Frances Hesselbein, transformative leader of Girl Scouts, dies at 107

Frances Hesselbein was living with her family in Johnstown, Pa., in the late 1940s when a neighbor asked whether she would be willing to take over a local Girl Scout troop that was about to lose its leader. At first, Mrs. Hesselbein declined.

“I’m the mother of a little boy,” she recalled saying, confessing that she “knew nothing about little girls.”

The neighbor did not give up. She later told Mrs. Hesselbein that if no new leader came forward, Troop 17 - more than two dozen 10-year-old girls who gathered weekly in the basement of a Presbyterian church - would be disbanded. Mrs. Hesselbein relented and agreed to serve for six weeks, until they could find “a real leader,” she said.

In the end, she stayed with the girls for eight years, through their high school graduation. She began ascending the local and regional ranks of the Girl Scouts until she was hired in 1976 to run the national organization at its headquarters in New York.

Mrs. Hesselbein led the Girl Scouts as chief executive for 14 years, recruiting new generations of members and volunteers, increasing the group’s minority ranks and modernizing its mission of empowering young women.

For her leadership of the Girl Scouts and her subsequent work training nonprofit executives, President Bill Clinton in 1998 awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“Frances Hesselbein has devoted herself to changing lives for the better,” read the citation. “With skill and sensitivity,” it continued, she “has shown us how to summon the best from ourselves and our fellow citizens.”

Mrs. Hesselbein died Dec. 11 at her home in Easton, Pa. She was 107. Her niece Frances Eckman confirmed her death but did not cite a cause.

The Girl Scouts of the USA trace their beginnings to 1912, when their founder, Juliette Gordon Low, first convened a group of 18 “Girl Guides” in her hometown of Savannah, Ga. (The Boy Scouts of America had been incorporated two years earlier.)

Unlike the Camp Fire Girls, a group that primarily emphasized domestic skills, the Girl Scouts aimed to train young women in civics as well as homemaking, preparing them for active roles in society.

Millions of youngsters grew up reciting the Girl Scout promise, selling cookies and collecting badges to mark their mastery of new skills, which evolved over the years from tasks such as “clean and dress fowl” to the use of a computer.

When Mrs. Hesselbein took office, the Girl Scouts were in the midst of a membership decline attributed to the anti-establishment views that had taken hold among many American youths in the 1960s.

Under Mrs. Hesselbein’s leadership, the Girl Scouts sought to attract more members by lowering the age at which girls could join. Previously, the youngest members were Brownies, age 6. In 1984, the Girl Scouts admitted the first Daisies, age 5.

“Women are working for part or all of their adult lives now,” she told the New York Times. “The possibilities are limitless, but you need to prepare. So we think 6 is not too early to learn about career opportunities, and we also think that girls need to learn about making decisions. When you’re 5, you’re not too young.”

Mrs. Hesselbein was credited with tripling the number of Black and other minority Girl Scouts and with recruiting from immigrant communities and public housing projects. She sought to expose young members to careers in science, technology, engineering and math as well as business - a field many girls first encountered through Girl Scout cookie sales.

“They gain confidence,” Mrs. Hesselbein said. “They learn to write an order, make change. They become a small part of the business world.”

Mrs. Hesselbein opposed suggestions to merge the Girl Scouts with the Boys Scouts, a topic of perennial discussion over the years. It was critical, she insisted, for girls to have female role models, and she broadened the vision of who those role models might be.

“At one time there was a stereotype that your Girl Scout leader was the mother of a Brownie,” Mrs. Hesselbein told the Times in 1984, “but increasingly we are having young businesswomen and professional women who are not mothers but care about children.”

Mrs. Hesselbein stepped down as chief executive of the Girl Scouts in 1990. At that time, according to the Girl Scouts, the combined total of girls and adult volunteers was nearly 3.3 million, compared with more than 3.1 million in 1977. Mrs. Hesselbein then became the founding president of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, later known as the Leader to Leader Institute and today called the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, in Manhattan.

The organization provides leadership training based on the work of management theorist Peter F. Drucker, whom Mrs. Hesselbein had met in the 1980s at the University Club in New York. He was said to have remarked, having observed her work with the Girl Scouts, that she was qualified to run General Motors.

Frances Willard Richards - in an early display of her independence, she changed her middle name to Ann, after her mother, at age 6 - was born Nov. 1, 1915, in South Fork, Pa. She grew up in nearby Johnstown. Her father worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad as a detective, and her mother was a homemaker.

She had hoped to become a playwright, according to the Girl Scouts, but suspended her college studies when her father died of malaria during her freshman year. After leaving school, she went to work at a department store to help support her mother and two younger siblings.

In the late 1930s, she married John D. Hesselbein, a photographer. For years they ran a photography studio in Johnstown before moving to Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital, as Mrs. Hesselbein took on increasing roles with the Girl Scouts.

Her husband died in 1978, and their son, John R. Hesselbein, died in 2011. She was also preceded in death by a grandson. Survivors include another grandson, three great-grandchildren and three great-greatgrandchildren.

President George H.W. Bush named Mrs. Hesselbein to two panels, on volunteerism and community service. She was the author of books including “Hesselbein on Leadership” (2002) and “My Life in Leadership” (2011).

At the Girl Scouts and in her nonprofit leadership training, Mrs. Hesselbein practiced and promoted what she described as a “circular management” style, rather than a traditional hierarchical reporting structure, to include more people in decision-making.

“The more power you give away, the more you have,” she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1992. “I truly believe in participatory leadership, in sharing leadership to the outermost edges of the circle.”