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Karen Logan remembers what she said to her husband when he asked her if she wanted to move to Kingston. “I said ‘yeah, that would be fun,’” the Ottawa-native recalls with a laugh. 

But she also admits that she never expected they would stay. 

Though a Queen’s graduate with a fondness for the city (“I’m a nerdy tri-colour bleeding person – I do oil thighs at the drop of a hat!”), Ms. Logan (Artsci’94) had already lived in Hamilton and Calgary with her husband as he pursued advanced degrees in psychology. She expected his position in Kingston to be equally short-lived. 

Not long after arriving, she heard about a job as a development officer with the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and decided she would apply. 

“It was totally a shot in the dark,” Ms. Logan says, explaining that while she didn’t have a background in fundraising, she had worked in project management for an oil and gas company in Calgary and with Canadian Blood Services in Hamilton. 

“They really took a chance on me,” she says. 

It was a chance that paid off: Ms. Logan took to the work instantly. “I learned that fundraising is really about connecting people with their passion,” she says warmly. “People want to do something, they want to make a change. We can help make it happen. It doesn’t get better than that.” 

Fifteen years later, Ms. Logan is still with Queen’s – though she has moved from fundraising into stewardship, which she describes as “recognizing and celebrating donors.” As a Development Officer with Stewardship (part of the university’s Office of Advancement), Ms. Logan says her days can include anything from writing a stewardship report for the university’s most generous benefactors, the Baders, to visiting the Queen’s University Biological Station, to updating the Benefactors Wall in Stauffer Library. 

“I get to meet and work with all sorts of interesting people right across campus,” she explains. “We get to learn a little about everything. It’s really fun.” 

But as much as she enjoys her work, Ms. Logan is particularly grateful for her colleagues, describing them as an “amazing bunch of people.” When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, it was her colleagues in Advancement who put forward a team in Ms. Logan’s name, “K. Lo’s Krew,” for Kingston’s annual Run for the Cure. Undergoing chemotherapy at the time, Ms. Logan recalls wondering if the team might raise $5,000 for the charity. By race day, they had raised $50,000. 

“It was like being surrounded by a big, pink, fluffy hug,” Ms. Logan says of the support. “It was almost overwhelming!” 

Her namesake team continues to run in the annual fundraiser. 

Ms. Logan, meanwhile, is pleased to call Kingston her “forever home” (“at least until retirement!”) and speaks with gratitude of the opportunity to do work she enjoys with people she loves. 

“I think it would be hard to fundraise for another university,” she admits, “because you have to be passionate about the cause. But it’s easy for me to talk about this place. I had a sense of community when I was here as a student and I still have it today.”