Kari Nelsestuen

Co-founder of Community Design Partners

Kari Nelsestuen is the co-founder of Community Design Partners focusing on making equitable, sustainable change within communities.  Her expertise lies in problem-solving through research, evaluation, and teamwork by applying a holistic, human-centered systems approach.  Kari’s recent projects include identifying the immediate challenges, designing solutions, and facilitating assessments for teams and/or leaders at the Chalkboard Project, Stanford d.school, Oregon Education Association, Penn Foundation, Construction Foundation, Concordia University, Portland Urban League, and multiple school districts. Prior to that, Kari assessed state and national education programs, including Oregon’s Quality Assessment Network. She led a major research collaboration examining discipline disparity for Education Northwest. Kari received a bachelor in psychology at Drake University in 1994, and master of science in international and comparative education at the Teachers College at Columbia University in 1997. Additionally, she has been trained in Facilitating for Equity through the National Equity Project, Design thinking at the Stanford d.school, Improvement science through the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and Data visualization through Edward Tufte. 

Email: nelsestuenk@wou.edu