Waggener Leaves Challenge Post for Kendal King Group

Tina Waggener, who spent the last 17 years as executive director of The Cancer Challenge, is leaving the successful nonprofit to become an account executive for retail marketing firm Kendal King Group.

KKG announced the hire in a news release Monday. Waggener will work from the Bentonville office. KKG maintains its headquarters in Kansas City.

Waggener, named to the 2001 class of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40, has helped The Cancer Challenge contribute more than $10 million to cancer care in Northwest Arkansas.

“It’s really neat to see the community working together,” Waggener told the Business Journal in an April 2012 profile. “I think The Cancer Challenge has been a big part of bringing people together and inspiring and influencing them to work together,” both as fundraisers and as grant recipients.

Before joining The Cancer Challenge, Waggener worked for nine years as creative services director at the Sam’s Club Home Office.

Kendal King Group works with several consumer packaged goods (CPG) retail clients including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Hallmark, Nickelodeon and the National Basketball Association.

Waggener said The Cancer Challenge board is currently conducting interviews and hopes to have new hire named by the end of February.