Katie Sheahan up for Femmes de mérite award

Director of Recreation and Athletics has strong community connections

barbara black

Katie Sheahan, Director of Recreation and Athletics, is in the running for the Quebec YWCA Femmes de mérite award in the Sport and Wellness category.

The three finalists were announced March 8, and the 10 winners will be revealed at a gala next month to celebrate the achievements of all the finalists. It’s a popular, joyous annual event.

Sheahan naturally sees the gala as an occasion to celebrate women but also as a chance to promote the YWCA.

“Over the years, it has also helped people build networks, and see the possibilities, including non-traditional careers, that are open to women,” she said.

Sheahan became Concordia’s director of recreation and athletics nearly three years ago. Before that, she put in more than two decades at the YMCA, where she rose to executive director of the Montreal branch and oversaw the successful downtown YMCA re-development project.

She was also responsible for the relocation of the residence-cafeteria to the former Reddy Memorial Hospital and that of the community, child development, language and fitness programs to the new downtown YMCA facility.

She oversaw the creation of the Ecole Internationale de langues du YMCA, and the development of community outreach programs such as First Stop, Dialogue and a new day centre for ex-offenders.

At the Y, she managed operations with annual revenues in excess of $10 million, led the efforts of a team of 200 employees and 100 volunteers, and contributed to a spectacular membership growth in a 24-month period from 3,500 to more than 9,000 members.

As Vice-President Michael Di Grappa said when he announced her appointment at the university, “She has demonstrated her ability to work effectively with a wide range of stakeholders, manage change, fundraise and build a strong and effective team.”

Even before her appointment at Concordia in 2003, Sheahan was a community partner in an institutional soul-searching exercise called Future Search. The exercise contributed to a renewed sense of purpose for the Recreation and Athletics Department.

Campus Recreation provides more than 50 intramural and recreational activities for students, staff, alumni and the public. The varsity sports program involves more than 300 athletes. The Department of Recreation and Athletics has a $3-million budget and more than 40 employees.

Sheahan holds a BA in sociology from Concordia and a Master’s degree in Management (Voluntary Sector Leaders) from McGill University. She recently graduated from the McGill McConnell Masters’ program.

This year’s winter Olympics showed the men how to “play like a girl,” and no one is more delighted than Sheahan.

“There’s such a tremendous sense of pride among men as well as women in their grace, their ambassadorship, their capacity to speak for their country,” she recently said.

In the Femmes de mérite competition, she is in very good company. She was nominated by Edith Katz, Coordinator of the Institute for Co-operative Education. Last year, Katz nominated Vice-Provost Danielle Morin in the Education category, and Morin won.