Truckload Authority - August/September 2018

Kathryn Sanner | Manager of government affairs
BY klint lowry
“This kid’s going places.”
Yes, that’s the sort of cornball line you’d expect to hear in a
snappy-talking 1940s movie, but it’s the perfect double-entendre
to introduce Kathryn Sanner, TCA’s new manager of government
affairs.
Just a cursory look at her history is enough to see she’s “going
places” in the jazzy sense of the phrase. At 26, she has not only
graduated college and served an internship in the U.S. House,
but after that, while working full time as a legislative analyst at a
national trade organization, she’s already gone back and gotten
her master’s degree in public policy.
Right after finishing that, and just before starting her new job
at TCA in June, Sanner took a little time in between for one of her
life’s passions — going places in the literal sense — this time a
trip to Spain with her family. One of her life’s goals is to visit every
continent.
Both sides of Sanner’s “going places” persona go back to her
childhood in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, a town of about 3,500 a
little over an hour’s drive east of Pittsburgh.
She grew up with her two brothers, Jason and Jim. Well,
she didn’t exactly grow up with them, she explained. They were
15 and 12 years old, respectively, when she was born, which in
retrospect she believes worked out nicely.
As adults, “I really appreciate having them around,” Sanner
said. On the other hand, when she was growing up, Jason and Jim
were already off to college and living their lives, so she avoided
the sibling squabbling and brotherly torment that comes with
being a kid sister.
But when you grow up in a small town, you’re kind of
everybody’s kid sister. The community observes you and
eventually “pegs” you with an identity, Sanner said.
In high school, she hung out with three close friends. Mariah
was dubbed the musical one; Kelsey was the athletic one and
Morgan was the comedian of the group.
Young Kathryn, that was a no-brainer, she was “the smart
one.”
The community’s consensus served to enhance the affirming
environment her parents, Barry Sanner and Lynn Miller, provided
at home.
“If you ask either of my parents they will tell you that from a
very young age, they were telling me that I should be a lawyer,”
Sanner said. That’s because she was always arguing with them,
and to their credit they recognized she was good at it.
“When I was in high school, I did mock trial, and even in
college I was leaning toward being a lawyer.”
Barry Sanner is a high school math teacher. “He teaches
calculus and geometry and all the things I’m not good at,” she
said.
While she lived up to her studious billing, Sanner has always
made it a point to balance work with outside interests. She’s
played piano since she was 5, and she took part in her high
school’s musical every year. She also played basketball and
softball and ran track.
Welcome to a wider world
“When I was 8, my parents took me on a trip to Europe,”
Sanner said.
This started a pattern that has stuck her entire life: keeping
an active, busy, well-rounded schedule but dropping it all once in
awhile to go see some part of the world.
Sanner’s mother is a Lutheran pastor who has always been
committed to organizing youth-group missionary trips to other
countries, which Kathryn often went on.
Off the top of her head, one trip that stands out was when
they went to Juarez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El
Paso, Texas. They spent a week there, working at an orphanage.
A trip to Peru also came to mind.
It’s one thing to travel on a vacation and enjoy all the
pleasantries popular tourism has to offer, Sanner said. “It’s a
very different experience sleeping on a floor, and spending days
helping build a school or feeding children. You’re there, this
American who has everything, and you’re with these people who
have nothing. It’s a humbling experience.”
Back home, Western Pennsylvania was an interesting place to
grow up, Sanner said. “I had an interest in politics for as long as I
can remember,” she said. “You were confronted with all sorts of
issues, being in that area: employment, education.”
Being raised with an eclectic worldview taught her to see
issues from all sides and nurtured her interest in political science,
drawing her to George Washington University, in Washington,
D.C.
College can have a way of bringing some high school academic
stars down to earth in a hurry. Not so for Sanner; she graduated
34 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2018