About Kathy "K.P." Pelleran-Mahoney

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• Twenty-five years in nonprofit management
• More than 40 years of experience in community development, collaboration, volunteer engagement, public relations and communications
• Successful outcomes through fifteen years of congressional and legislative education and advocacy
• Proven leader in fund development, cost-containment, and business management

Kathy's work has advanced health care for all, women’s rights to autonomy over medical decisions, protecting reproductive freedom, early childhood education and care, after-school access, tobacco education and cessation, alternative fuel policies to reduce greenhouse gasses and our carbon footprint, programs to help increase family functioning and get troubled kids back on track, agriculture policy, disaster relief for farmers, and economic development and job creation. She believes in opportunities for people to get a good public education that can lead to fair work opportunities with fair wages.

Respect for Michigan’s agriculture production and an environment with clean air, water, and land is part of her character. Having grown up in rural Michigan, and living on three of the Great Lakes, she has high regard for our clean air, water, and land and the viability of what we produce to help feed people in our communities, state, nation, and worldwide.

Kathy has been a strong proponent for people being able to live, learn, work, and play as members of thriving communities where they are able to meet their economic needs and prosper. Her strong public education was the basis for her ability to work worldwide. She maintains that the two greatest gifts of many to our people in our great democracy are a strong public education and our right to vote in free and fair elections. Through personal involvement, Kathy believes we are able to choose people as our representatives who will put our values forward through policies, and help us to navigate unfamiliar agency actions and procedures to resolve our concerns.

As a young woman, Kathy put herself through college working in food service, as a peer counselor in the dormitory system, as a tutor-counselor for Upward Bound students, and as interim Storekeeper for the College’s Inventory and Supply during the largest expansion of the College’s history. After graduating, she was a youth counselor in Mackinac County working with troubled youth where she coordinated with social services, the county probate court, school personnel, and law enforcement leaders. She tutored one young wayward man in reading and had him released weekly from jail to participate in a group reading program. Though he went to prison, he wrote her a letter to thank her for believing in him and assisting him in his journey to read and later get his GED.

Kathy's policy chops were honed while she worked for State Senator Mitch Irwin (D-Sault Ste. Marie), U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), and a member of Congress for nine years; as an elected college trustee for seven years, and two years as the City Clerk in Montague. She learned the ins and outs of government on the job and what it meant to help people solve problems in their dealings with government. She worked on policies across the board at the local, state, and federal levels. Later, she applied that knowledge in nonprofits working for the Girl Scout council, the Council for a Strong America, Citizen Action, the United Way of the Lakeshore; and as a consultant.

In the mid-1990s, she was a program officer and trainer for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs stationed in Moscow, Russia where she worked with budding civic organizations and political parties; candidates, and local, regional, and national leaders.

Pelleran-Mahoney recalls one local leader from a group she trained who called her after the local elections in Astrakhan at the tip of the Caspian Sea; he exclaimed, “We won! We all won who you trained! Next time you just train Yabloka!” She replied, “You are now the expert; you are qualified to do the training.” Her work took her across the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the Baltic countries.

The daughter of small business owners, Kathy learned a solid work ethic. To pay half the cost of her school clothes she baby sat and picked berries in the summers, and later worked at the family market. She is a card carrying member of the Girl Scouts USA from Brownie scout through present as a life member. Being raised in the Lutheran church, but with family of differing faiths, Kathy has strong beliefs in duty to God and country.