Kari Keefe

Founding Executive Director, KC Social Innovation Center

Kari Keefe

Founding Executive Director, KC Social Innovation Center

Biography

Kari is the founding Executive Director of KC Social Innovation Center, a nonprofit impact agency and regional hub for human capital development in smart, digital cities, exploring the nexus of learning and work to advance the design and development of innovative, high-quality, inclusive opportunity and workforce initiatives in the Kansas City region.

Prior to launching KCSIC, Kari had a successful 20-year marketing career working with entrepreneurs and startups before jumping into ed-tech in 2013 with a National Science Foundation grant working for Mozilla managing an experimental fund for next-generation educational pilots that use gigabit technology to illustrate the transformative power of high-speed, low latency Internet and cyber physical systems on learning and workforce development.  Kari serves on a number of boards and advisories and is a frequent speaker on opportunity ecosystems, next-generation workforce models, human empowerment and inclusion.