enthusiastically educates and empowers people to create strategic impact & positive change. She teaches courses on Social Entrepreneurship & Sustainable Business at the University of Florida and in 2005, brought Social Entrepreneurship to UF where she co-founded and directs the Social Impact & Sustainability Initiative in the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center.
Kristin is passionate about teaching students to leverage the skills, strategies, mindsets, and competencies of entrepreneurship to create innovative, sustainable, regenerative, inclusive, resilient, and impactful solutions to social, environmental, and economic problems locally and around the world. In 2019 she launched the UF Business for Good Lab where teams of students work as consultants, helping companies to walk their talk around sustainability, track their progress towards the UN SDGs, and apply to become certified B Corporations.
Kristin has been a pioneer in the field of Social Entrepreneurship education. While attending both the NetImpact conference at Stanford in 2005 & 2006 and the Skoll World Forum at Oxford in 2006 & 2007, she connected with the small handful of faculty who were part of the Ashoka-Skoll University Network for Social Entrepreneurship; at the time, Social Entrepreneurship was being taught at fewer than 12 colleges and universities around the world. She had the opportunity to develop relationships and learn from others who were creating courses, programs, and centers in Social Entrepreneurship, as well as make connections with folks at the major foundations for Social Entrepreneurship, like Ashoka, Skoll, and Echoing Green... and when AshokaU launched in 2008, she was among the first faculty invited to participate, she was asked to present at their first AshokaU Exchange in 2011, she was invited to author the chapter on Teaching Social Entrepreneurship in the Annals of Entrepreneurship Education in 2013, as well as a chapter titled “Key Mindsets & Competencies of Social Entrepreneurs & Changemakers (Learning Outcomes Framework)” in AshokaU’s 2019 publication, Preparing Students for a Rapidly Changing World: Learning Outcomes for Social Innovation, Social Entrepreneurship, and Changemaker Education.
Kristin believes community service can be transformative and loves partnering with Echoing Green, B Lab (the organization behind both Public Benefit Corporations & certified B Corporations), Florida for Good, and the Greater Sum Foundation to create opportunities for students. She is a member of the For Good Movement, B Academics (where she serves as Chair of Teaching & Curriculum Innovation), the American Sustainable Business Council, and the Academy of Management. She shares B Lab’s vision of building an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economic system for all people and the planet.
Kristin's curiosity about social justice, human rights, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (especially the lack of women & people of color in leadership roles) led her to earn an undergraduate minor and a graduate certificate in Women's & Gender Studies while completing her doctorate degree. She continues to serve as an affiliate faculty with the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women's Studies Research at UF. She has taught courses cross-listed with women's studies courses for the past decade and collaborates on research focused on women social entrepreneurs. Since 2014 Kristin has been a co-director of UF’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Summit. In 2019 she joined WetheChange, a network of women leaders of certified B Corporations and other purpose-driven businesses who believe in business as a force for good to generate abundance and prosperity for all. In Spring 2021, she was invited to serve as a UF Warrington IDEA Advocate. She also serves on UF’s LPAC (LGBTQ+ Presidential Advisory Committee). Kristin is grateful to be inspired by the many diverse mentors in her life who exemplify what it means to live & lead with courage, compassion, and connection.
After finishing her Ph.D. in 2003 and earning a Postdoc in Marketing & Management from UF in 2013, Kristin earned a certificate in Social Entrepreneurship from the INSEAD School of Business in France and in 2014 she was awarded a scholarship to attend the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, earning an executive certificate in Social Entrepreneurship. In October 2018 she graduated from the Strategic Communications Academy for UF Leaders & Scholars where she learned & practiced the power of storytelling to engage influencers (policy-makers, funders, and the media). And in March 2019 she earned a certificate from the Social Entrepreneurship Bootcamp from the Stanford Center for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business.
From 2007 - 2016 Kristin founded & directed the Young Entrepreneurs for Leadership & Sustainability High School Summer Program at UF, the only summer program in the US where college bound high school students learned and practiced the skills of successful business and community leaders, while being inspired to solve social, environmental, and economic problems. In January 2016 the program received the United States Association of Small Business & Entrepreneurship Education (USASBE) Specialty Entrepreneurship Education Program Award, the highest honor for an entrepreneurship education program and a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment for the impacts created by the program over it’s 10 year run.
In 2019 Kristin trained with Dr. Brené Brown and her team to become a Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator and re-certified in Summer 2020 with a focus on justice, equity, diversity, inclusion (JEDI), and belonging. Kristin often speculates that perhaps what matters most in life is our ability to practice courage, kindness, hope, and gratitude. Kristin believes “we learn courage by couraging” (as Mary Daly said, quoted by Brené Brown in Daring Greatly).
In addition to her work at UF, Kristin founded do good well consulting in 2002 (and became a certified B Corp in 2018), to help businesses, organizations, and individuals create strategic impact (strategic career planning, strategic venture planning, strategic philanthropy, and strategic giving) to connect their values & practices around issues related to sustainability, social & environmental impact, ESG, CSR, JEDI, impact investing, and high impact philanthropy/effective altruism/strategic giving. For two decades she has helped changemakers find & create impact careers. Kristin loves cheering people on; given the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, she began offering Courage & Confidence Coaching. She graduated from the Optimize Coach program with Heroic (a certified B Corporation & Public Benefit Corporation) in January 2022 and is now enrolled in the Advance Coach program.
Kristin is also a certified Yoga Teacher who nearly lost her right leg & life in 2015-2016 due to a battle with pyoderma gangrenosa that became infected with MRSA. After recovering, she was determined to learn how to float & fly. Since August 2018 she has successfully done press handstands nearly every day as they fill her with both gratitude & joy-- for life, for health, for strength, and for courage. She realized she wanted to give others the same transformative experience and empowering feeling that she gets when she’s on her mat, flowing, and moving -- learning and doing things she never imagined possible... then taking that sense of purpose & meaning off the mat & into the world… She loves to create opportunities and make space for students to feel safe in their bodies, to try new ways of moving (and thinking) and realize they can do hard things — and discover that courage & truth are already there, inside their hearts, and they've been there all along.
Kristin delights in living in a historic home built in 1912. She finds joy in collecting & sharing information & resources about how we can all make more conscientious choices about our consumption & live more sustainably, supporting local farmers; learning to climb trees & standup paddle board; reading The Sun Magazine, and collecting quotable cards.
One of her many favorite quotes (she has hundreds) is this line from Maya Angelou, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can’t be consistently fair or kind or generous or forgiving any of those without courage.” An understanding from Erik Erikson, that “humans need a sense of belonging, identity, purpose, and meaning” has been central to her understanding of the world; and given the impacts of COVID, she most resonates with the daily practices of courage, kindness, gratitude, and hope.
... Oh, and in case you're curious, our name is inspired by these words from Minor Myers, Jr: "Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good," as seen on this quotable card.
Please note: Kristin is not a licensed mental health professional, psychologist, therapist, or counselor. Her consulting & coaching is in no way to be construed as a substitute for psychological counseling, psychotherapy, mental health counseling, or any other type of psychotherapy or medical advice. She gladly refers folks to respected credentialed mental health professionals.