Kirsten Gagnaire | Founder & CEO
Kirsten Gagnaire is a global strategist, systems thinker, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience designing and scaling cross-sector initiatives in health, education, digital innovation, and gender equity. A Seattle native with deep roots across Africa and Southeast Asia, Kirsten founded Kati Collective to help institutions align vision and action—centering the voices of communities too often left out of strategy and decision-making.
Her work lives at the intersection of bold thinking and real-world execution. Whether leading global strategy efforts with the World Bank or Gates Foundation, scaling mobile health programs in Nigeria and Bangladesh, or advising governments on localization and measurement, Kirsten brings clarity, empathy, and pragmatic innovation to every engagement.
She believes that the people most impacted by global systems must be at the center of shaping them—and she’s spent her career designing processes that operationalize this principle. Her approach is grounded in trust, accountability, and an unwavering belief in local wisdom.
Kirsten has held senior executive roles including:
Global Director of the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), a public-private partnership across 20+ countries
Country Director for Grameen Foundation in Ghana
Managing Director at FSG, leading digital health and gender strategy
Founder and CEO of two consulting firms focused on equity, strategy, and systems change
She’s a facilitator, problem-solver, and lifelong learner—currently completing an Executive MSc in International Strategy & Diplomacy at the London School of Economics. When she’s not advising clients or speaking at global convenings, she finds renewal on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, where she spends time hiking, boating, and learning alongside her husband and their two dogs.
“Systems change begins with deep listening. When we honor complexity instead of controlling it, real transformation becomes possible.”
Our Approach
At Kati Collective, we don’t arrive with pre-built solutions. We enter into complexity—thoughtfully, collaboratively, and with the humility it demands.
We partner with institutions that are navigating real transitions: adapting to geopolitical shifts, rethinking how to center equity, or aligning bold vision with practical execution. We serve as strategy partners, facilitators, translators, and bridge-builders—working across systems to help our clients move forward with clarity and purpose.
Grounded in Context, Oriented to Impact
We begin by listening: to the people closest to the work, to the systems already in motion, and to the values that drive your mission. Whether advising on global strategies or local initiatives, we believe lasting change only emerges when global ambition and local wisdom are aligned.
Our clients rely on us to:
Design bold, implementable strategies
Facilitate alignment across diverse internal and external stakeholders
Translate vision into frameworks, operations, and measurable impact
Build adaptive processes that hold up under pressure
How We Work
Embedded, not extractive.
We work alongside you, not above you—joining your team, adapting to your culture, and building capacity along the way.
Strategic, not prescriptive.
We bring frameworks, not formulas. Every engagement is tailored. Every approach is adaptive.
Global fluency, local relevance.
Our collective spans the globe—Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the U.S.—and we design with the nuance and respect that diverse contexts require.
Human-centered systems thinking.
We don’t just optimize structures—we hold space for relationships, histories, and futures.
Our Role in Your System
Whether you need a strategic advisor, interim executive, convening facilitator, or learning partner, we operate with a single goal: to help you align your vision and action in a way that’s strategic, inclusive, and sustainable.
We don’t stay forever—and we don’t leave things unfinished. Our work is designed to build momentum that lasts beyond our engagement.