Fredrik O. Andersson is an Assistant Professor at the Indiana University (IUPUI) School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Fredrik’s research sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship, civil society, and nonprofit organization studies. His main scholarly interests include new nonprofit emergence, governance, and capacity building. His most current research considers the entrepreneurial dynamics of the voucher school population in the City of Milwaukee. Fredrik joined the O’Neill School at IUPUI in 2017 from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where he taught and conducted research from 2013 to 2017 with the Helen Bader Institute for Nonprofit Management. Fredrik completed an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship and Public Affairs from the Bloch School of at Management the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Phyllis Becker is a Senior Fellow of the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership and former Deputy Director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services: Quality Improvements, Leadership & Professional Development. Phyllis’ professional experience includes community assessment and development, training and facilitation, program and curriculum development and consultation in the human and social services arena.

Matthew J. Beem, PhD, CFRE is the chairman and CEO of Kinetic, a Kansas City based global fundraising consulting firm. He joined Hartsook in 2001 as executive vice president, has served as CEO since 2011 and became chairman in 2019. During his more than 20 years with Hartsook, Matt has helped thousands of nonprofits in the United States and around the world raise billions of dollars to expand and build facilities, enlarge and create programs and initiate and grow endowments.

Matt chairs the advisory board of the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy in Plymouth, United Kingdom, is an adjunct instructor of organizational behavior in the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and is a senior fellow of UMKC’s Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership. He has served on the boards of trustees of Avila University in Kansas City and Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa and in multiple local, regional, national and global board and committee roles.

Matt is a featured speaker on fundraising and fundraiser compensation in the United States and abroad. He is the author of Performance-Driven Fundraising: Taking Control of Your Success, co-author of $231 Billion Raised and Counting and author or co-author of multiple academic textbook chapters and journal articles. Matt holds a bachelor of journalism in news editorial from the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a master of public administration in nonprofit management and doctor of philosophy in organizational behavior and higher education administration from UMKC’s Bloch School of Management and School of Education.

Jamie Berry is a consultant working in the non-profit and public sectors. An experienced professional, Ms. Berry has held senior executive positions in both the public and private sector in consultative sales, operations, and management. Ms. Berry is an honors graduate of the Executive MBA program at the University of Missouri Kansas City and currently teaches a leadership course in their Master of Public Administration program. Her focus is on helping organizations create infrastructure which supports sustainable growth. Ms. Berry works with Boards and organizational staff on strategic planning and implementation, provides interim Executive Director and short/long term project management services.

Gene Dooley is a distinguished leader with over 40 years of service in the YMCA movement, including 23 years as Executive Director of the YMCA of Greater Kansas City. Upon his retirement in August 2010, Gene established a consulting firm that provides specialized executive coaching in leadership development, strategic alliance analysis and development, operational alignment, succession planning, and transitional leadership planning and assisting with community collaborations and management agreements. Gene fully utilizes his training and expertise as a Certified Executive Coach, and he has convened a rich and diverse network of associates in areas such as architectural design, construction cost analysis, facility assessment, construction owner representation, leadership development, membership development and keynote speaking, to fully serve the needs of his clients.

Known for thinking outside the box, Gene is committed to staff development and fund development, to the importance of collaborations and strategic alliances, and to providing management services to mission driven organizations. Gene brings communities together for the common good of service. During his tenure with the YMCA, community partners placed into operation over $35 million dollars in facilities managed by the YMCA.

Gene’s leadership in Kansas City began in 1987 with an operating budget of $3.1 million dollars and an endowment of $2.3 million. The YMCA of Greater Kansas City had six membership facilities serving five Missouri counties, 18,900 members and 41,230 program participants, and in 1987 provided no child care. When Gene retired in August 2010, the annual operating budget was $47 million and the Y had expanded to include

• 19 membership facilities across ten counties in both Missouri and Kansas,
• five early learning centers,
• 98 before & after school program sites serving six school districts,
• six Head Start centers,
• 92,321 members and
• 347,000 program participants.

The YMCA of Greater Kansas City’s endowment realized a significant increase during Gene’s tenure, which led to the establishment of the YMCA Foundation of Mid America; it now holds a portfolio of $12 million.

While in Kansas City Gene also shared his expertise in nonprofit management. He served as an Adjunct Professor at Rockhurst University for 13 years and a guest presenter for the Masters of Public Administration program at University Missouri-Kansas City and the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership.

Jim Doyle has been focused on Strategic Management (Planning and Implementation) for nearly 20 years following a career related to management and accounting. After 10 years at Sprint, Jim turned to the nonprofit sector graduating from the Bloch School of Management with degree in Public Administration in 2010. Since 2010, Jim has worked in several organizations focused on strategic management as well as engaged in various consulting arrangements for Kansas City area nonprofits primarily in the area of business planning and development.

Jim recently joined the executive leadership team at The Family Conservancy. Prior to joining The Family Conservancy, Jim led performance improvement teams at University Health where he taught Six Sigma as change management and successfully implements strategic projects. In addition, Jim teaches Strategic Management and Six Sigma in the Avila University Graduate Professional Studies program, and recently embarked on a Public Administration Doctoral program focused on applications of complex system science.

Scott Helm accepted a position with Children’s Mercy to lead the department of organization development and the growth of their Berry Institute in October 2021. Previously, he had been the director of the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership, director of the Bloch executive MBA, and a professor of practice at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management. Scott continues to be involved with the Midwest Center as a Senior Fellow. He has a B.A. in economics from Washington College, a M.P.A. with a concentration in nonprofit management from UMKC, and an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in public administration and economics from UMKC.

Chris Hoyt teaches courses in the areas of federal taxation, business organizations, retirement plans and tax-exempt organizations. Previously, he was with the law firm of Spencer, Fane, Britt and Browne in Kansas City, Mo. He received an undergraduate degree in economics from Northwestern University and dual law and accounting degrees from the University of Wisconsin.

He is currently the chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Lifetime and Testamentary Charitable Gift Planning (Section of Probate and Trust) and serves on the editorial board of Trusts and Estates magazine. He is a frequent speaker at legal and educational programs and has been quoted in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, MONEY Magazine and The Washington Post.

Janine Hron is a Midwest Center Senior Fellow and a nonprofit leader with particular expertise in strategic positioning, marketing, formal collaboration, and organizational development. She is currently an associate director of the Center for Public Partnerships and Research at the University of Kansas, focusing on systems-level adaptability, collaboration, and responsiveness among public and private child- and family-serving organizations. Previously, in a 37-year span, Janine has provided executive leadership for nonprofit organizations dedicated to health care, education and children’s social welfare concerns, creating and operating programs with local, regional and national scope.

Jane Lampo, EdD, CFRE recently retired from her position as Vice President of Institutional Advancement at the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences where she oversaw all fundraising and alumni activities.

Prior to joining KCU in 2014, Jane was Managing Director of Planned Giving at Children’s Mercy Hospital. She first came to Children’s Mercy in 1994 as Director of Planned Giving, and over a period of 18 years she helped build the planned giving program to one of the largest among children’s hospitals. At Children’s Mercy, Jane also served as Senior Director of Leadership Gifts and had the responsibility for the major gift program in addition to planned giving program. She also served two years as Vice President of Advancement at Rockhurst University.

A Certified Fund Raising Executive, Jane is an adjunct professor in the UMKC’s Nonprofit Leadership Program teaching classes on major gift and planned gift solicitation. She is an active member and former board member of AFP, the Mid-America Planned Giving Council (recently renamed Mid-America Charitable Gift Planners), CGP (national association of Charitable Gift Planners) and the Kansas City Estate Planning Society. She also serves on the Kansas City Estate Planning Society Symposium committee.

Jane earned a B.A. in French and Education from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, and an EdD in
Higher Education Administration, with a focus on philanthropy, from the University of Kansas.

Professor Tony Luppino teaches or co-teaches business, entrepreneurship, and tax courses, including several interdisciplinary entrepreneurship courses relating to for-profit, social and civic entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial practice of law. He also serves as the Law School’s Director of Entrepreneurship Programs and a Senior Fellow with UMKC’s cross-campus Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. In 2017, he was named the inaugural recipient of the University of Missouri System Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award. In 2018, Prof. Luppino received the UM System President’s Faculty Award for Economic Development, and in 2019 the UMKC Trustees Leo E. Morton Community Service Award.

Prof. Luppino’s scholarship and conference presentations focus primarily on legal and policy issues significantly affecting entrepreneurs, and on entrepreneurship education. He was the principal organizer of the Law & Entrepreneurship Special Interest Group of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), and has served for several years as lead editor of the Entrepreneurship Law (EshipLaw) website (http://www.EshipLaw.org) powered by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. As outgrowths of his work in urban innovation and civic entrepreneurship through the interdisciplinary Law, Technology & Public Policy course, he has become one of UMKC’s principal contacts with the MetroLab Network, and a founder and leader of the Legal Technology Laboratory (see http://www.thelegaltechlab.com).

Before joining the faculty on a full-time basis in 2001, Prof. Luppino practiced law with firms in Boston and in the Kansas City region. His practice included a wide variety of business, tax planning, and transactional work, involving multiple disciplines within the law. He received his A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1979. In 1982, he received his J.D. from Stanford Law School where he served as an associate editor of the Stanford Law Review. While in private practice in Boston early in his practice career, he earned his LL.M. degree in Taxation from Boston University, and in 1986 was articles editor of the Boston University Journal of Tax Law.

Nailah M’Biti, is the Chief Real Estate Development Officer for the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council and President of Compass Nonprofit Solutions, a consulting firm that focuses on helping organizations build capacity. She has a passion for working with emerging nonprofits and establishing collaborations among community organizations to improve their sustainability. She earned an Executive Masters in Public Administration from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Nailah currently resides in Kansas City, MO.

Dr. Shirley Marie McCarther is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She has over 30 years experience in the field of education as a teacher, principal, curriculum director, and central office administrator in urban, rural, and suburban school districts across the country.

Dr. McCarther teaches courses in educational administration, foundations, and diversity. Her research agenda focuses on equity and access and embraces narrative studies, ethnography, documentary, and historiography; all giving voice to those long silenced across race, class, and gender boundaries. Dr. McCarther has been published in numerous scholarly journals and presented at national conferences including the American Educational Research Association, American Educational Studies Association, Organization of Educational Historians, and the National Association of Multicultural Education.

Dr. William (Bill) Moore is Principal at The Strategy Group, an international consulting firm serving as a thought-partner, advisor, coach and consultant to philanthropic, nonprofit, and community network leaders working to bring about change through system-level approaches and strategic collaboration. Dr. Moore provides rigorous strategic planning, program evaluation, and theory of change training, workshops and supports. Bill is the past President & CEO of Support Kansas City, Inc. a Kansas City-based nonprofit providing strategy and operations support to more than 170 nonprofits annually. Bill is the former Vice-President of Programs at the REACH Healthcare Foundation and Senior Research Associate at the Kauffman Foundation. Bill’s community service includes serving on the Board of Directors for the Association for Consultants to Nonprofits. He is a former Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center and Auburn University. Bill holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Kansas.

David Oliver is a partner in PLX CORP – “Plan. Lead. Execute.” – a think tank offering innovation and tools to improve governance, recruitment, accountability, process, visioning, internal controls, risk management, leadership development, and analytics. PLX helps companies diversify and strengthen their boards and implement best practices in board/management relations. Governance is governance, whether the company is for profit or “for purpose” – a term that’s used in place of not for profit.

He has a particular interest in issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, in building a better community in our region.

He is also an attorney with the Kansas City law firm Berkowitz Oliver LLP. The firm does civil and white collar criminal trial work. He chaired the management committee of the firm for thirteen years. He has handled a variety of business disputes on behalf of clients in state and federal courts. He is a trained mediator since lawsuits are not the best way to settle disputes and should be a last resort. He has also has served as a special master in state court.

His civic activities have focused on pediatric health, urban education from early learning through higher education, and the arts. He currently serves as a founding board member of Aligned, a non-profit, non-partisan coalition of business leaders committed to improving education in Kansas and Missouri; board member and board chair of MRIGlobal, an applied scientific and engineering research institute based in Kansas City; board member of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri; board member and board chair of DeLaSalle Charter High School in Kansas City; advisory board member of Tesseract Ventures LLC, a company based in Kansas City that invents, engineers, licenses, and sells highly specialized 21st century cyber-physical systems to industry 4.0 verticals.; board member and board chair of The Beacon, a bistate Missouri/Kansas non-profit online news venture; board member of the UMKC Trustees; board member of Teach for America – KC; a founding board member of DIBS for Kids; board member of Friends of Alvin Ailey; board member of the Missouri Advisory Board for Educator Preparation in Jefferson City; advisory board member of the Spencer Art Museum at the University of Kansas; advisory board member of the AUP+D Department at UMKC; member of the UMKC Enactus Business Advisory Board; member of the advocacy committee of ArtsKC; member of the advocacy committee of Nonprofit Connect; and advisory board member of Startland, a community building nonprofit activating a thriving and inclusive culture of innovation in Kansas City through stories, experiences and talent.

He is on the board of The Francis Family Foundation; the board of The Cross Foundation; and is a trustee of the Murphy Charitable Fund.

He is an emeritus trustee of Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics and was a member of the board and chaired the education committee of The Civic Council of Greater Kansas City.

He is a senior fellow at the Center for Nonprofit Leadership at the Bloch School of Management at UMKC. He is an adjunct instructor in the Executive MBA program at the Helzberg School of Management at Rockhurst University.

He is shortstop on the Pitch Perfect Collaborative team that is restoring Satchel Paige’s house at 28th and Prospect in Kansas City, Missouri.

He is a graduate of Haverford College (B.A. with honors in history, elected to Phi Beta Kappa) and Boston University School of Law.

Email: david@plxcorp.com
Mobile: 816-805-4055

David Renz is Professor Emeritus of Nonprofit Leadership and Director Emeritus of the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership, the public service leadership research and development center of the Department of Public Affairs in the Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri –Kansas City (UMKC). The center, a key contributor to UMKC’s community engagement mission, serves approximately 3,500 leaders of nonprofit and other public service organizations each year.

An award-winning educator and scholar, David teaches and conducts research on nonprofit and public service leadership, especially nonprofit governance and board effectiveness. His current research focuses on governance and management in networks and socially-entrepreneurial organizations. Recently, David was honored with a Special Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kansas City nonprofit association, Nonprofit Connect; in 2017 he was recognized with the “Distinguished Achievement in Leadership and Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Research Award” from the international scholar association, the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).

David serves public service organizations in many capacities, including consulting and service on councils, task forces, and governing boards. David has worked with more than 160 boards, commissions, and networks in the past two decades. Among other initiatives, he helped found the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council (a network of university-based nonprofit centers) and the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers.

David writes frequently for both the academic and practice communities and, with his colleagues and coauthors, has produced more than 155 chapters, reports, and articles for journals such as Nonprofit Management and Leadership, The Nonprofit Quarterly, Strategic Governance, Public Administration Review, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. He also is editor of the fourth edition of The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management and co-editor of The Research Handbook on Entrepreneurs’ Engagement in Philanthropy. David earned his Ph.D. in Organization Studies from the University of Minnesota.

Tim is a founding partner in Praxis Nonprofit Strategies. He has 20+ years of experience in fundraising and strategic planning. His work includes: sponsorship fundraising with Habitat for Humanity; corporate fundraising with United Way; international development with the Peace Corps; and capital campaign consulting and management. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration and Certificates in Fundraising Management and Community Facilitation. Tim currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri with his wife and three children.

Wim van Klinken EMPA MAR – After a successful career as entrepreneur in Europe, Wim van Klinken refocused his passion from the for-profit sector to the public sector. He currently serves as a senior executive at Community of Christ’s international headquarters. He is also associated with the Henry W. Bloch School of Management as Associate Professor in the Public Affairs department and as Senior Fellow at the Midwest Center For Nonprofit Leadership. Wim studied economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam with an emphasis on business management information systems. A life-long learner, he also studied music and took post-graduate studies in business administration, asset management, and the prestigious European Comenius Course by the Academy of Management of the University of Groningen. In the U.S.A., he received a master of arts in religion from Graceland University and a master of arts in public administration from UMKC.

For a quarter of a century, Dr. Thomas Vansaghi has served in variety of senior-level positions in public service, higher education and the nonprofit sector. He began his career as a volunteer on a gubernatorial campaign that led to a series of leadership roles in Jefferson City, Missouri where he worked in state government with the Office of the Governor and Missouri General Assembly. He was recruited to lead the government relations, fundraising, strategic planning, marketing, public and community relations for a regional state university and later an urban/suburban community college district. Later, he was appointed as the executive director of an international association of primary care physicians dedicated to promoting the triple healthcare aim of enhancing the patient experience, improving the health of the population and reducing costs. In 2015, Dr. Vansaghi became an assistant professor of nonprofit leadership at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. At Jewell, he engages undergraduate students in critical thinking to prepare them to pursue meaningful lives leading nonprofit organizations. He also serves as the director of strategic planning for the college.

Jennifer Wampler has served the Kansas City community in development leadership since 1992. Twelve of those years at UMKC and thirteen years at the Kansas City Ballet. She has extensive experience in all aspects of fundraising and year after year has met and exceeded fundraising goals. She secured $48 million in a capital campaign for a new UMKC Conservatory campus in downtown Kansas City.

Jennifer is a Senior Fellow with the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership at UMKC and is honored to teach each year in the fundraising series training and educating nonprofit professionals of today and tomorrow. She has a BA from Iowa State in Religious Studies and Sociology and an MPA in Nonprofit Management from UMKC.

Gene Wilson has worked in Public Affairs for nearly 60 years. Starting in higher education, he ultimately became Vice President of Institute Relations at The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. He then moved to the Atlantic Richfield Company in Los Angeles and led the organization of the ARCO Foundation as President until his retirement in 1994. During his ARCO tenure, he served as an officer of INDEPENDENT SECTOR; Chair of the Contributions Council of The Conference Board; and Senior Advisor to the Council on Foundations. He came to Kansas City as President of the Youth Development Division of the Ewing Marion Kauffman, then became Senior Vice President of the Foundation, responsible for National Programs and Planning until his second retirement in 2003. Since then, he has served on numerous nonprofit boards and councils including United Way, United Community Services of Johnson County, and Senior Fellow and member of the Public Affairs Council of the Bloch School at UMKC. He also is an Advisory Board Member of the Center for Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, and is a Charter Trustee of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He continues to serve on the Advisory Council of MARC’s Kansas City Communities For All Ages. He is an Elder at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church. And for nearly 20 years he has sung with the Kansas City Men’s Ensemble, all of whom are currently or have been members of the Kansas City Symphony Chorus.

In 2013, he was named Volunteer of the Year by Nonprofit Connect, Kansas City’s association for philanthropy, and in 2015 was recognized with the Regional Leadership Award from the MidAmerica Regional Council. Through MARC, he has spoken frequently for the past 15 years on the implications of the demographics of the Baby Boomers, and how we can view the increasing number of these older adults as opportunities, rather than as problems.