Member Spotlight: Helen McClenahan, Chief Communication Officer, Archdiocese of Seattle

From left, Chief Communication Officer Helen McClenahan, Seattle Archbishop Paul D. Etienne, and Chief Human Resources Officer Jeff Pixler. Courtesy photo

Faith, communications and God’s plan

Helen McClenahan finds purpose serving the church through communications and faith.

The Catholic Journalist’s Member Spotlight highlights the diverse voices and organizations that make up the Catholic Media Association.

This month features Helen McClenahan, chief communications officer for the Archdiocese of Seattle. She was named Communications Director of the Year by the Catholic Media Association at the Catholic Media Conference in Atlantic City, N.J., in June.

Helen McClenahan had just had her fourth child and was with a company that boasted a “Best Place to Work” award when a friend called and asked if she’d consider a job change.

She had no idea that seven and a half years later the request would lead to her being named the CMA Communications Director of the Year.

Her friend described some of the job challenges, emphasizing them in his description as “everything you love.” Then she asked what the company was.

When he said, “the archdiocese,” Helen’s reaction was, “I’ve never thought beyond that parish bubble.”

She consented to having lunch with her friend to talk about the job. But then she got a nudge from above. “That day my sister called me and … said, ‘I saw this thing on Etsy and I had to get it for you. It’s in the mail.’”

The “thing” arrived the next day and sits on her desk at the archdiocese. It was a beautifully calligraphed copy of Helen’s favorite prayer of St. Francis.

Holding the framed prayer, she said, “You can’t be more obvious than this, so that’s what sealed the deal.”

“I have been doing communications type work since sixth grade when I was the communications officer for my Catholic school (class), so I’ve always leaned in this direction.” But until the archdiocesan job, it had been in much different communication arenas, ranging from Silicon Valley to health care.

Initially, she thought she might be there a couple of years. “But that is not what God’s plan was for me.”

In her second week, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain called her up to his office. His “welcome to the chancery,” was followed by “Do you know what a pontifical secret is?” Her first big assignment was the first press conference announcing that Archbishop Paul D. Etienne would become a coadjutor to Archbishop Sartain.

Since jumping into the communications fray that is an archdiocese, she has learned that most of her work falls into three general areas.

“One is running our communications team, which is really fun. We have a group of people that do creative and design work; a group that put out Northwest Catholic magazine, our newsletter and our website. Then we have a digital team that’s focused on our public campaigns and we create a bunch of materials for parishes and schools. We create communications toolkits so they can easily go in, download things for their bulletins. Our goal is to make it easier for them to evangelize.”

As a second part of her duties, Helen personally handles issues and crisis management, things by their nature unpredictable.

The third main part of her job is her role in the senior leadership at the archdiocese. For the latter, she sits in on a weekly meeting with others to manage the work of the diocese as smoothly as possible. In fact, she estimates she spends about 80 percent of her time in meetings.

“There’s no such thing as a typical day. I set up my computer and start with prayer. I say, ‘All right, let’s do this together. See what today brings.’”

What it brings may come from any of the 28 active projects on which the communications department is working. Those include helping the Associated Catholic Cemeteries prepare a new pre-planning guide, helping the retreat center incorporate the new archdiocesan brand into their materials, promoting an upcoming event and proofing the next issue of the magazine.

The biggest of those projects is the ongoing strategic pastoral planning effort called Partners in the Gospel. The multiyear project started with a year of research and planning, followed by a year of listening to input and concerns from across the diocese.

Stretching from the west side of the mountains and north to south across Washington, the diocese includes 136 parishes, now in 60 parish families, 74 Catholic schools, four cemeteries, two camps and a retreat center, all part of an ongoing process to best share resources to meet needs.

One of her most memorable activities since she came to the diocese was participating in a Pilgrimage of Peace to Japan in 2023. Seattle Archbishop Etienne and Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, N.M., recognizing their dioceses’ links to nuclear weapons, led delegations to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There they met with hibakusha, survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing of their cities.

Helen said one of the most important outcomes of the trip was Archbishop Etienne’s joining with four other bishops to support nuclear disarmament.

Helen McClenahan (left) poses for a photo in Peru with her family (from left) Isla, Oakes, Cade, (in back) Max, and her husband, Tyler (kneeling). (Courtesy)

Traveling is something Helen also loves to do with her family. That fourth child she had before taking the archdiocesan post, Isla, is now 12 and a seventh grader at St. John the Evangelist School.

Her husband, Tyler, is boys’ basketball coach and in-house substitute teacher at Bishop Blanchet High School in Seattle. And the first three kids — all boys — are Cade, 18, a freshman at Santa Clara University in California; Max, 17, a junior at Bishop Blanchet; and Oakes, 14, an eighth grader at St. John School. And there are two dogs.

“Seattle is one of the most secular parts of the country and the Catholic Church is not liked by the media,” she said. “One reason I took this job was to tell great stories about what Catholics are doing.”

“Catholic media helps people connect with the larger Catholic Church and all of its beauty. Stories inspire people to live out their own faith and feel as though they’re part of a larger faith family.”

Boehlefeld, retired features and multimedia editor for The Observer in Rockford, Ill., freelances and writes fiction.