Since its founding in 2017, Downing Khaled and the 10-person team at the Minneapolis-based firm, have worked to make traditionally underrepresented voices heard by combining a community-driven strategy with a human-centered design approach to its work.
As Minneapolis emerges from a year of twin pandemics — COVID-19 and the ongoing pandemic of systemic racism — we are presented with a rare opportunity to reimagine and rebuild our downtown. It’s time to create a new vision of downtown Minneapolis that starts with equity and justice and expands with abundance, beauty, joy, vibrance, innovation and belonging. But where do we start?
Following a few years of chaotic change and disruption, it’s tempting to view 2023 as a year in which philanthropy slid back into its comfy, often frustrating norms.
After all, data is emerging to suggest that there was not, and there probably won’t be, any sweeping revolution to democratize philanthropy. Most funders, it turns out, still see MacKenzie Scott’s massive, no-strings funding as an anomaly rather than a model they can follow. Murmurs of fatigue and even legal threats to racial justice philanthropy threaten to undo the progress made in the aftermath of the 2020 uprising. Even giving to climate change, which was finally booming for a couple of years there, seems to have leveled out to its lackluster sliver of annual giving.
Minneapolis-based strategy and insights firm, Imagine Deliver, has been ranked among the top B Corporations in the world. For 6 years now, the firm has produced insights and strategies that help complex systems and large companies reinvent products and services to better meet the needs of all users.
This list of organizations and businesses have committed to integrate social impact as a legal component of their business model by declaring Public Benefit Corporation status and/or have undergone a rigorous evaluation through B Corp certification that measures a company’s social and environmental performance.
International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) USA awarded Imagine Deliver the IAP2 USA Core Values Award in the Creativity and Innovation Category for their project Transforming the Future of Healthcare: The Art of Community Engagement & Strategy Design – Imagine Deliver, Arden Hills, Minnesota.
“We gravitate toward people who are like us,” says Kate Downing Khaled. “We need to hack that to know each other better.” As founder and managing director of the Minneapolis consultancy Imagine Deliver, workplace transformation is her business—she advises organizations on inclusivity and innovation.
When she’s not growing her company’s reach — she’s doubled the firm’s headcount and tripled its revenue — Kate Downing Khaled is passionate about giving back to her community.