From Encore Fellow to Board Member at KairosPDX
Several years ago, four dynamic women came together with a common vision and conviction to make a difference in the education of children from lower income neighborhoods in Portland. They were driven by their acute understanding of the huge racial and opportunity gap that exists among the lower income and African American communities in the state of Oregon. They created KairosPDX, a public charter school in NE Portland, to close this gap in education. KairosPDX became operational in 2013 and was the first public charter school ever to be approved unanimously by the Portland School Board. The school opened its doors in 2014.Like any new start-up venture, KairosPDX’s vision and mission had to be matched with a core organizational structure to sustain its early success. Social Venture Partners’ Encore Fellows Program selected me to serve as an Encore Fellow at KairosPDX to assist the team in establishing and improving its financial management systems and operations. I was drawn to this opportunity for several reasons:
I had known Zalika Gardner when she taught my son, Jalen, in the second grade at Catlin Gabel. Zalika is a professional educator who always dreamed of having her own school that could make a difference. As a founding member of KairosPDX, she found her dream.
I was impressed with the dedication of these four women who made huge sacrifices to their careers and family to launch KairosPDX; and
My experience and background were well suited to assist KairosPDX given my experience investing in small businesses as a venture capitalist, working on business transactions as an attorney, and the responsibility as CFO of a sizable QSR business.
I accepted the nine-month Fellowship and dug in to learn as much about the financial inner-workings of KairosPDX as I could. I treated this opportunity from the perspective of a start-up not-for-profit business and asked myself what financial management structure would I want in place if I were to “invest” in KairosPDX. This perspective is critical because any potential investor (in this case an individual donor or governmental funding source) would support KairosPDX as long as there was a sound financial management system. Such a system will lead to credible financial reporting, solid audit results from an independent accountant/firm and confidence that KairosPDX would satisfy its fiduciary responsibilities to its current funding base as good stewards of their capital.
From this business perspective, I was able to focus on evaluating the current financial management system, make reasonable recommendations for improvement and assist in implementing these improvements. My analysis was thorough and sometimes challenging because of the start-up nature of the organization, where serving its children was always the over-riding priority rather than systems and procedures. Also, the many roles each founder had to assume to successfully meet the challenges of KairosPDX’s primary mission to teach children sometimes delayed the implementation of our plan.
Nevertheless, we made great strides over the course of my Fellowship toward establishing an improved financial management system that lead to greater organizational accountability, less risk to KairosPDX’s financial stability and better efficiencies in its operations. If sustained, this will allow KairosPDX to overcome the challenges that cause most charter schools to fail in its first few years -- not having a sound financial management infrastructure and system of accountability that leads to financial excess, fraud, no financial accountability and undue risks to the not for profit’s stakeholders.
The greatest honor I received from KairosPDX, in addition to taking pride in our accomplishments over the tenure of my Encore Fellowship, was their invitation to join the Board of Directors at the end of my Fellowship in February 2016. Not only did I join the Board, but was asked to serve as its Treasurer. That was a fitting conclusion to my work at KairosPDX.
Equally satisfying was the commendation from the Chairperson of KairosPDX and Operations Director, Marsha Williams, who stated the following and I quote:
“Ken has been a great asset to KairosPDX and we have enjoyed having him join our team and share our mission and vision for Portland youth. He has been willing to take on anything given to him and has also stepped up and offered to take on even the smallest projects to support the management team in any way he can. Ken has been very thoughtful and thorough in all the work he has produced and we have full confidence in his work and capabilities to help shape and grow KairosPDX. It has been a pleasure to host him as an Encore Fellow.”
I have been honored to serve my Encore Fellowship at KairosPDX and I am looking forward to serving on the Board and will continue to make a contribution to meeting KairosPDX’s mission to close Portland’s persistent achievement gap through innovative pedagogy, community collaboration, and family partnership.