Whether in sports or business, Seattle Humane Board Member Chris McCall loves coaching people and sharing his skills and experience to make organizations better.
“That’s what appeals to me is, I think there are opportunities to teach and help the group,” he says. “Everybody wants to learn, and my way may not be the best, but at least I’ll give you something to think about and you can adapt it for your own benefit.”
Chris has more than 30 years of experience in strategy consulting, strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, finance process and alliance management. As he begins to step back from The Spur Group, a go-to market strategy and execution company he co-founded, Chris has been looking for ways to lend his expertise toward supporting nonprofit organizations like Seattle Humane – he’d spent nine years on the board at The Spur Group and four as chairman.
He’d worked for more than 15 years with fellow Seattle Humane Board Member Jeff Betts, who’d mentioned there were several open board positions. Chris was familiar with Board Member Phil Sorgen’s work at Microsoft and worked there at the same time, though he only knew him then by reputation. Chris had also previously worked with Board President Clare Pedersen.
“I knew Clare from business interactions over the years. She was at Slalom, and she coached my team for a while,” he says. “Being on a board for an organization that I have a lot of respect for and passion for, it was really just great timing.”
Chris grew up with cats and his wife, Cindy, grew up with dogs. They’d strictly been a cat household for the longest time until 2003.
“It was our first experience with Seattle Humane. Our oldest daughter had been bugging us for years to get a dog,” he says. The dog they adopted was named Sambuca. “He was a beast of a lab. They said maybe he had Pyrenees in him. He kind of ruled the house.”
Chris’s first dog, Sambuca, who was a rescue from Seattle Humane in about 2004. Pictured here at his favorite place – playing in the sand in Long Beach WA
They’ve had many other dogs and cats over the years, all of them rescues.
“We never had a store-bought animal,” Chris says. “Animals were fated to us more than deliberate.”
Chris’s cat Mochi, current dog Harlow, and Charlie with Harlow
On top of consulting businesses on strategic planning and channel management in technology, Chris coached lacrosse and soccer for his children while they were growing up and was also an assistant scout master.
Chris sees lots of potential for growth at Seattle Humane and believes it’s the many programs and services that help the organization stand out. He also believes the best ideas for how Seattle Humane will continue to grow in the future already exist in the people who work here, and it’s just a matter of testing those ideas to see what works best.
“The innovative ideas are sitting in the people who work here,” he says. “It’s how do you get these ideas heard. We have a mantra at my company that we have more ideas than good ideas.”
With degrees in finance and economics, coupled with 30 years of experience working in multiple industries, including financial services, health care, energy and aerospace, Chris is excited to be serving on the board’s treasury committee.
“A lot of what I’ve done over the past 30 years is, “OK, I’ve got a bunch of numbers, what do I do with it?’ For me, money and math always made sense. I’m not an artist but that stuff always hit a groove.”
