Lise L. Luttgens
CEO, Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles

Born in 1953 in San Francisco, California.

Lise L. Luttgens was appointed the first chief executive officer of the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles (GSGLA) in December 2008. The GSGLA is the result of an historic merger of six legacy Los Angeles-area councils into a new organization, one of the largest in the nation, with an initial enrollment of over 41,000 girls and 24,000 adult members in a wide range of settings and programs.

She founded and operated her own professional training and coaching consultancy, Luttgens & Associates, from 2005 to 2008. During that time, she also served as interim CEO of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California, helping to unify six entities into a single organization.

As the COO of Fulfillment Fund (a nonprofit college access organization) from 2003 to 2005, she established business systems and processes, and realigned operations and the financial structure to serve students in the LA Unified School District.

In her almost 30 years as a hospital administrator, Ms. Luttgens served as senior vice president and chief operating officer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA); CEO of the Doheny Eye Hospital and COO of the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine; and associate director of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center.

Ms. Luttgens received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Beloit College, a master’s degree in public health (with an emphasis in hospital administration) from Yale University’s School of Medicine, and an advanced fellowship in academic medical center administration from the University of Michigan. She completed the Executive Management Program from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and received certification from the College of Executive Coaching.

A Girl Scout while growing up in San Francisco, Ms. Luttgens brings to all of her leadership positions an enthusiasm that draws upon her deep reservoir of opportunities seen and experienced during Girl Scouts. She brings a true business compass to all of her roles in the nonprofit world. Her inclusive leadership style persuades, with grace, medical titans to work through the challenges of administering healthcare facilities in service to men, women, and children.

Elizabeth Ghaffari: You’ve had quite an extensive education—Beloit, public health at Yale School of Medicine, advanced fellowship at University of Michigan, UCLA certificate in management, and then a certification in coaching. Tell me about the choices behind your education. Why did you go all the way to Wisconsin?

Lise Luttgens: I was slightly impatient in my youth. I graduated from high school as a junior—a year earlier than expected. I was accepted at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and actually only stayed there for two years before moving to the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada for one summer, thinking I might want to pursue an acting career.

I knew I needed a liberal arts degree, so I next chose Beloit College in Wisconsin, in large part, because I had never been out of the West. I wanted some experience outside of California—felt that some diversity would be good. My family is now a fourth-generation California family. Not everyone in the world does things the way they’re done in San Francisco.

I think I was just restless. By the time I landed somewhere, I was looking ahead and asking myself, “Where am I going to go next?” But I’ve since learned to sit still—I stayed in one job for twelve years. Back in those days, I was young, ambitious, and had a lot of pent-up energy. To their credit, my parents allowed me to pursue my dreams in my way. They were very supportive and allowed me to find my own set point—my own “true north”—even though they could imagine some of the mistakes I could make along the way. I’m really grateful for that support.

I did make some mistakes along the way. Transferring to multiple schools as an undergraduate is not a recommended way of putting down roots, learning a routine, establishing yourself and making lifelong friends. Although I managed to have a few of those—my roommate from Pitzer and a classmate from my senior year abroad at Beloit both are still very dear friends. I see them regularly, now almost forty years later. I have a good network because I like to stay in touch with people who have made a difference in my life. I’ve learned how to be resilient, adaptable, and flexible. Then again, when my own daughter was ready to go to college, I made it extremely clear that I felt it was important that she choose a school and stay with it for four years, regardless of whether she was happy or not in the first semester.

My education really is the reason I’ve been able to have such a strong career trajectory. I was fortunate to enter into a career at a time where people, women especially, could move up very quickly.

I knew, early on, that I wanted to work in hospital administration. After I graduated from college, I did some pretty extensive interviewing of leaders—community leaders, both men and women—because I wanted to get my arms around where I could fit well, where I could be of service, where I could be happy, productive, and sustain a lifelong career. I was trying to decide between a position in a university setting or in a hospital setting—I felt that both options were very attractive as microcosms of the way the world works.

Ghaffari: It seems like you have this pattern of interviewing people. How did you figure that out?

Luttgens: When I came back to San Francisco—after my undergraduate work at Beloit and working in London for seven months—I found myself in the same situation as most young people back then. I had a liberal arts education and a bachelor’s in psychology. I’d done some work in communications—engineering and operations at a public broadcasting television station. But, I had no clue what I wanted to do. I had just turned twenty-one years old. It was important to me to take some time after graduating from college.

I was fortunate in that my mother, Leslie Luttgens, was an active community leader and board leader in many organizations in the Bay Area. She encouraged me to think deeply about where I could find a space for myself in the world. She opened doors for me by putting me in touch with some of her colleagues and contacts. I was fortunate to be able to interview key leaders in San Francisco who had an association with her through her community and board work. I asked questions about how they got to their positions, gathered information about what inspired them, and listened to their advice. That experience is a model that I use to this day—to seek input, ask for counsel, and be open and receptive to whatever people have to offer about their opinions or passions.

Ghaffari: Tell me a little about your family.

Luttgens: I am an only child. My father was a physician—a hematologist—in private practice in San Francisco. He died in 1982 after a long bout with Parkinson’s disease.

The whole time that my father was in private practice, my mother was working as well as parenting. She was always very involved in the community. I’m aware that she played roles of being a great mother and being active outside our home, which in those days was different from many of my friends. I had no idea what she did. And it really wasn’t until I became an executive that I developed an appreciation for how extraordinary it was to have that kind of role model. She was one of the first women invited to serve on public company boards in addition to her extensive charity and community work.¹

Ghaffari: Tell me about your first job and how important it was.

Luttgens: My first real job after college was working at Presbyterian Hospital at the Pacific Medical Center [PMC] in San Francisco. I was the assistant to the director of the Department of Education and Ancillary Services, basically a staff role supporting the director. It was a clerical, secretarial, and administrative role. I worked for a very enlightened woman, Dr. Sandra Hellman. She shared her responsibilities as director with me and allowed me to stretch in my function as her assistant. She was well ahead of her time, treating me more than just an hourly employee.

I did a lot of hard work and moved quickly into all of the realms in which she worked, learning as much as I could about how a hospital functions. We provided education for house staff, interns, and residents—continuing medical education, nursing, in-service, and management training. As she moved up in the organization, so did I. She was a role model as a respected woman in leadership with an advanced degree in public health. She was tough, but fair. She worked very hard and expected me to do so as well.

Ghaffari: She was one of your first mentors?

Luttgens: Ironically, once I was on that job, my first real mentor was the chief operating officer, Frederick C. Meyer. He took an interest in many of the front-line staff and really went out of his way to encourage me, talking with me from time to time about my career interests.

__________

He nudged me to go back to graduate school, probably a little bit before I felt ready. I credit him with encouraging me to think big, to be ambitious, and to look for the strongest graduate program possible, and then excel in it.

Fred said, “It’s time for you to go back to graduate school, and I don’t think it will serve you well to go into a part-time public health program and keep working here.” I had planned go to UC Berkeley while continuing to work full-time at PMC. He said, “No. I think you should go back to a full-time graduate program, immerse yourself as a student, and really take a deep dive in. And I think you can go anywhere you set your mind to.” Together, we sent away—in those days everything was snail mail—for university catalogs, looking at everything that was being offered in hospital administration.

I interviewed with admissions officers and professors at Washington, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, University of Michigan, UC Berkeley, North Carolina, and Duke. I was very pleased to be accepted at Yale. Based on Fred’s advice, I moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and was wildly happy for two years. In between my two academic years at Yale, I served as Fred’s administrative resident at PMC, which was one of the highlights of my career.

Ghaffari: What was the Yale experience like?

Luttgens: There were twelve students in the hospital administration program. We all did well, but several of my classmates have become giants in the field. One in particular is Marna Parke Borgstrom. She and I studied together all the way through our two-year curriculum. She became the administrative resident at Yale New Haven Hospital right after graduate school, and today she is the CEO of Yale New Haven Medical Center. That is an example of the caliber of people that Yale was turning out during my era. We had the pick of positions and were able to rise rapidly.

I was fortunate to be allowed to do a joint curriculum with the School of Public Health and the School of Organization and Management—the then new business school at Yale. While I didn’t get a formal degree from the latter, my master’s thesis was jointly read by one faculty member from the School of Organization and Management and another from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Medicine. That was the first time that two readers from two different schools within Yale shared the responsibility for thesis-reading.

Ghaffari: Your thesis was on the role of HMOs in health education, and yet this was before federal HMO legislation had even been passed, is that right?

Luttgens: The National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974 had recently been passed, and HMOs were just beginning to be created. There were two hundred prepaid group health plans in the country at that time. A friend from PMC had given my name to the Department of Education at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company because they wanted a student to find a way to create greater visibility for MetLife in the prepaid group health plan arena. Most prepaid group health plans—other than Kaiser-Permanente and Ross-Loos Medical Group in California—were brand new and just finding their way.

The hypothesis for my thesis drew upon my work in education at PMC—that the numbers and types of health education offerings provided in an HMO might be a predictor of size and future success. As it turns out, after doing t-tests and chi-squares for a year, I learned that there are no predictor variables—no regression analysis that aligns those characteristics.

But, in the process of gathering data, I talked to every single executive director or CEO of every prepaid group health plan—all two hundred of them. I really parlayed that into something. I got MetLife to agree to publish the findings and give me credit as the author. They let me hire some first-year graduate students to compile and analyze the interview data under my supervision. We put together this great publication, which MetLife then published and distributed widely.

Unfortunately, just several weeks before graduation from Yale, I was contacted by my primary thesis reader who expressed concern that my work was being published by MetLife. Unbeknownst to me, there was an academic requirement that any thesis material belonged to the department, not the individual student.

Ghaffari: What did you do?

Luttgens: Fortunately, my second thesis reader was from a department in another school at Yale—Organization and Management. I was able to have that professor petition on my behalf. At the last minute, my thesis was approved, and I was able to graduate.

I seem to live on the edge all the time. I’ve been a risk-taker from the beginning, and this situation was just another example. The thesis itself—learning research methods—wasn’t as important as the two more practical lessons learned. First, the interview process exposed me to a wide spectrum of “real world” thought on an important and contemporary subject. Second, I learned how to negotiate within a traditional system that had “always done it this way,” and get a solution that kept our focus on doing the right thing.

Ghaffari: Would you say that this taught you how to get yourself out of such quagmires?

Luttgens: Yes, you’re going to hear me say this over and over again. Be inclusive. As a servant leader, always share power, information, and build a platform with your stakeholders so that everyone can see and understand the same points of view. I believe the role of leadership is to get everyone in the same boat. Once they’re all in the boat, my role is to get everyone rowing in the same direction.

It’s a major theme that keeps coming up throughout my career. Another important theme that you’ve already touched on is that I’ve always bucked the system a bit. For some reason, I always find myself in these situations where change is required to move forward. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a real leadership job that has not required pretty intense change management.

When I was associate director of UCLA Medical Center, where I worked for almost twelve years, one of the executives paid tribute to me at my going-away party by saying, “You know, Lise always took the assignments that we didn’t want to take on. She oversaw departments that needed oversight and turnaround, and she enjoyed helping make them better.”

I never really set out to be that way. It’s just what resonates with me—when you are dropped into the whitewater, you just figure out how to navigate down the rapids. My résumé says, “Special expertise in leading organizations in transition. Key accomplishments in turnarounds, restructuring, team building, and in inspiring stretch goals and results.” I really just like to do that.

Ghaffari: Tell me about your transition through the fellowship at Michigan.

Luttgens: The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, fellowship in the academic medical center administration was very highly sought-after. There just weren’t a lot of fellowships in hospital administration back in the seventies, and this particular fellowship was the only one in the country that specialized in academic medical centers—organizations that were teaching hospitals in a medical school setting.

It was a working fellowship where I spent the first year reporting to the hospital CEO and the second year working for the dean of the School of Medicine. I got to see the same issues from two very different perspectives. Deans and hospital CEOs seldom see eye to eye—and Michigan, at the time, was no exception.

By working in the hospital the first year on projects and staffing committees, I was able to build a trusted relationship with the hospital and executive staff. The second year, I had to sever all my ties to the hospital staff and move into the School of Medicine. Being a non-MD in a school of medicine administration was very unusual. It was a unique and remarkable experience—truly one of the highlights of my career. I’m still in touch with three of the executives from there.

Ghaffari: Why do you think that you have this ability to jump in and morph? Where does that come from?

Luttgens: I believe I’m seen as trustworthy. I try to act in a responsible and accountable manner. I see the good in people until they give me a reason not to. That’s served me well in every job I’ve had because people tend not to be guarded with me. They know I will hold those confidences, be discreet, and use their input for the good of the organization rather than for my own personal benefit. I try to be mindful and intentional about putting the organization’s best interests first, always.

Ghaffari: What brought you to UCLA in Southern California?

Luttgens: When my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, I wanted to be back on the West Coast, where I could be involved with his care. As an only child, I felt the responsibility of helping my mother with this, so I looked at opportunities in every academic medical center in California.

I was offered a staff job in strategic planning at Stanford Medical Center, but about a week after having accepted that job, I met Dr. Raymond Schultze, the newly appointed CEO of the UCLA Medical Center, a physician and associate dean of the School of Medicine. Dr. Schultze was looking to build an executive team that could understand the integration between the School of Medicine and the hospital. I’d just completed my fellowship in academic medical center administration in Ann Arbor. He convinced me to take a step back from the job I was going to accept at Stanford, which proved to be the right decision for me.

Ghaffari: How do you think he heard about you?

Luttgens: All the hospital CEOs of the UC system met monthly and talked. I’d sent out my résumé to all of them. My name came up when they were comparing notes about their staffing decisions. Dr. Schultze called me, saying, “I’d like to take you to lunch.”

Literally, by the end of the lunch, I agreed to go work for him. I started as Dr. Schultze’s staff assistant, where he gave me great latitude, just as Dr. Hellman had at PMC. I then moved into line roles, first as an assistant director and associate director, picking up more responsibility as I went. I played a staff role for two years, then—in 1983—decided that the action in hospitals was on the line, and I wanted to move there.

Ghaffari: Has your family been supportive of your moves?

Luttgens: My family in San Francisco was very supportive, even though I was in Southern California. Remember, my father was a physician and had a faculty appointment at UCSF, so he understood my passion for this work. In 1984, I married a pediatric cardiologist who was practicing in Philadelphia. He moved across the country so my career could continue to progress at UCLA, which is about as supportive as it gets!

Ghaffari: What have been some of the key work challenges that you faced?

Luttgens: Dr. Schultze knew that I was looking back East, and he came to me and said, “What could I do to keep you?” I told him, “You can give me a line role,” and he did. They gave me more and more responsibility. Later on, I learned that I was given the departments that other members of the team felt were challenging. Some of the really tough departments were headed by physician leaders in the School of Medicine. Most physician leaders don’t see hospital administrators as their equal, so we had to work that out.

Ghaffari: How did you do that?

Luttgens: By doing what I always do. By showing up, telling the truth, being trustworthy, giving people the benefit of the doubt and aligning with them until they gave me reason not to. Trying to do the best for them. My whole academic and personal upbringing was working with physicians. So I don’t view physicians as the enemy. It just doesn’t make good business sense.

Ghaffari: How many departments did you end up having under you?

Luttgens: I had a total of ten professional services departments. Most of them were physician-led or physician-supported.

Ghaffari: What was your performance metric that you did for them?

Luttgens: Back in those days, the early eighties, we didn’t have quality management or outcomes as we do today. You needed to control expenses, enhance revenue, increase patient volume, and get along.

I was well-known around the medical center for getting substantial capital funding for items in my capital budgets each year. Most of my departments were very capital-intensive. The radiology department needed MRIs and CTs. Radiation oncology needed linear accelerators and stereotactic brain irradiation devices. The anesthesia department needed several different machines each year. We’re talking about multiple, multiple millions of dollars. I became very good at capital budgeting.

Sometimes as a leader, you can’t really pinpoint how you are doing—you might have a feeling, but you just don’t know for sure. So, you have to have systems and processes in place to take some of the subjectivity out of the equation. There was one instance where I knew something in the department wasn’t right, but I just couldn’t pinpoint it. Eventually there was an internal audit, and the problem was uncovered, but it had reached a pretty significant point.

Ghaffari: Can you give some insight as to the key turning points or critical challenges you faced as a leader?

Luttgens: One key turning point was leaving my comfort zone at UCLA in 1991 after almost twelve years of being something of a “golden girl.” I’d been around for a while, had earned the respect of the faculty and of the staff, and had benefitted from getting some protection from the CEO. I was getting impatient to move up, but the two people above me in the organization weren’t going anywhere any time soon.

One of the smartest things that I did in the first fifteen years of my career was move up quickly, early. It was the time, in the seventies and eighties, when there were a lot of opportunities, particularly for women. You were rewarded if you were smart, accountable, worked hard, were trustworthy, and got the job done. I think that today, young people don’t have the same opportunity to do that—there just aren’t the wide-open career paths that we had available to us.

I never felt I was treated or compensated differently as a woman. I wasn’t—I don’t have that experience or point of view. Maybe that was other people’s realities, but not mine.

Most of my mentors were male. I’ve talked about Fred Meyer and Ray Schultze. I had a marvelous mentor at the University of Michigan, Dr. Jeptha Dalston, who taught me a lot about integrity and how to reach solutions with key stakeholders. He had worked in politics in Oklahoma, and led turnarounds in many healthcare organizations that had complicated politics.

Jep gave me a speech on my first day of my fellowship. He said, “You work for this organization and don’t ever put yourself in a position where your integrity is called into question. Never take office supplies home. Don’t make long-distance phone calls from your office phone. Don’t make personal copies on the duplication equipment. At some time, someone will see you do that and make assumptions about your character.”

I’ve never forgotten this advice, and it’s served me well thirty-five years later.

Ghaffari: What made you decide to go to the business administration executive education program?

Luttgens: I didn’t have enough finance in any of the education that I’d had. I intentionally avoided anything quantitative for most of my educational career other than biostatistics in epidemiology. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get ahead if I didn’t have more finance, so Dr. Schultze sent me back to the UCLA Anderson School of Management. It was a great time.

My daughter was a one-year-old at the time, and we had my two stepsons living with us while we were both working more than full-time. I’m not sure how I made it through that business program. I met some really interesting people in that class, and got a number of new skills, including enough finance to get by, although it is still not my strongest suit.

Wherever I’ve gone, I’ve always made a point to hiring a very strong CFO who understands what I’m good at and what she needs to help me with. I’m a fantastic budgeter and love thinking about ways of using resources more wisely. But I’m not technical, as any of my CFO partners would be quick to tell you. I know two CFOs, one who is still at Children’s Hospital, the other one worked with me at the Fulfillment Fund. I might send them an e-mail saying, “Could you please help us out with this?” They’d always get extra Girl Scout cookies—they love Girl Scouts cookies.

Ghaffari: How did you get the job at Doheny?

Luttgens: After more than eleven years at UCLA, I was contacted by an executive recruiter, Jack Schlosser, whom I trust and respect, to look at a job on the USC Health Science Campus. My first reaction was, “Why would I want to leave a job I’m doing well with to go to a smaller place across town?”

He said, “Lise, think of Doheny as off-Broadway. You’re going to have a big role in an organization that’s growing.” The CEO of the Doheny Eye Institute was Dr. Steven J. Ryan, who was also the dean of the School of Medicine. He was a very high-powered, impressive, and inspirational leader who taught me a lot.

As the COO of the Institute, I was responsible for the day-to-day operations of a medical group, a research institute, a department of ophthalmology and a small teaching hospital. Once again, I had chosen a role that built on my background in academic medical center administration, tapping an understanding of how these component parts work together.

Those were rough times. I had to close the hospital because it really didn’t have a sufficient patient base with an average daily census of just 1.2 patients. We collectively decided that there was no way to provide a twenty-five bed accredited hospital with the support it needed, and we knew we’d have operating losses draining our financial stability. We re-leased the space to the USC Health Sciences campus and entered into a long-term, ten-year lease with Tenet Healthcare to take over the hospital and the operating rooms. Dismantling that structure was challenging.

Ghaffari: Did any of these activities keep you up at night?

Luttgens: Well, at the time I was at Doheny, I was getting a divorce, and it was very, very difficult for me. It felt like a large tidal wave to balance the responsibilities of closing a hospital, laying off staff, negotiating legal agreements with other entities at the same time I was dismantling my marriage and family. It gave me a lot to think about, all the time, and I learned a lot about personal and professional fortitude. I can’t think of any other time that required such difficult decisions.

Shortly after we closed the Doheny Eye Hospital, I was approached by the new CEO of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. I was chairing a consortium of all the hospital CEOs associated with Keck. There were five at the time—Norris, the USC Tenet hospital, Doheny, CHLA, and the big LAC+USC county hospital. I chaired this group of hospital CEOs, all male, mostly older, and pretty “command and control” oriented. Totally unbeknownst to me, these gentlemen recommended that Walter “Bill” Noce, the new CEO of CHLA, get to know me to see if I’d fit on his team.

I had invited him to lunch to welcome him to the new group. By the end of lunch, he said, “So, I’d like you to come work for me as my new COO.” It was déjà vu from my lunch with Dr. Schultze fifteen years earlier. That move turned out to be six of the most wonderful and fulfilling years of my life.

Ghaffari: What were some of the principal challenges you faced during the time at Children’s Hospital?

Luttgens: Building trust between the administration and the medical staff. Bill was new at that time to academic medical centers. He recruited me to “warm the place up.” We were a really good team, and the overall leadership team was outstanding during Bill’s tenure.

I forged strong relationships with the medical staff and helped create a collaborative culture. I recruited some strong leaders, including someone to tackle the ambulatory care issue and someone to lead the Cancer Center of Excellence. There were several physicians who historically had not trusted the administration, but who respected me. One was the medical director of the cancer center. After I left Children’s Hospital, he got me on the board of the LA Ronald McDonald House and later hired me as the interim CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California, where he was the chairman of the board.

Ghaffari: Do you see yourself as bouncing from CEO to CEO in a way?

Luttgens: Not at all. I view it that I’ve been very blessed. Right about the time that I’m at the end of something, before even I know that I’m at the end of it, the universe just sort of shows up and says, “Well, we’ve got this need over here.”

The Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles had to merge six small councils, some of them with multi-million-dollar budgets. Together, we now have a $15 million operating budget. There were also six different cultures we had to merge, which is exactly what I did at Ronald McDonald House Charities. I took six different houses and put them together under one umbrella 501(c)(3).

Ghaffari: Do you consider yourself a merger and acquisition specialist?

Luttgens: No, I’m a generalist, but I’ve taken organizations, moved them around, put in systems, processes, and quality management. There were no mergers at UCLA, Doheny, CHLA, or the Fulfillment Fund. Doheny was the opposite of a merger—an unbundling. So I don’t really see myself as a mergers and acquisitions specialist. I do think I’m a change management leader and someone who can influence organizations in transition.

Ghaffari: Would you describe your network as people you’ve seen prove themselves?

Luttgens: Sure. These are people who have expertise and who are respected in their field. And they also are people with whom I have a personal relationship. There are a lot of people who are respected in the field, but they’re not approachable or accessible, or there’s no reciprocity. In general, I try to give as much as I take and be responsive to those who ask for my help.

Ghaffari: As you look at your network, would you say there is a greater percentage of men or women?

Luttgens: My personal network happens to include a lot of women, in large part because I’ve grown up in a professional environment where I’ve always been fortunate to have really smart, ambitious, courageous, competent—beyond competent—women around. I don’t really think I consider gender in my network. Here at the Girl Scouts, my executive team is all women, but we have some very capable men on our senior management team as well.

Ghaffari: Do you think if you had been in the business world, you could do the same kind of thing?

Luttgens: I do consider myself in the business world—the nonprofit business world. Anyone who is running a nonprofit in this day and age, who isn’t running it as a business, isn’t going to have a nonprofit a few years from now. I think that everybody has some blind sides where they need to tap outside advice.

Ghaffari: Why did you transition into forming your own company?

Luttgens: Bill Noce—the CEO at CHLA—was one of the people who influenced me the most. He was looking for his own successor, but that wasn’t going to be me. It wasn’t what I wanted, and I wasn’t a good fit to take over his role. Bill started succession planning in 2001, although he didn’t intend to leave until 2007 when the replacement hospital project was completed. That meant six more years of being groomed during a time when I had family responsibilities for a pre-teen daughter.

I was, by then, a single parent. You sometimes ask yourself, “What was your moment of truth?” My moment of truth was in 2001. I looked at my twelve-year-old daughter and said to myself, “I can spend the next six years climbing this ladder and furthering my career—then Kate will go to college, and I won’t really know her. I will have no foundation of influence. I will have to look back and say, ‘I could have, I should have, and I didn’t.’”

That was the hardest—and the easiest—decision I’ve ever had to make. The hardest was preparing and wrestling with the decision. Once I knew I had to leave, I was phenomenally relieved. And Bill worked with me on a transition that allowed me to move forward. I announced I was leaving in June of 2001.

CHLA had had a long history of administrative instability. When Bill assumed his CEO role and recruited me, that six-year run was one of the longest periods of stability Children’s Hospital had experienced in years. The staff finally was enjoying that stability. The physicians were enjoying a good relationship with our administration. It was truly a marvelous time in the life of the hospital. We celebrated the one hundredth anniversary, so people were feeling very bullish about their future. When I announced I was leaving, they were concerned that it might mean the end of an era.

Bill put a lot of energy and trust into supporting me as a leader, and here I was walking away without really knowing what I was going to do next—other than to be a mom. So, there were a couple of months of disappointment and anger. My going-away party was scheduled for October 11, 2001. And then 9/11 happened.

In that brief period of time, between September 11 and October 11, everybody in the hospital had a chance to process the idea that, if this was your last day on Earth, what would you do? Everybody began to understand the meaning of “carpe diem”—to seize the moment and the balance between family and profession. Many people have told me personal stories since then, how their point of view changed dramatically after 9/11. My own decision was made before 9/11, but people in the organization began to realize how that event changed everything, dramatically.

I made a decision to take my daughter out of school on October 11 for my going-away party on the front lawn of Children’s Hospital. There were hundreds of people there. My twelve-year-old daughter (unbeknownst to me) had contacted the mistress of ceremonies and asked if she could say a few words. She got up and stood behind the podium and said, “You have had my mommy for the last six years. It’s time for me to have some time with her. It’s time for you to give her back to me.”

There really wasn’t a dry eye in the house. So many people contacted me later and said, “Now we get it.” It was a combination of things—an “aha!” epiphany after 9/11, and people seeing a twelve-year-old in action saying, “I really need my mom.” And let’s face it—it is a children’s hospital. The people that work there really understand the importance of family.

Ghaffari: Was there anything that you could have put in place for the organization to make that transition easier?

Luttgens: I did an extensive formal transition plan for Bill, saying, “I have an amazing executive team. This person can take on more responsibility. This person should report to that person. These are the issues in each department that will need to be addressed in this manner.”

I’ve never left a job without preparing a written transition plan. I did that for UCLA, Doheny, CHLA, and the Fulfillment Fund. I’ve always had a person in place to step in if the CEO wanted it. I have never left an organization unprepared for their future.

Ghaffari: Forming your own company let you manage your life on your terms?

Luttgens: I formed Luttgens & Associates as an LLC—a limited liability corporation. It was a great opportunity to be on my own, to be my own boss, and to have a lot of flexibility in terms of my time. It came at a great time in my family’s life, too—right when my daughter and I were traveling all over the country looking at colleges. I don’t know how many frequent-flier miles we racked up that year.

We wound up visiting thirty-two potential schools—probably a record for any parent and college-bound student! But, we did that because I didn’t want to make the same mistake with Kate that I did with myself, bouncing around as I did. I was very clear about it. Kate was accepted as an early-decision candidate. She has just graduated with distinction from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, which was the thirty-first college campus we visited. She’s as happy as a clam. All that research and input proved to be a good return on investment.

Ghaffari: How does Kate view this attention to detail in her life?

Luttgens: She shares the same view—we both have lot of attention to detail and like to be prepared. All three generations of women in my family are pretty assiduous at options analysis.

Ghaffari: How did the Ronald McDonald job fit in with your Luttgens & Associates role?

Luttgens: I was a paid consultant and interim CEO to Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California. It quickly turned into a long-term, full-time assignment. I always wanted the opportunity to run my own business, to choose my own clients, to be able to say and do what I wanted to say and do. Up to then, I had been a COO, always responsible to a CEO. I wanted to be the CEO. The timing was just never right. So, running my own business and being the principal really gave me the opportunity and confidence to lead differently. Luttgens & Associates served me well in preparing me to take on the CEO role at Girl Scouts of Greater LA.

When I took the job at the Girl Scouts, one area of mutual agreement was that I would sideline my consulting business. This was an easy decision, given the effort it took to get the new council off the ground. It is still a pretty big job.

Ghaffari: Was your assignment at the Fulfillment Fund similar to your Ronald McDonald consulting role?

Luttgens: No, they were very different. The Fulfillment Fund is a nonprofit youth development organization, and I was brought on as their first COO. I was recruited to establish some business systems and processes. Once I did the job that needed to be done—I was there for two years—there wasn’t anything more for me there.

Ghaffari: How significant was the Girl Scout’s merger of six area councils, and how do you view the consolidation?

Luttgens: Girl Scouts of the USA—GSUSA—began realignment at a national level several years before LA actually merged as part of a national core business strategy. There had been almost four hundred Girl Scout councils around the country, and the goal was to create fewer, stronger, and more “high performance” councils. Now, we have a total of one hundred and twelve councils nationally.

The Girl Scouts of yesteryear are nothing like the Girl Scouts of today or tomorrow. My elevator speech is, “Girl Scouts is so much more than cookies, camping, and crafts. We build opportunities for leadership development, life skills, and community service.” The compelling reason to take this job was the challenge of merging six different cultures into one unified council, creating one unified board, one leadership team, and one set of business practices. Taken together, these challenges hit all of my hot buttons. And it really has turned out to be the perfect job in a wonderful organization with strong, mission-driven goals.

Ghaffari: Initially, you resisted the offer for some time, right?

Luttgens: Yes, I was very happy running my own company. I told the search committee, “Why would I want to put on Spanx every day, drive through rush-hour traffic, and report to a board when I could be sitting at home wearing my headset in my pajamas, coaching a client?”

I worked hard and had inspiring coaching clients and wonderful coaching engagements. I lived a pretty flexible life and called the shots. If I didn’t want to take a client, I didn’t.

Then in April 2008, a very prescient friend of mine, Susan Leary, had just left the Fulfillment Fund as their CFO. She’s now chief administrative officer of First Congregational Church in Los Angeles. We went out to breakfast at Shutters Restaurant where, she said, “I really think you should look at this job. I don’t think there’s anyone else who could do it as well as you can. You have the chops for some of the difficult challenges we will face. Furthermore, are you aware that there’s probably going to be a recession? Coaching and consulting probably will be one of the first things that corporations lop off their budget. And, add up how much time you’re spending volunteering with Ronald McDonald House and your church.” And I realized she was right. It was about thirty-two hours a week.

I’d been contacted four times, and responded each time saying, “I’m not interested. I’m happy where I am.” After breakfast with Susan, I called the search firm back. I asked if the position had been filled yet. They said they were sending candidates to their client. I asked if they would still be interested in me. They said they really would.

Ghaffari: For the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles, are you following a script you’ve been given or are you searching out opportunities on your own initiative?

Luttgens: That’s a big question. Before the merger, there was a concern nationally that membership was declining. That was one of the motivating factors behind the national realignment initiative and the national CEO’s focus on creating a contemporary core business strategy that focused centrally on girls as leaders. We had lots of smaller councils around the country that didn’t have the resources or market position necessary to lead a large high-performance, high-capacity organization. They were competing for the same fundraising dollars, and the public support was not as strong as it needed to be. There has historically been an over-reliance on revenue from our cookie program.

After we merged, we created a critical mass. We now serve more than forty-one thousand girls in partnership with more than twenty-four thousand adult members who are the conduit for delivering service to these girls. We have almost three thousand troops in our jurisdiction. Our current operating budget is now $15 million. We now have one hundred and fifty FTEs² and are growing.

We have identified five focus areas for our programs: environment/outdoor adventure, arts and culture, wellness and healthy living, STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—and business smarts. Doing this work in our first six months after the merger allowed us to consolidate and create some three hundred council-led activities while assuring the countless activities continue at the troop-level.

Ghaffari: What’s the smartest thing you ever did?

Luttgens: Certainly, taking this job. It has built upon every strength—and mistake—I’ve ever experienced in my career. There was no playbook or script for this job, and I’ve loved being able just to use my instincts about people, programs, and culture to get to this place. Of course, it’s not just about me. I have an incredible team and board of directors, and our volunteers are the most dedicated I’ve ever experienced.

Ghaffari: Has it been an easy process?

Luttgens: It was very fluid at the start. I moved every key executive from a legacy council [those that were being merged] who wanted to stay with the Girl Scouts, into a role on my new executive team with an understanding that they’d have eighteen months to prove themselves. There were six key executives—some were CEOs, others were COOs, one was a director of development, plus one executive whom I recruited from outside the merged councils.

I locked everyone in a room at the City Club for two days. We built our organizational structure from scratch. We had flipcharts, we had yellow sticky-tabs. We created the framework for what this new council might look like based on the experiences and vision of these six key people.

__________

We tried to figure out how many FTEs we needed to have without overstaffing, since we knew there was some redundancy. We had six CFOs, but no human resources director. We knew we needed to integrate all the service delivery functions—membership recruitment and retention, volunteer liaisons, and program staff—across the vast regions of our new council even though the communities were very different. There really was no model for us to follow because our catchment area—the Los Angeles market—is the most diverse girl market in the country. It is also challenging because we have three hundred and fifty different cultures and languages of girls and their families to work with. There is no one-size-fits-all approach because it’s such a diverse area.

What we have learned through this realignment process is that we are not your mother’s Girl Scouts—we are building the Girl Scouts of the future while honoring the strong history and tradition this organization represents. The predominant ethnic representation in Los Angeles is Hispanic. We have to develop Girl Scout programming that is sensitive and uniquely appealing to Latinas who do not have the Girl Scout tradition as part of their family experience or background. We are fortunate to have a new CEO at the national level, Anna Maria Chávez, who is a Latina.

Currently 25 percent of our girls receive some financial assistance to participate in Girl Scouting. That number will only grow as we broaden our membership to more girls in more underserved communities in LA. Girl Scouts is already the largest girl-serving organization nationally. Here in Greater Los Angeles, there are still too many girls who need us and will benefit by being part of the Girl Scout Movement.

Ghaffari: Do you see competition coming from special diversity sub-groups that market to girls based on their unique ethnic or cultural origins?

Luttgens: I don’t view it as competition. I think that the Girl Scouts is the best-kept secret in town. Our challenge is to get the word out. We compete effectively when people understand what we do, how we do it, what is our promise and our winning proposition—how we help girls reach their full potential to become leaders and active citizens. For some girls, that might mean reaching their full capacity within their family, or in their neighborhood. For others, they will lead in their larger community, go to college, or become president of the United States.

If you look around at the women business leaders in Greater Los Angeles, I think you would be surprised at how many of them were Brownies or Girl Scouts. I am really excited to be able to use our one hundredth anniversary in 2012 to highlight some of these women and how their successes tie back to their Girl Scout experience. We will have our first GSGLA “Women of Distinction” event to gather these women together and connect them to one another.

The fact that so many of our Girl Scout alumnae are accomplished leaders in their fields is something to be really proud of. Every single female astronaut was a Girl Scout, and a large majority of women members of Congress were Girl Scouts. One of the key messages I want to get out is that if you were a Girl Scout, you are still a Girl Scout. Those lessons and experiences don’t leave you. I’ve witnessed women saying this to me over and over again.

Our one hundredth anniversary is all year long in 2012. We kick it off on October 29, 2011 with the largest girl expo in the history of the country called “Girltopia.” We will open that up to both Girl Scouts and non–Girl Scouts at the LA Convention Center to highlight our upcoming “Year of the Girl.” It’s patterned after Maria Shriver’s Women’s Conference in Long Beach.

Ghaffari: Was your mother’s Girl Scouts competition to the “new” Girl Scouts?

Luttgens: When I first took this job with the Girl Scouts, the two questions people asked me most often were, “How do I get cookies?” and “Do you have to wear a uniform?” I always sort of goodheartedly lean into that and then talk about what we are doing to help girls become leaders. What I say is, “Let’s talk about cookies—the mission of the cookies. Let’s talk about the entrepreneurship that girls learn in selling this product and setting goals, making connections, following up with their customers, and finally deciding how to use that money for troop activities.”

Another key enhancement moving the Girl Scout brand forward is the creation of the “Girl Scout Leadership Experience,” which is a model where girls discover themselves, connect with others, and take action to make the world a better place. “Discover, Connect, and Take Action.” Nationally, GSUSA has identified fifteen outcomes for this leadership model and each outcome has specific definitions for the girl, depending upon her age and development level.

It’s both a branding challenge and also one of the reasons that we realigned as a Movement, so that we could create a voice. We’re not doing Girltopia—the girl expo I mentioned earlier—just to open up something fabulous to girls. We’re expecting a wide-scale collateral impact and influence all over Los Angeles, where people will say, “Oh, the Girl Scouts. I haven’t thought about them as an option.” And as they learn about us, they will see why we provide meaningful and relevant experiences for today’s girl or young woman.

If you search YouTube, you’ll see a marvelous clip about today’s Girl Scouts entitled, “What Did You Do Today?,” which illustrates the choices girls of today have in determining how they use their time. They can sit in front of a computer screen, go to the mall and text their friends, or they can be out in the world having unique experiences—kayaking, going to space camp, rock climbing, traveling to venues outside their community, volunteering in a wide variety of settings.

Girls today are so community-minded. Every year I become more and more impressed with the level of Bronze, Silver and Gold Award projects our girls undertake. They also are focused on how they’re going to get to college and what they’re going to bring to college.

I think the competition we face in attracting and retaining girls is the extraordinary pressure girls receive in our society, and the disassociation and disconnectedness that girls feel growing up. And if you look at the statistics, girls in Los Angeles face stunningly difficult social challenges to stay on course. Our job is to give them a safe environment with qualified leaders so they have alternatives to these challenges.

Ghaffari: Were there any major surprises that you encountered in your career?

Luttgens: The biggest surprise has been putting thirty years into a career in hospital administration and winding up as a nonprofit executive. I mean, some people can see the bridge between those two fields pretty easily, but I certainly didn’t know this was where I was going to end up. While unanticipated, it was a delightful surprise.

I think probably the lesson that I learned is that when you trust the universe, trust the process, do a good job and keep your good reputation, then you can trust that you will wind up right where you need to be. You don’t really need to worry. I’m fifty-eight and the older I get, the more I realize that when I worry about something in the future or I try to write the script and control too much, chances are that I get disappointed. Instead, when I am able to lean into some of the uncertainty or dive into the whitewater that comes up, things have a way of working out better than I’d planned.

Ghaffari: Do you feel that this has been an experience like whitewater rafting?

Luttgens: The work that I do feels a little like whitewater rafting sometimes. I’ve frequently been involved in turnarounds where you take a job without knowing what exactly you will encounter. You get into the boat and launch on a journey where there is no turning back once you commit. There are other people in the boat, and hopefully these are people you can trust and will work together as a team. But out on a river you don’t know what’s coming up or exactly what technique you will use to stay upright. Sometimes the rapids come at you so fast that you have to work to keep from getting thrown out of the boat.

Ghaffari: Who are your primary, the most important, mentors in your life?

Luttgens: I’m so blessed to have had so many mentors. First and foremost, my mother has been my consummate mentor and continues to be. I was just up in San Francisco for Mother’s Day, and we were chatting about my current role. She’s still active, providing advice to people in her community and being a source of wisdom and experience.

In the sixth grade, I went to an all-girls’ school where there was a lot of cliquishness. I would come home and tell my mother, “So and so doesn’t like me.” My mother would just say, “Be nice to everyone.” Her advice has served me well. I’m a big believer that you never burn a bridge. I’ve tried to pass that advice on to my daughter, Kate.

I’ve gotten to know a lot of my mother’s friends. I’ve been fortunate that she has shared her network with me, and I’ve been able to develop relationships with them myself. Toni Rembe is an attorney friend from San Francisco. We have the same birthday, so we’re birthday buddies. We walk her dogs through the Presidio whenever I’m in San Francisco, and she has given me some invaluable perspectives on my career choices.

Ironically, most of my mentors have been men. The mentors that stand out for me are the people who have told me the unvarnished truth and have been my mirror. The most difficult conversations have been the ones where I needed to change something. I’ve always been a high performer, but I wouldn’t be where I am if I hadn’t received direct feedback about how to improve myself. Those have been some of the conversations I’ve carried with me and played back in my head long after the person has gone. I’ve also had mentors who really celebrated me. The one person that has been outstanding since the very beginning of my career is Fred Meyer, then the chief operating officer of Pacific Medical Center, who now has his own consulting company. I’ve known Fred since I was a sixteen-year-old candy striper in the sixties at Pacific Medical Center.

Ghaffari: Why did a rebel like you listen to these mentors?

Luttgens: They were smarter than I am. They know more than I do. They were more experienced, more successful.

It wasn’t that I was an unfocused rebel who had to fight City Hall because I had a chip on my shoulder. I was raised to know that there was a path for me, but that it might not be the well-trod path. I think that was why I had all those changes in college. I kept landing in places that I had chosen that I thought were right for me. Once I got there, it didn’t feel quite right. In retrospect, that was just my youth and inexperience trying to determine where I fit.

Ghaffari: How would you describe your decision-making style?

Luttgens: Definitely inclusive. I have a really strong executive team of four C-suite people, any one of whom could step into my role if I were hit by a truck tomorrow. And that answers your question about succession among the ranks.

Ghaffari: Do you always hire people who are smarter than you?

Luttgens: Yes, absolutely, and people who work as hard as I do, or even harder. I have a hard-working team, very dedicated and loyal. Loyal to each other, loyal to me and loyal to the Girl Scouts. I really try to build an esprit through sharing information and the decision-making process, even if it doesn’t directly involve everybody on the team. I think it’s really important that when a team makes a decision, it’s a team decision. One of my mantras is that the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts, especially when people are well-informed and have the right intent.

Ghaffari: What’s your process of developing the organization’s long-term strategy?

Luttgens: There definitely is a national strategy—a core business strategy around increasing membership, providing a unified leadership curriculum for girls, and positioning the brand. The national strategy provides a framework, and then we as the council translate that to the individual characteristics of our area and our population’s unique requirements and needs. That’s the “take the best and leave the rest” approach. We are fortunate to have a national framework while maintaining our regional flexibility.

Ghaffari: How would you say two of the things that you’ve developed, the STEM program and the Business Smarts, offer opportunities to increase the visibility of women in leadership?

Luttgens: Actually, all five of our program areas do that. But since you asked about Business Smarts and STEM, we can talk about the number of opportunities in these fields and the disproportionately low number of women filling these positions. When Girl Scouts have the opportunity to try new things and become confident of their achievements in these more traditionally male fields, the ripple effect is remarkable. Add to the mix positive female role models who have been successful in these fields, and we have a perfect alignment of relationships and experiences for leadership.

Ghaffari: How do you define a leader? How do you define leadership?

Luttgens: I think leadership is recognized when an individual can influence the thinking and the progress of others. When I look at the women and men I consider leaders, they are not all from one profile. A common characteristic is that they are people others pay attention to and follow because they are believable and inspire confidence.

Some leaders I’ve known are quiet but effective, while others are charismatic and larger than life. I’ve been fortunate to be a member of the Organization of Women Executives, which has members who are leaders from all industries and with many different approaches and perspectives on leadership. Being part of this group has been greatly enriching and has helped my understanding of how leadership can be shared—how leaders support as well as lead.

Ghaffari: The Gold Award is the highest, most prestigious award a girl can earn in the Girl Scouts. How is that acknowledged outside the Girl Scouts?

Luttgens: Well, first of all you’ve touched on a point of sensitivity for us as a Movement. The girls who earn this award are extraordinary young women doing amazing things with their lives and serving their communities locally and globally. Each year, we honor about two hundred Gold Award Girl Scouts here in Greater LA, and I have the opportunity to see their projects and congratulate them. It is the most joyous day of my Girl Scout year.

We’ve heard anecdotally from college admissions officers or human resources interviewers that—when a girl submits her application and states that she’s a Gold Awardee—she automatically goes into the next level of the process. Unfortunately, I often have to explain what this award represents by comparing it to boys who are Eagle Scouts. I look forward to the day when I don’t have to qualify the Gold Award in this way.

Ghaffari: Why is the Girl Scout’s Gold Award not as well known?

Luttgens: The first reason is that the Eagle Scout has been the Boy Scouts’ award for almost all of their one hundred years. Over that same century, the Girl Scouts of the USA has renamed this prestigious award several times. It has been called the “Curved Bar,” the “Golden Eaglet,” the “First Class,” and most recently the “Gold Award.” Four different names over one hundred years. It’s really hard to have a brand identity, but I believe the Gold Award is here to stay.

Secondly, I’m not at all a feminist, but I do think that, historically, men have been better self-promoters and networkers than women. It follows that the critical mass of Boy Scouts has done a great job promoting the notion of the Eagle Scout.

Ghaffari: Is there any hesitance on the part of the girls themselves or the volunteers to flaunt their Gold?

Luttgens: No, not at all. I wish you could witness the pride at our annual Gold Award ceremony. They, their families, their fellow troop members and leaders, and our staff are incredibly proud! Our alumnae can attest to how their Gold Award, or its earlier equivalent, has shaped them as outstanding individuals.

It is a secret that has been too well kept. As with breaking up some of the stereotypes and myths about the Girl Scouts overall, and cookies in particular, having conversations about the Gold Award is very important to help the general public understand what they are supporting.

Ghaffari: Can you tell me the best responses you’ve had to your career aspirations and the worst responses you’ve had and how you’ve dealt with them?

Luttgens: It’s a hard question because everyone has been supportive, but obviously my mother is the standout. She’s been the most knowledgeable and present for me over time. I would also say my family—my daughter and my former husband—have been extremely supportive of my career. There was never any question that I would not only continue my work after marrying and having a family, but that I would continue to dedicate myself and advance in my career. My daughter has been incredible in working around my professional advancement and knows how important she is. She comes first, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

I haven’t really had any worst responses. I’ve been very blessed in that I’ve been surrounded by supportive people. We’re not a big family, but there’s strength here. I’ve worked after school ever since I was fourteen. There was never a question that you worked, that you paid your own way. That’s just the way I was programmed, and it’s continued in the way I’ve raised my daughter. I was fortunate that my parents funded my undergraduate education. My father used to tell me it was the best gift they could give me.

Ghaffari: What advice would you give to young women today as they think about a career?

Luttgens: Join the Girl Scouts! Not to be glib, but I do think it provides a network, a safe environment with other females where you can be yourself, where you don’t have distractions, where you’re not competing with boys, where you really are able to find your self-esteem—your true north—in your own way, where you have supportive female mentors. All of this just happens to be the model for the Girl Scouts. I didn’t know that at the time that I took this job. But, I do think it’s important to surround yourself with people who expect you to reach your full potential and who show you how to do it.

That’s certainly true for me, even today. Our board expects nothing less than that this new council reaches its full potential, quickly and without detours. They expect me to lead GSGLA expertly, and I expect nothing less of my senior management team. I expect nothing less of my daughter. I expect nothing less from the people with whom I volunteer at church. I think it’s a mindset—no one else is going to change the world for you. If you want to change something, it’s up to you to take responsibility for it.

That’s why, when I said, “My advice is to tell the girls to join the Girl Scouts,” I really do think that girls today are faced with such serious—and traumatic—challenges, that it’s up to all of us to be a safe harbor for them.

Ghaffari: In any of the advice that you’ve given me, would you say anything differently for men?

Luttgens: I really wouldn’t have. I don’t differentiate much between men and women. I’m pretty gender-blind—which is interesting working in an all-women’s organization.

Ghaffari: The Girl Scouts as an organizational role model looks a lot like a political government—the delegation, the representation. Do you see yourself moving into the political or government arena?

Luttgens: No, I see myself staying right here, until the universe finds something different for me.