Kate Hodel 
Pursuing her passion for community entrepreneurship, Kate was the original program officer for the KCSourceLink founding grant. She went on to work for KCSourceLink and SourceLink as a consultant and eventually as staff, helping build networks across the state of Missouri and in select communities nationwide. Currently Kate works on special projects for KCSourceLink, include the We Create Capital effort, KCInvestED, Whiteboard2Boardroom and research into capital access and job creation by early-stage firms. She is the co-author of a new book, Beyond Collisions: How to Build Your Entrepreneurial Infrastructure (Amazon).
Kate also chairs the board for NetWork Kansas, a SourceLink affiliate, and serves on their Startup Kansas Loan and Capital Multiplier Venture Fund committees. She has been involved in fundraising for the Kansas City Symphony for more than 30 years as part of the Kansas City Symphony Alliance.
Kate spent part of her career heading up marketing for Rockhurst University and The Kansas City Symphony, and was executive director of Kansas City’s Ignatian Spirituality Center for six years. She holds a bachelor in journalism degree from the University of Missouri – Columbia and an MBA from Rockhurst University.
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Books by Kate Hodel
In communities across America, people are trying to support entrepreneurs. They know entrepreneurs add jobs, character and vitality to a community’s economy. Beyond Collisions gets behind the meetups, the accelerators and the hackathons to provide a guide for how to support entrepreneurs – how to build the entrepreneurial infrastructure. Entrepreneurship is poised to take its place alongside attraction and retention as a key economic development strategy. In traditional economic development, there is a defined process for the attraction and retention of companies. With entrepreneurship, there’s been no infrastructure, no roadmap. In most communities, efforts to support entrepreneurs are fragmented. Beyond Collisions provides a clear, proven path to building the entrepreneurial infrastructure that can enable people to start and grow thriving companies. It’s not one program, no silver bullet. It’s a process, a strategy to identify, connect and empower entrepreneurial support resources, and then measure the results. Maria Meyers, Kate Pope Hodel and the SourceLink team have been working in Kansas City and across the country for 15 years, listening, learning and leading. They join with others, the entrepreneurs of entrepreneurship, to share hard-earned lessons about how to build the kind of inclusive, supportive network that encourages entrepreneurship. Beyond Collisions explores key questions. Section One addresses why should a community support entrepreneurship, what an entrepreneurial infrastructure looks like and who benefits. Section Two provides practical, tactical steps to identify, connect, empower and measure the entrepreneurial infrastructure. Section Three outlines strategies around marketing, funding and leadership. Sprinkled throughout are stories from the field, firsthand accounts of building networks, encouraging entrepreneurs and analyzing outcomes.
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