Gillian Helm

Gillian Helm has led the organization’s tremendous growth through strategy and client-centered design over the last eight years, including the implementation of a systems and service provision overhaul resulting in an 850% increase in client numbers served from 250 to 2400 annually. Under Helm’s leadership, Literacy KC’s fundraising strategy has resulted in extensive growth as well, increasing the annual budget, from $300,000 to $3.7 million over eight years. Helm received a Bachelor’s in English Literature with a minor in Spanish from Park University. She engaged in extensive research in Latin America on non-governmental resources available to women in poverty as a graduate student at the University of Kansas and completed a Master’s degree in Public Administration with an emphasis in Nonprofit Management from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Helm joined the Literacy KC team in September 2011 as a member of the Programs team, climbing the ranks to become Literacy KC’s CEO in October 2015, and continues to dedicate her time and talent to the improvement of services, the diversification of programming, and to meeting the 21st century, multi-dimensional literacy related needs of Kansas City’s adults and families through research-based, data-driven curriculum. In 2019, Helm was named Nonprofit Connect’s Emerging Nonprofit Professional of the Year and in 2023 one of the Kansas City Business Journal’s “20 to Know” Nonprofit Leaders. Helm loves reading and running, and would like to own her own restaurant one day. She also does her best to keep up with her husband and three young sons, Griffin, Case, and Theodore.