Kris has provided trusted strategic and communications counsel to scores of nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, government officials, education entrepreneurs, and educators for more than 30 years. Her expertise includes strategic and organizational planning and design, communications strategy and execution, and facilitation and moderation. Kris has helped to create eight national, statewide, and community-based education nonprofits, and has led strategic planning processes for dozens more. She has also helped to create networks of mayors working for education improvement in two states—California and Arizona—the only such existing networks in the country. She has written extensively on education and community engagement in support of education improvement. She is a trusted adviser to foundation presidents, nonprofit CEOs and organizational boards of directors.

In 2000, Kris created Collaborative Communications, building on a career in journalism and education. She was a reporter and editor at Congressional Quarterly and Governing magazines. She wrote the National Assessment of Title I at the U.S. Department of Education. And she led education practices at Widmeyer Communications, KSA-Plus Communications, and Millennium Communications.

In 2004, Kris endowed a scholarship for editing and copy editing at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. The scholarship is named after John B. Bremner, an influential mentor.

Kris has a master’s degree in education policy and administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She holds both a bachelor of science degree in magazine journalism and a bachelor of arts degree in literature from the University of Kansas.