Munro Richardson

Experience

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  Greater Kansas City Community Foundation

  Jul 1998 - Dec 2000

  Manager of Community Leadership

  Developed and implemented the Foundation’s community leadership initiatives. Created community leadership agenda in concert with the President and Board of Directors. Represented the Foundation on select community initiatives. Managed multiple competitive grant processes. Built and maintained relationships with key non-profit and government agencies, funders and community leaders.

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  Kauffman Foundation

  Dec 2002 - Oct 2012

  Lead and manage education department within $2 billion private foundation. Supervise diverse portfolio of education programs with total commitments in excess of $200 million. Led design and startup of Ewing Marion Kauffman School, an urban college prep charter school in Kansas City. Strong interest in startups and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Member of senior leadership team. Executed variety of special projects for Office of the President, including Kauffman Fund for Greater Kansas City, Kauffman Legacy Grants, and startup of $70 million Kauffman Scholars program.

  • Vice President

    Mar 2010 - Oct 2012

  • Director

    Dec 2002 - Feb 2010
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  Ewing Marion Kauffman School

  Apr 2010 - Oct 2012

  Board Member

  Founding board member of Ewing Marion Kauffman School, a college prep urban charter school in Kansas City, Missouri.

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  Kauffman Scholars Inc.

  Jan 2012 - Oct 2012

  Board Member

  Board member of college access and scholarship organization. KSI works to increase the chances of postsecondary success for over 1,600 low-income urban students in Kansas City.

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  MyEDmatch

  Oct 2012 - Jul 2013

  Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

  Created new teacher recruitment and job matching website (www.myEDmatch.com) for K-12 education market. Lead and managed outsourced developers of technology platform through conceptualization, visual design, development, QA, and deployment. Developed and executed customer recruitment, sales, and digital marketing strategies. Directly managed company operations, including legal, finance, customer service, and vendors. Raised $250,000 angel seed funding. Voluntarily departed company after successful acquisition by a private equity firm in August 2013. Show less

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  LigoSphere

  Jan 2014 - Apr 2015

  Co-Founder & CEO

  LigoSphere was a Kansas City-based startup company. We built a mobile app for college students called Ligo. Ligo (available in iOS and Android) was intended to make it easier for college students to discover and connect with people, organizations, and activities around campus. Alpha tested Spring 2014 and beta tested on seven campuses in Kansas and Missouri during the 2014-2015 academic year.

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  Read Charlotte

  May 2015 - now

  Executive Director

  Read Charlotte is a 16-year (2015-2030) community initiative to improve children’s reading in Mecklenburg County, N.C. We don’t run programs. We are an intermediary that coordinates community resources behind evidence-based practices to improve early literacy outcomes from birth through third grade. We make it easier for adults to take actions proven to help children learn to read.Selected accomplishments (2015-2022):Partnered with Reach Out and Read Carolinas to scale up the Reach Out and Read program in Mecklenburg County from serving 29% of low-income children ages 0-5 in 2016 to 70% in 2020. In Summer 2017, partnered with the YMCA of Greater Charlotte to import the Summer Literacy Infusion project from Philadelphia to stop summer reading loss. From 2017-2021, more than 4,500 children served with 70%+ maintaining or improving their reading each summer.In Fall 2018, partnered with Helps Education Fund to launch the evidence-based HELPS fluency program in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Over 1,500 children tutored as of Spring 2022 with average 1.5+ years growth for students who get 50+ tutoring sessions in an academic year.In Summer 2020, partnered with Learning Ovations to launch the Reading Checkup, helping Charlotte-Mecklenburg families identify & respond to their child's reading needs. 4,500+ students served as of Spring 2022. In Fall 2021, partnered with 9 nonprofits to support integration of the A2i After School platform within their after school programs to provide targeted, high-impact K-3 literacy tutoring. Over 800 children served through Spring 2022.From 2015-2022 coordinated over $8 million in local funder co-investments in a portfolio of projects.Received Campaign for Grade-Level Reading Pacesetter Awards in 2016 and 2017, and Bright Spot Award in 2020.For more information on our approach and results, go to www.readcharlotte.org. Show less