Meet our Team: Kari
Why This Work Matters
When I founded Paco Leadership Collective, I knew the urgency of our mission could not be overstated. Women—particularly women of color and those impacted by systemic inequities—are underrepresented in leadership roles across every sector. This underrepresentation isn't just a statistic; it's a barrier that perpetuates cycles of harm, economic exclusion, and limited agency for millions of women. Paco exists to change that.
Today, this work has never been more important. With the signing of executive orders that undermine diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and dilute gender equity protections, we are witnessing a coordinated effort to roll back progress that women, people of color, and marginalized communities have fought tirelessly to achieve. While these actions may seek to diminish our power, they also illuminate the critical need for organizations like Paco to rise and lead.
My Journey
Growing up I received constant messages about what it meant to be a woman- messages that were often conflicting and confusing. My parents worked diligently to offset the societal and cultural stereotypes that inundated my childhood, but the message that women are valued primarily in terms of motherhood, domestic responsibilities, and sexual objectivity was so pervasive that it felt at times impossible to believe that I could one day live my own life where I pursued my dreams and passions without asking men for permission or owing them an apology.
These messages continued as I pursued my educational goals and began taking on leadership roles in the workplace. Across my various roles as school founder, principal, and policy advocate, I experienced just how often women’s expertise is undermined, how our voices are dismissed, and how we’re penalized for asserting ourselves. I watched male colleagues overstate their qualifications while minimizing mine, take credit for work I’d done while getting paid a higher salary to do so, and restate my ideas as their own before my sentences were even fully out of my mouth. These are not isolated experiences, nor are they imagined or hyperbolized; they are the daily experiences of women navigating work, family, politics, and life. And they are experiences that are disproportionately more harmful to women of color, women navigating poverty, and women impacted by systems such as housing insecurity, foster care, incarceration, or domestic violence.
My “Why”
This is the inescapable reality that emerged when, as a high school Principal, I watched my female students commit themselves to their academic careers only to graduate into a world that never saw them as the leaders they were. In 2022, I got word that a student I was very close with – who was in my class during my first year as a teacher – had died as a result of community violence. She was brilliant, resourceful, hilarious, & fearless, – and, at every turn, society told her it wasn’t enough - that her identity, her experiences, and her gender precluded her from being the leader of her own life, let alone a leader within the world and systems in which she lived.
These are the consequences of a society that continues to view women as inferior, incapable, inconvenient, and disposable. It’s why we urgently need women of all identities and experiences in positions of leadership. And it’s why I started Paco – to honor her memory, to validate the irreplaceable leadership she embodied, and to remind myself daily to fight like hell toward the creation of something more inclusive, more whole, and more abundant.
The Vision for Change
Paco Leadership Collective is a collective response to a society that champions competition and celebrates individualism while branding ambitious women as controversial and criticizing their desire for self-determination as selfishness. It’s a creative response to cruel and antiquated systems that penalize poverty, spin profit from pain, reward unearned privilege, and punish the lack thereof. And it’s a courageous response that says we are no longer requesting a seat at the table, we are building our own boardrooms.
Our mission is both simple and transformative: to cultivate individual leadership and collective power to ensure economic justice for all women. This goes beyond equal pay; it’s about access, equity, and rewriting the narrative of what’s possible. By investing in women’s leadership, we’re building a future where cycles of harm are broken, healing is prioritized, and women shape the policies that impact their lives, ultimately creating communities and systems that are better for everyone.
