Kate Cheney Chappell is an American businesswoman, manufacturer, and co-founder of Tom's of Maine in 1970.
Chappell is a 1963 graduate of Oxford School in West Hartford, Connecticut. She attended Chatham College and Sarah Lawrence College before she and her husband, cofounder Tom Chappell, moved to Kennebunk, Maine in 1968 to raise their family. Kate and Tom now share a summer home on Monhegan, Maine.
She also attended the Sorbonne and the University of Southern Maine, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1983 with an A.B. in Communications after an 18-year hiatus from college.
In 2006, a controlling 84% stake in Tom's of Maine was purchased by Colgate-Palmolive for $100 million in 2006. [1]