A three-time graduate of Wichita State, Kaye Monk-Morgan has been chosen to serve as president and CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC), an organization dedicated to improving leadership skills in the state and beyond.

Before arriving at KLC, she worked at Wichita State for nearly 30 years, her last role at the university being vice president of Strategic Engagement and Planning. Monk-Morgan considers she and her family “Shockers through and through.”

“I’m an educator at my very core,” she said. “So I love the fact that I got an opportunity to lead and education adjacent organization.”

In 2007, the Kansas Health Foundation founded KLC to focus on “adaptive challenges,” issues that are not easy to solve. 

“Our job really is to foster civic leadership development,” Monk-Morgan said. “And create a culture where people show up and are willing to take risks in an effort to move something difficult forward.”

On March 6, Monk-Morgan will shift from her current role as chief impact officer to president and CEO. In her former role, she worked on strategies for the nonprofit and served as a teaching faculty.

“I’m really fortunate that I’m getting a chance to move into the position of president in an organization that’s strong,” Monk-Morgan said. “Both in size and scope, the type of work that we do here at KLC continues to grow.”

Currently, KLC teaches courses at some universities around the state, like Fort Hays State and Wichita State. In these classes, instructors apply the same ideas and strategies used at KLC.

“Taking our framework … and applying it for students really is a way to kind of meet some of those particular needs when young people are going into the workforce,” Monk-Morgan said.

In her new role, she plans to work more closely with schools in Kansas, from K-12 to 4-year universities.

“If we’re going to change our state, we do that by working with young people,” she said. “50-year-olds are cool, but the people changing the world are probably not going to be 50-year-olds.”