Engagement Manager
kbowens@multisolving.org
Kelsi Bowens serves as the Engagement Manager for Multisolving Institute.
She has worked in the environmental sector through various organizations in Atlanta, GA. Prior to joining Multisolving Institute, Kelsi worked as a Communications Manager with The Conservation Fund. There she helped manage and expand urban conservation initiatives across the United States. Her work was primarily focused on supporting communities through the Parks with Purpose program. The program focused on transforming neglected inner–city properties into greenspaces that deliver environmental, economic, and social benefits to residents in under–resourced communities. This work has allowed Kelsi to explore and help strategize solutions for social justice issues at the intersection of environmental challenges. Kelsi is a natural convenor with a growing understanding of methods and challenges that come along with bringing people together from various sectors and perspectives to create positive change.
She has participated in various leadership trainings and fellowships including the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leaders (IGEL), the Rockwood Leadership Institute’s Democratizing Leadership fellowship, and earned a certificate in Personal and Organizational Leadership from the University of Georgia’s Institute for Leadership Advancement. Kelsi has an M.B.A. from Mercer University. She also holds a B.A. in Journalism with a minor in Environmental Law from the University of Georgia.
Multisolving Institute is a project of the New Venture Fund
© 2022 Multisolving Institute
That opened a new front of research at Climate Interactive: what else would improve around the world if countries truly transitioned away from fossil fuels? From improvements in air quality to energy security we documented many co-benefits of climate action, and incorporated some of them into Climate Interactive’s well known computer simulation, En-ROADS.
But, the multiple benefits of actions to protect the climate remain mostly theoretical without ways of overcoming the obstacles to multisolving. That’s why, from the beginning of our work we have collaborated with others to understand the bright spots of multisolving around the world and to pilot multisolving approaches. First in Milwaukee in partnership with the Milwuakee Metropolitan Sewerage District and then in Atlanta, with Partnership for Southern Equity, we began to see what was possible by bringing the different parts of a system together in pursuit of actions and investments that lifted up many goals at once.
From this action research, along with a series of case studies of multisolving projects, we began to see attitudes and approaches that are in common across a wide diversity of multisolving projects, a topic we wrote about in Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Then came 2020. Pandemic. Escalating climate change impacts. Dire warnings about biodiversity loss. And more and more folks connecting the dots between each of these issues and structural inequity. Invitations to write, speak, and teach about multisolving came fast and furious and with it the possibility that what we’ve learned from multisolving bright spots could help support leaders around the world to respond to crises with multisolving. That spark led to the launch of the Multisolving Institute and our mission of supporting leaders as they pursue multisolving approaches
