Most have undoubtedly heard that we recently lost a wonderful member of our Women in Consulting community, Kenna Mawk. Kenna passed away early August in a scuba diving accident.
I had the pleasure of working with Kenna in her pro bono role as Web content co-chair on my online marketing team. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her. She was a great member of the team—generous with her time, talented, and always willing to help others. And she was a genuinely very nice person.
Kenna was a well-liked member of the WIC community and will be sorely missed. Here are remembrances from a few people.
“Kenna epitomized the can-do spirit that makes the WIC pro boon team such a great group that accomplishes amazing things. She was always happy, ready to help out in anyway necessary—and always with a great sense of humor. I received many wonderful notes from the WIC Community about Kenna that reinforced everything I believed about her. She is deeply missed and leaves a big hole in our Web team and in our hearts.” —Avery Horzewski, WIC President
“Kenna was not just another WIC Web content co-chair, she was a very special, gracious, always-willing-to-pitch-in WIC partner that helped to make the WIC website as complete, current, and user friendly as possible. Life is so very fragile, and I think of what a loss this must be for Paul, her husband, her family, and her friends. I know I will miss her.” —Maria Larcher, Kenna’s Web Content Co-Chair
“I worked for Kenna at Ciphergen about 10 – 12 years ago. Even then she was a ‘flipper dipper,’ always planning her next scuba trip. She was a woman who absolutely lit up with excitement at the thought of taking her precious vacation time to work as part of a volunteer group counting endangered sea turtles in the Caribbean. I once asked her why she quit being a vet, to which she replied, ‘I couldn’t bear it any more: so many people were asking me to put to death perfectly good and loving animals.’” —Tori Muir, WIC Member
“I had the honor of working with her at Knight-Ridder Information/Dialog, and I had a great deal of respect for her knowledge and passion.” —Sharyn Fitzpatrick, WIC Member
For those who’d like to attend, a memorial service for Kenna will be held on Saturday, October 1st, 12 noon at Mariani’s Inn & Restaurant, located at 25000 El Camino Real, Santa Clara. A light luncheon will be served for those who’d like it. The food service will start at 12:30.
Our heartfelt condolences go out to Kenna’s husband and family.
About Rachel Melia
I think of Kenna every day. She and I had been working together weekly on a PetSiteSolutions web business since November. She was a lovely, talented and capable person. Losing Kenna creates a void in my day to day life.
Kenna was such a positive, upbeat person that just oozed good vibes…I regret that I’m getting to know her much better now than when she was sitting next to me at WIC meetings…!
I just read about Kenna and my heart skipped a beat. Cannot believe she is no more with us. I worked wit Kenna. She was my supervisor from 1998 to 1999 and later we worked together on one project. She was the kindest person I know – with lot of determination, enthusiasm and creativity. I respected her a lot and learned a great deal from her. She was always content and never complained about anything. Good people are very few and she was among them!