With more than 20 years as a strategic leader, Kari has honed a unique dual perspective of the nonprofit sector that is combined with extensive collaboration with corporations and funders. Throughout her career, she has worked with more than 100 non-profits and has held numerous leadership roles that impacted fundraising efforts—grossing over 50 million dollars. She has aligned hundreds of corporations and their stakeholders to develop meaningful programs—creating shared benefits for donors, non-profit agencies and ultimately the community. By fostering peer to peer relationships, she has aligned expectations and helped navigate the murky waters of giving.
Kari successfully merged these perspectives because she has been both a fundraiser and a donor. In 2003, Kari and her husband founded Haven Charitable Foundation to invest a synergy of gifts—time, money, leadership and influence to start addressing the most pressing issues facing our communities. Since its founding, Kari has donated more than $2 million to impactful organizations of diverse scope and size.
In 2011, Kari launched Corporate Citizen to guide corporations, nonprofits and foundations through every facet of fund development and corporate giving strategies that ranged from strategic planning, stakeholder and impact reporting to create a culture of good citizenship. Realizing money alone can’t bring about transformational change, Kari stepped forward to start candid conversations that deepened alignments between the public-private sector.
This integration of philosophies shaped her newest venture, Goodways and Company based in Knoxville, TN. Using her curated methodology crafted over decades of experience, she elevates her client’s mission through a blend of tried and true practices with innovative and novel approaches to complex issues, keeping the donor perspective front and center. Never one to color in the lines or stay inside the box, Kari dares to challenge tired and outdated strategies. The Goodways team will lead you through an engaging, integrated and actionable process that breaks big ideas into bold steps that create sustainable organizations.
Her career has been as varied as it is complimentary. Prior to relocating to Knoxville, TN Kari lived in Phoenix, AZ for almost 35 years. She is a graduate of W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University with a degree in Supply Chain Management. In 2015, Kari was named the Phoenix Business Journal’s Outstanding Women in Business and was named one of AzBusiness Magazine’s 50 Most Influential Women in Business. Kari’s other notable achievements include being named the Most Influential Woman in the Valley in 2009 and 2011 as well as Women Who Move the Valley in 2010 by Arizona Foothills Magazine. Kari is alumni of Valley Leadership Class 31 as well as AZ Leaderforce: Collaboration For A New Century. She proudly served on numerous Board of Directors in Phoenix including being selected by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to serve on the Board of Directors of The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute.
Kari is married to former Tennessee Vol Paul Yatkowski and has three sons, Griffin (21) and twins Tate and Tyler (14) and a boxer named Dexter!