Finance Pro Counts Success by Building Teams

Kate Boatright

Park Cities mom Kate Boatright has spent almost 18 years at S&P Global Ratings, the largest of the big three credit-rating agencies, where she now manages all the teams for the company’s commercial business in North America.

But for Boatright, the most important measures of success have little to do with data and scores.

“I define myself more as a people leader or a manager than I do even as someone who works in finance,” she said. “I love coaching, and I think I’m most proud of having a really great track record of helping others achieve what they want to achieve.”

This school year, Boatright has brought her team-building skills to the PTA presidency at Armstrong Elementary. She chose “Ahoy! Armstrong” as the theme for the school’s 110th year and called for all hands on deck to help the PTA reach its goals.

“There’s roles for everybody,” she said. “It’s really about finding the right balance, and the right roles for everybody involved.”

Boatright’s approach has paid off for the school, which has blown past fundraising expectations. Armstrong’s November auction raised more than $630,400, a record-setting amount that will enable the PTA to both support the school and make a meaningful contribution to the Highland Park Education Foundation, which aims to ensure Highland Park ISD continues its tradition of providing an excellent education for years to come.

The PTA presidency takes about 20 hours of time in a slow week. But despite her commitments to S&P Global Ratings and Armstrong, Boatright still finds time to lend her coaching skills to her third-grade daughter’s Girl Scout troop, which she has co-led since her daughter was in kindergarten. 

Boatright explained that she hopes to help the girls learn and grow in sustainable ways and summed up her Scout leadership philosophy with the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” 

Boatright herself has a long record of philanthropic involvement. In addition to her role as Armstrong PTA president, she is a Sustaining Member of the Junior League of Dallas, a past president of the Dallas Pi Beta Phi Alumni Club, and an active member of both the Women’s Auxiliary League of the Salvation Army and the Cattle Baron’s Ball of Dallas, where she served as underwriting co-chair in 2023.

So how does Boatright balance her family, which includes her husband, two daughters, and an English Springer Spaniel, a job that involves travel at least half the time, and her philanthropic commitments? 

The answer is that “million-dollar question” is that she can’t, or at least that she can’t do it alone.

“I literally cannot do it all. I can’t be present everywhere. Even if I could, at some point I have to sleep,” she said. “The more that you can enable others and get them on board with what you can accomplish, empower them and have them help you, that’s the only way it works. I like to think that I do a lot of that.”