Chief Executive Officer, Girl Scouts of San Diego

Carol Dedrich is the Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts San Diego, the nonprofit organization dedicated to building girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. She leads a team of more than 100 staff who support more than 24,000 youth and adult members and six properties in San Diego and Imperial counties with a $13M budget.

Carol attributes the lessons she learned as a young Girl Scout with preparing her for leadership roles in school, the military, and throughout her career. Now, she is a champion of girls and women, committed to helping them overcome insecurities and building collaborations to expand their perspectives and skills.

As CEO, Carol’s priorities include serving a geographically and economically diverse girl and volunteer base, leveraging community partnerships to better reach underserved communities, enriching the volunteer and older Girl Scout experiences, and building lasting relationships with donors to serve more girls with relevant, critical programming.

Carol has more than 20 years of experience at the executive level through roles in the government/military, corporate, and nonprofit sectors. She began her career as a Patriot Missile Officer in the U.S. Army with an RA commission and is a veteran of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. She transitioned to civilian life as a Director at United Way of Tucson

and Southern Arizona, later moving to the John Wayne Cancer Institute as Vice President of Marketing and Development, and Vice President at the Fulfillment Fund. Before joining Girl Scouts San Diego in 2016, she spent seven years as Chief External Relations Officer for Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles.

She has an MBA and is a graduate of both the Harvard Business School Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management and Lead San Diego Influence. Among her many awards and accolades, Carol was named San Diego Business Journal’s CEO of the Year in the Nonprofit category and was a finalist for San Diego Magazine’s Celebrating Women Awards in the Nonprofit Pioneer category in 2023. She has been named to the San Diego Business Journal’s SD500 Most Influential People in San Diego (2019-2023) and Top 50 Influential Veteran Business Leaders (2022), and to the Los Angeles Business Journal’s list of Women Making a Difference (2014).

At her leisure, Carol enjoys working on her private pilot’s license, being a scuba diving enthusiast, and traveling the world with her husband, Alex. Next on their bucket list: Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, Chuuk Lagoon, and a flying experience in Africa. They recently adopted her late sister’s tortoiseshell cat, Kenya, who loves making appearances during virtual meetings.