Ken comes from New Zealand, which means he has a cultural bias for helping small organizations create an impact that belies their size; he runs marathons, which means that he understands that even the biggest projects are undertaken one step at a time; for his first degree he was a women’s studies minor, which means that he understands issues around power and control and also the need to challenge dominant paradigms; lastly he spent six years learning the Maori language (the indigenous language in NZ) as that was the right thing to do as Maori was the NZ’s first language.

In addition to these core things that are important about Ken, in his professional life he has been a Youth Worker, a Strategic Planning Manager for a City, a community college Tutor in business studies, a CEO of a large community foundation and the ED of a small Native American foundation.  Most recently Ken has been the principal of a management consulting business, the Manaaki Group, which specializes in working with non-profit clients.  In addition to his first degree he has post graduate qualifications in business studies with a focus on finance and public policy.  He has also attended non-profit leadership and strategy programs at both the Harvard and Stanford Graduate Schools of Business.

Ken has a commitment to hard work, working at the grass roots and informing his work with research.  He sees his role with NWABR as being developmental – that is building on all of the amazing work that has been done over the last 25 years to secure a sustainable and exciting path for the future.