to summarize McGillycuddy persona. “I’ve tried throughout my life to focus on what it takes to succeed graciously,” she says. “That’s a word, I hope, that is used to describe me after I go on. I would like to be thought of as gracious, not sharp-elbowed.”
Few would argue that in a sharp-elbowed man’s world, McGillycuddy, the young Irish girl who asked for a job, is fully gracious.

Greg O’Brien, a regular Boston Irish Reporter contributor, is president of Stony Brook Group, a publishing and political/communications strategy company. The author/editor of several books, he writes frequently for regional and national publications.