Kate Webster designed her life into a new category of entrepreneurship for the 20th century, when
women were just finding their way into the marketplace and professional public life in America. Kate
was the consummate Professional Volunteer. Born of parents, both doctors, her mother was an ENT
specialist to many of the East Coast intelligentsia, including Jackie and John F. Kennedy, her father
was a general practitioner and, during the Great Depression, the "physician to the Stock Exchange."
Kate grew up in New York City, graduated from Smith College and then began her second life as
mother, wife and professional volunteer, in Seattle and on Bainbridge Island, with her husband Holt
Webster (1919-1992), founder, CEO, and finally president of Pacific Air Freight and, from 1968 to
1984, first president and then CEO of Airborne Freight Corporation. Kate's career as a professional volunteer included over three decades of work with Children's Hospital, Washington State University, and Smith College. She began with the Junior League of Seattle, then as a founding member of the City Club of Seattle. Among the countless and delightful stories of her life, full of wonderful characters and famous individuals, she once had her friend and fellow Smith alumna, Julia Child, over for dinner.