Carol Ann Sampson

Carol Ann Brenne was born to Howard and Barbara (Gearhart) Brenne on May 19, 1951 at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Oregon. She was sister to a younger brother, Richard. Carol grew up in Raleigh Hills and attended Raleigh Park Elementary School, Whitford Junior High and Beaverton High School.

Carol enjoyed an active childhood and participated in a variety of activities including swimming, the Girl Scouts and horseback riding. Carol loved to read throughout her life and for her, a great afternoon involved coming home from school, grabbing a Snickers candy bar and reading a book. Carol was extremely close to her father Howard. She loved his sense of humor and the joy he took in life’s simple pleasures. And Howard enjoyed very much spending time with Carol and finding interesting ways to entertain her. What could be better than to take your daughter to the hospital, pretend to be a doctor and treat her to a chocolate sundae in the doctor’s lounge. Perhaps the thing that they most enjoyed doing together was simply walking to the local Fred Meyer store, talking and laughing and kicking rocks all along the way.

Carol grew up during an exciting time in music history which brought one of her very favorite groups, the Beatles, onto the international music scene. Unfortunately, her love for the Beatles did not translate into a love for the seven years of piano lessons that she took at the behest of her mother. Carol would always say that she might have liked her piano lessons better, if rather than playing obscure works of obscure German composers, she had had the opportunity to play something that she actually liked. It didn’t help that she had to practice in the dark basement of the family home under the sinister glare of the family’s bust of Beethoven.

Carol attended Oregon State University where she earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in English Education in 1973. While at OSU, Carol lived in Snell Hall and developed life-long friendships as a member of “The Snell Girls”, a group of friends with whom she shared annual get-togethers. Carol always liked to point out that at the time she went to college, women were told that they could become a teacher, a nurse or a secretary.

Not long after completing her degree, Carol and her then husband Dennis Pike moved to Phoenix, Arizona where Dennis had been transferred as a member of the United States Air Force. In terms of weather, Phoenix was not a good choice for Carol as she loved the cooler weather of Oregon. She especially loved the fall and every year she would drive to northern Arizona so that she could see at least one leaf fall to the ground.

While in Arizona, Carol started her working life coincidentally enough, as a secretary, at Tally Industries. She loved working at Tally and developed a number of life-long friendships including one with Lorraine Martinez who would become one of her closest friends.

Carol’s time in Arizona led to a major transition in her life. After a divorce from her husband, Carol found it difficult to make ends meet while living independently on a secretary’s salary. As such, she decided to look into getting a job in the still relatively new field of computer programming. After completing 2 years of course work at Arizona State University, Carol took a job as a computer programmer at Maricopa County. It was there that she found her passion. Carol loved computer programming and especially the ah ha moment that comes when the solution to a tough programming problem seems to arrive magically in your brain.

Carol’s programming experience provided her the opportunity to return to Oregon in 1984 where she took a position as a consultant with Cap Gemini America. Carol’s return was somewhat bittersweet as she had to leave behind her close friends in Arizona, as well as the place that she liked to say was where she became an adult. But every cloud has a silver lining and at Cap Gemini, Carol met Bob Kipe who would become one of her closest friends and who would later play a pivotal role in her life.

Carol eventually moved on from Cap Gemini and in 1991, while working for another consulting company, was assigned to an information systems project at Multnomah County. It was at the first team meeting for this project that she met her eventual husband Frank Sampson whom she instantly liked, because like her, he hated to get up early in the morning.

Carol and Frank exchanged wedding vows on October 23rd, 1994, in a beautiful ceremony conducted fittingly enough by the Multnomah County Tax Collector, one of the primary “users” on the information systems project where they first met. During their marriage, Carol and Frank shared many wonderful adventures and particularly loved traveling together, enjoying trips to Europe, Canada and within the United States.

Carol and Frank had an incredibly close relationship and were able to do things, like working together, that other couples would find problematic. In 2002, both Carol and Frank were working for Kipe & Associates, a small consulting firm founded by Bob Kipe. The year 2002 was very difficult because Bob Kipe was diagnosed with cancer. During the last three months of his life, Bob began training Carol to replace him as the President of the company because he wished to see it continue and knew that there was only one person who could do the job. On May 31st, Carol took over as the president of Kipe & Associates, one day after her dear friend Bob passed away. Carol had loved her work as a consultant and never wished to own a business, but she felt that the legacy Bob created was too important to see it end.

Carol not only carried Bob Kipe’s legacy forward, but created her own. She will be remembered as an extraordinary business woman who always had the best interests of her clients and employees at heart. For over 10 years, Carol served as the president of Kipe & Associates, renamed Kipe Technology Resources in 2009. Under Carol’s leadership, the company achieved tremendous business success and was recognized by the Portland Business Journal for accomplishments including: twice making the list of the 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies in Oregon (9th in 2005 and 19th in 2012), being ranked as one of the Top 50 Women-Owned Business in Oregon for 6 consecutive years (No. 2 in 2011) and also for 6 consecutive years, being ranked as one of the Top 25 Technology Service Providers in Oregon. As a business leader, however, Carol’s greatest sense of satisfaction came not from the financial performance of her company, but rather from helping people find jobs that they enjoyed and helping her clients achieve their business goals.

Carol and Frank achieved one of their own goals in 2012, when they sold Kipe Technology Resources and retired. After retiring, the adventuresome couple continued to enjoy traveling and finding other ways to keep life interesting. They tried downtown life for a brief period, living in Portland’s Pearl district in a condominium on the Willamette river. Exciting trips would also follow including a wonderful trip taking them from Bergen, Norway to Stockholm, Sweden and finally to London, England and a day at the 2015 Wimbledon Championships.

Because she found her career in information technology so rewarding, Carol became an advocate for bringing more women into the field of information technology and to support this objective, Carol established the Carol Brenne Sampson Information Technology Scholarship Fund at Oregon State University in 2013.

Carol is survived by her loving husband of 21 years, Frank Sampson; her brother, Richard Brenne; and her beloved niece Sarah. In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to the Oregon Humane Society, Oregon All-Classical Radio or the charitable organization of your choice.

A memorial service will be held at Skyline Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home, 4101 NW Skyline Blvd., Portland, OR, on Thursday, July 7, 2016, at 2pm.

Please visit the guestbook and enter a special message or memory. Thank you.

Arrangements entrusted to Skyline Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home (503) 292-6611