McNulty started as president and CEO of the Park City Education Foundation back in 2008 as the country found itself in deep financial problems due to the subprime mortgage crisis. From there she was able to reinvent the foundation that was originally formed in the 1980s.
“The Ed Foundation was largely dependent on real estate developers at that time,” she said. "So that really dried up, essentially, within a month of me starting. There were conversations about whether the organization could even keep its doors open back in 2008. And it was just provided this really unique opportunity, that feels kind of like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to reinvent the organization and build a sustainable mechanism for bringing in resources into our schools.”
From then on, she only grew the organization, seeing it go from a $250,000 annual budget to one of more than $3 million today.
“A lot of those things that we have today that are part of the system are were really generated from ideas working within the community and seeing needs and gaps and how we could work the Ed Foundation collaboratively with the school district to fill some of those gaps," she said. "So, we helped pilot the full-day pre-K program that 4-year-olds now have. We seeded the coding program that's now K-to-12. It was the first coding program in the country in our elementary schools where every student was learning to code.”
The board of directors has hired Joelle Kanshepolsky of Pathway Associates to lead the team until a new CEO is hired. Kanshepolsky is familiar with the Park City community as she served as interim CEO of the Park City Community Foundation for a year. The search for McNulty’s replacement won’t start until later in the year because it’s summer and both staff and board members are out of town.
McNulty said she is confident there are talented individuals within the community who would be a great fit as her replacement. She said none of the current staff is interested in stepping up for consideration. She expects the position will be posted in September.
