PSU Magazine Spring 1995

'I ' "The Women's Union was a reall y going concern," Thompson say . "There wa a lot of crossover into the community. Kathy Cornett came out of that ort of ferment of energy and ideas." Cornett and several other students were "really the nucleus of all that work ," Thompson remembers. She also credits Cornett with having enonnous patience to stick with the time-consuming collective decision-making process the women used to arrive at consensus. Cornett took all the women's tudies cla es she could and accumu– lated enough credits for a certificate before the program was fully approved. She al o taught Introduction to Women's Studies in 1976. Earning her B.S. in 1975, she was awarded one of P U' first two women's studies certificates when they were made formally available the next year. From there it was a logical step to enter community ervic . Cornett (right) tours a Portland Habitat for Humanity project with Cynthia Winter, Habitat acting director, and Rob Hardies, assistant director. Portland Habitat for Humanity is one of 275 charitable groups that receives money from the Oregon Community Foundation, where Cornett is vice presi· dent for programs. "There was never any question that I would work for the non-profit and public sector," Cornett says. "I attribute a lot of what I've done to the tradi tion of ervice in my family through organizing people to accomplish their own aim." The Oregon Community Founda– tion wants to do exact!y that. On one hand the state seems to be growing more polarized-between rich and poor, urban and rural, young and old, eastern desert and western valley. Yet Cornett i optimi tic about O regon's chance of weathering the economic, demographic, and political storm ahead. "We are very lucky in Oregon," she says. "We have a mall population and a form of government that people can still touch. There's a lot of belief that things can change. When I talk to people from other states, I'm not ure they have that." c omen 's job takes her all over the state, and she senses a trong pos itive feeling in O regon's com– munities. People from every quarter are bringing new proj ect idea fo r local con– trol and community improvement to the OCF. "Given half a chance, people have a lot of impulse to be involved," she say . The crucial thing is to understand how complex people' li ves are today, and to integrate opportunities for community activity with the demands of work and family so that people don't have to sacrifice one for the other. Family se rvices and voluntee r-dependent ocial programs mu t acknowledge the degree of overload many people are experiencing just trying to keep up. "What I'm encouraged about now is that I ee peop le in communitie attacking problems in holistic ways," she says. "In the '70 we could afford to run programs in isolation. We didn 't have the underlying notion to link." Now, he say , community activists know "we' re not go ing anywhere if we're not connecting." Cornett is active in more than just the OCF. he serves on the board of Portland Impact, a utheast Portland anti-poverty organizati n, and the State Commi ion on National and Commun– ity Service. The latter group supervises AmeriCorps in Oregon, and Cornett finds the level of commitment among AmeriCorps volunteers to be high. "We hear a lot about Generation X, but there's a lot of interest in that generation in service," she says. "Young people say, 'Don't give me a b.s. job. Don't give me something that's not tangibly helping.' They're not interested in endless meetings and political infighting." Another sign of hope fo r Cornett is a hi ft in the metaphor that shapes our soc iety. In the past, the community has been hierarchical, with tructured authoritarian relationships between policymakers and recipient . That top-down concept no longer works. We're moving into a vision of society as a web of interconnecting lateral tructure . "Leader hip is different," he says. "We used to have Tom McCall and G lenn Jackson , people who could just get things done" through the fo rce of their individual personalities. Now, she says, "leadership has got to be hori zontal and inclusive. It feels less efficient to people, but you can 't make closed-door decisions any more. Everybody ha to be at the table." Though he would be too modest to agree, the new face of leadership in Oregon look omething like Kathleen Cornett. Her wholehearted dedication to the state and her ability to embrace chang hine through like a beacon . "I love O regon," she says with a grin. "Make sure you get that into the article." D (Valerie Brown , a Portland freelance writer, is a frequent contributor to PSU Magaz ine. ) PRI G 1995 15