Girl Scouts CEO works to improve young lives, expand program’s reach

Judy Cranston lives by the Girl Scout motto: “Do a good turn daily and be a sister to every Girl Scout.”

A Girl Scout herself and CEO of Girl Scouts of Western New York, Cranston is devoted to the organization’s mission of building girls with courage, confidence and character and to make the world a better place.

“We want to provide girls with the skills to have a lifetime of leadership,” says Cranston. “It’s a program that’s created for girls with the input of girls. As a national organization and locally, we’re always surveying girls to make sure we’re meeting their changing needs.”

Cranston joined the Girl Scouts of Western New York leadership team in 2009 as COO. Three years ago, she was appointed CEO.

Girl Scouts was founded by Juliette Gordon Low on March 12, 1912. More than a century after its inception the organization continues to flourish. Within Girl Scouts of the USA there are 112 councils, and Girl Scouts of Western New York is one of them.

“We cover a nine-county area. We go from here to Batavia to Buffalo to Niagara Falls and through Jamestown,” says Cranston. “We have six service centers including Rochester, Batavia, Buffalo, Jamestown, Lockport and Niagara Falls. We also have five retail stores as well as four camps that cover over 3,000 acres of land.”

Girl Scouts of Western New York has 80 full-time employees year round. But when camp season hits—typically the first week in July through the second week in August—the organization adds an extra 140 workers.

“We are also partnered with nearly 6,000 adult volunteers who dedicate their spare time to support us and the girls,” says Alison Wilcox, chief operating officer of Girl Scouts of Western New York. “We may have a smaller staff of around 80 people, but we’re able to have a really far reach for some 15,000 girls because of our volunteers.”

Girl Scouts offers programs for grade levels ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade. The programs are centered on four pillars: STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), life skills, outdoors and entrepreneurship.

“We have tons of new badges and lots of good things going on in STEM like computer science where we have girls coding as well as girls doing things like cybersecurity and robotics,” says Cranston.

Girl Scouts aims to unleash the power of G.I.R.L., an acronym for go-getters, innovators, risk-takers and leaders.

 “We give girls exposure to everything from the stock market to building a budget, to managing credit, to figuring out how to manage student loans,” says Cranston. “We bring girls out to colleges and expose them to women engineers at places like Fredonia, St. Bonaventure and RIT to show them what it’s going to cost them to go to those schools and help them figure out how they would prepare for that.”

Amplifying availability

 The Girl Scouts team is zoning in on making Girl Scouts available to as many girls as possible.

“We’re trying to reach some of the populations we may not have reached previously, like urban environments or even rural environments,” says Cranston. “There are more and more families now who may not have Girl Scouts as a tradition in their family, so it’s not something that’s as familiar to them. There are also girls who are from a different country where Girl Scouts wasn’t a tradition. We want to expose girls and make sure they have the opportunity to be in Girl Scouts.”

But Cranston is aware that opportunities are abundant for girls these days, so Girl Scouts is keeping relevancy at top of mind. Programming is an essential aspect of the organization, so establishing new badges for girls to earn that are useful in building and reinforcing leadership skills is one method Girl Scouts is implementing to remain relevant.

Further, Girl Scouts is fixated on elevating the Gold Award. The Gold Award is the highest achievement in the Girl Scouts program and is available to high school girls. Participants are challenged to put together a seven-step project to solve an issue within their community, which gives girls that chance to have a tangible impact on the world around them.

“People aren’t really that familiar with the Gold Award and what it does for girls,” says Cranston. “For example, if you earn the Gold Award, you are eligible for many college scholarships through that. You can also go into the military at one level higher automatically. It really demonstrates that you have the discipline to not only create change within your community or the global community, but that you have the wherewithal to stick with it and complete a goal.”

Cranston is dedicated to showing girls and their families how Girl Scouts can fit into their lives and how it can be a life-changing journey. Joining Girl Scouts does not necessarily mean joining a yearlong troop if that is not your cup of tea. Girls can also attend Girl Scout-led camps, events, travel opportunities and series.

“There are lots of different ways (to get involved in Girl Scouts) that don’t involve the whole yearlong troop experience, but of course that’s available for those who want to do that,” says Cranston. “What we need to do is make sure that people are aware that no matter how busy they are, there is room for Girl Scouts and it will make a big difference in her life.”

 Cranston in command

Cranston is not the type of leader to sit back on her laurels and let others do the dirty work. She is not shy when it comes to rolling up her sleeves and pitching in.

“I’m very much a participative leader, where I enjoy talking to my staff a lot about how we want to solve problems together,” she says. “Employees at all levels have no issue calling me with ideas.”

Chief Development Officer Jerilyn Hickey can attest to Judy’s hands-on, approachable leadership style.

“Judy’s a great collaborator; I really value her opinion,” says Hickey. “She and I work very closely together on many things, and she really listens to the opinions around the table and is actively taking feedback on how we’re handling situations.

“She is truly invested in every member of our team,” adds Hickey. “Judy is certainly someone who manages by walking around. I’ll tell you from personal experience that when folks are experiencing a difficulty in other aspects of their lives, she’s the first one to say, ‘Family first. Go take care of it; we’ve got you.’ Her commitment to the people around her is a huge strength of hers.”

And this investment in those around her translates outside of work. Cranston’s friend for more than a decade, Anne Wakeman, confirms her active interest in others.

“Judy’s the type of person who you will call to get another perspective on whatever you’re thinking about,” says Wakeman. “She’s very strong and caring and she nurtures people.”

Also attributing to Cranston’s fruitful leadership is “the fact that she listens to people, she respects people, she sets expectations and she is willing to help people get where they need to go,” adds Wakeman.

Leader of a branch of a nationwide nonprofit, Cranston was not always in the nonprofit arena. For many years she worked as a manufacturing and supply chain manager at Kodak Co. until she was recruited to electronics manufacturing company Hover-Davis Inc. where she served as chief operating officer. From a Fortune 500 company to a midsize privately held company and now at a not-for-profit, Cranston has seen it all.

“I was one of the first female supervisors in the manufacturing environment,” says Cranston. “In my first five or seven years of my career I had almost no female peers except maybe the secretaries. I tell my staff that we have to run Girl Scouts like a business because we’re in the business of serving girls. We have to be efficient at that.”

Wilcox says that Cranston’s decades of leadership experience in different sectors have molded her into a poised leader, one who is also a skilled listener and always open to new ideas.

“Judy has so much background in business that you’re confident in the decisions she makes, but she also listens a lot and asks questions to see what people think in order to make a good decision,” says Wilcox. “She’s very direct, which is an excellent trait for a leader and something that’s very hard for women. You always know where you stand with her, and she’s very fair and kind.”

Cranston is highly committed to leading Girl Scouts of Western New York, but she treasures maintaining a healthy work/life balance and she recommends her staff do the same.

“Don’t let yourself burn out,” warns Cranston. “My staff and my family know that my gravestone or my urn is going to read, ‘She used all of her vacation days.’ Don’t burn out because you’re not doing any favors to yourself or your family or your work if you don’t take some time to do the things you love.”

Outside the office

Cranston grew up in Baldwin in Nassau County on Long Island. She came to Rochester to attend Rochester Institute of Technology where she received a bachelor’s degree in production management and a master’s in business administration.

Cranston has been married to her wife of 25 years, Lynn, and has one daughter, Nell, and two young grandchildren.

Outside of work Cranston enjoys listening to audiobooks while going on walks and experimenting with cooking international cuisines. She recently took up the ukulele and is taking her rescue dog, Nicky, through training classes to become a certified therapy dog. She also has a soft spot for Broadway music, as it coincides with fond memories of time spent with her late mother.

“Growing up in Long Island we went to Broadway musicals all the time,” recalls Cranston. “When I was a kid, one of my mother’s traditions was that she would take one of us kids alone—because with five kids you don’t get a lot of alone time with your mother—into the city to see a play. I love some of the oldies like ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘Chicago.’”

Cranston cites her mother as one of her strongest role models. A mother of five children, she somehow found time to go to night school to get two master’s degrees.

“She really taught us the value of education,” says Cranston. “She was also an activist and a feminist early on, and she taught us the value of volunteering and the value of speaking out for social causes and the fight against injustices. She was protest marching from day one and instilled that in us.”

Cranston currently sits on the board of Trillium Health where she is vice chair, leading its  governance committee. Trillium Health offers medical and social services to those in need. Its  mission is “to promote health equity by providing affordable and extraordinary primary and specialty care, including LGBTQ health care,” a mission that aligns well with Cranston’s values and beliefs.

“They’re a wonderful organization and I think the most important thing about their mission is that they provide extraordinary care to everyone, regardless of a person’s ability to pay,” she says. “Everyone gets treated equally there, no matter who they are or who they love. I’m proud to be a part of that organization.”

Inside and outside the office, Cranston always reminds herself of the Girl Scout motto, and sometimes it even leads to unexpected yet memorable encounters.

“I was helping an elderly woman pump gas recently and she thanked me and I said, ‘It’s the Girl Scout motto to do a good turn daily.’ And she said to me, ‘I was a Girl Scout and I remember that!’” says Cranston. “And I told her to pass it along. Do a good turn daily and it pays you back in spades.”

[email protected] / (585) 363-7031

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 Judy Cranston

Title: CEO, Girl Scouts of Western New York

Age: 62

Education: B.A. in production management and an MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology

Home:  Rochester’s Browncroft neighborhood

Family: Wife, Lynn; daughter, Nell

Interests: Walking, listening to audiobooks, cooking international cuisines, golf, Broadway music

Quote: “Don’t burn out, because you’re not doing any favors to yourself or your family or your work if you don’t take some time to do the things you love.”