Kia Her

Associate Consultant

+1-651-315-8926

Kia approaches everything she does with passion, dedication, and a drive to listen and learn. She brings to The Improve Group a record of supporting mission-driven organizations to close disparities and better serve their communities. Outside of work, Kia enjoys spending time with her family, grooving in dance classes, and eating her favorite foods.

Expertise

Evaluation

Kia sees evaluation as a powerful tool for supporting and facilitating meaningful change. As an evaluator, she focuses on applying The Improve Group’s Community-Responsive Approach as she works to design and implement evaluations that are purposeful, meaningful, intersectional, inclusive, and equitable. To do this, Kia keeps affected communities in mind and engaged throughout the process. Kia enjoys applying a mixed-methods approach for generating a wholesome narrative and analysis, though if she had to choose one, her favorite data collection tool is qualitative interviews.

Consulting

Kia approaches her work with clients with curiosity and co-creation in mind. By asking insightful questions about root causes and how different pieces of an initiative fit together, Kia brings both a focus on details and big-picture connectedness. In collaboration, she focuses on building shared understanding and authentic relationships to ensure accountability; that needs and expectations are met; and that affected communities are engaged. As a visual learner herself, Kia also likes using visual methods—like logic models—for collectively processing information.

Race equity lens

Throughout her career, Kia has focused on applying a racial justice lens to mission-driven programming, particularly to end employment and workforce disparities. She brings this expertise to support equity-focused evaluation at The Improve Group. Kia served as an analyst at Everybody In, a nonprofit focused on eliminating racial employment disparities in the Twin Cities. Similarly, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA with Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota, where she supported the organization’s efforts to reduce racial employment disparities across the state.

Professional Experience

The Improve Group | St. Paul, MN | Associate Consultant | 2020-present | Work collaboratively with project team to complete activities to make the most of information, navigate complexity, and ensure clients’ investments of time and money lead to meaningful, sustained impact.

University of Minnesota Duluth – Cultural Entrepreneurship Program Capstone | Duluth, MN | 2019-20 | Consultant | Worked in a team with two graduate colleagues to develop processes and tools as resources to guide future work to conceptualize Duluth’s creative economy.

Women Acting Together for Change (WATCH) | Kathmandu, Nepal | 2019 | Development Practitioner | Supported WATCH to further self-sustainable rural community development by conducting qualitative evaluation of Poverty to Prosperity microcredit program.

YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities | Minneapolis, MN | Senior Data Processing Representative | 2017-19 | Ensured efficient and smooth data processing in a variety of programs while providing customer service to customers, members, and program and branch staff to support the YMCA in its mission of improving health and wellbeing for all ages.

Minnesota Children’s Museum | St. Paul, MN | Museum Education Associate | 2016-17 | Provided customer service to visitors and interactive play with children to foster the museum’s educational philosophy.

Everybody In | Twin Cities, MN | Research Analyst | 2015-17 | Conducted data analysis and evaluation to provide insight through a racial equity lens on specific projects working to eliminate employment disparities.

Goodwill-Easter Seals | Twin Cities, MN | Employment Research & Evaluation Coordinator AmeriCorps VISTA | Extended and coordinated the efforts of a 3-year goal in Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota’s workforce development services and programs to reduce racial employment disparities in Minnesota.

Education

University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs | Master of Development Practice

College of Saint Benedict | Bachelor of Arts in Sociology

Want to learn more about Kia? Check out their full resume here!