Avary Kent

Title: CEO & Co-Founder
Organization: Spring Activator USA, Inc
 
Linkedin: avarykent
 
Avary Kent is a serial Social Entrepreneur who brings ideas to life. Most recently Avary has served as the Chief People Officer for Spring Activator in Canada during an incredible phase of growth.  Doubling the size of the team from 16 to 38 in 2 years and dropping turnover from 46% down to 18% during this time.  Avary is certified through the Thomas Kilmann Institute in change management, conflict mediation, and systems change.  Avary draws on over a decade of experience as an executive to support a holistic approach to people operations, crafting a culture of psychological safety, courageous conversations, and systems of accountability to deliver exceptional outcomes.   
 
Motivated by a deep connection to calling and purpose, Avary is passionate about systems change and has volunteered with Catalyst 2030 for the last few years to support new tools and frameworks to shift the funding paradigm for non-profits and recently joined the awards committee to elevate funders who are making meaningful progress to advance systems change.
 
They were the Founding Executive Director of Conveners.org leading peer-learning communities of practice for impact focused conveners where they leveraged their expertise in experience design and facilitation to support organizations in the development of participant focused events integrating human centered design techniques that deliver outstanding feedback and results. As an on-site facilitator Avary has worked with politicians, academics, cyber security experts, factory owners and workers, Fortune 100 brands, investors, and foundation leaders. Avary is adept at navigating challenging conversations and supporting groups towards productive dialogue and action.
 
Avary co-created the Impact Accelerator Network in 2011 with leaders in the field including GSBI, MCN, Unreasonable Institute, and Village Capital.  The Impact Accelerator Network was folded into Conveners.org in 2014 and became the Accelerating the Accelerators program.  The program convened a global network of 225 accelerators from over 20 countries and provided access to world-class program leaders to share capacity building frameworks, best practices, and lessons learned from building programs in new markets around the world.  Avary has served as a consultant to the C&A Foundation and Ashoka Globalizer on the design of an Ethical Fashion accelerator, and was a consortium lead for DFAT’s innovationXchange program Frontier Incubators & Frontier Labs to increase the capability of incubators and accelerators across SE Asia and the Pacific Islands. In 2017 Avary led a collaboration of 10 organizations to design and launch the Accelerator Selection Tool to support entrepreneurs in finding the right program to meet their needs around the world.
 
Avary has also been a lead consultant to Kaiser Permanente for the Hatch Group, the innovation team for the office of the CEO.  In this role they supported the design and implementation of an internal accelerator program to support cross-department collaboration to advance the organization's goals.  Avary built the Thriving Leaders program in response to the challenges of COVID-19 to support mental and emotional wellbeing for business leaders in Kaiser’s market.  They also supported ICA with an accelerator program to increase resilience for diverse business owners impacted by COVID-19 regulations.
 
Avary was also the co-founder of ImpactAlpha, The Happiness Institute, and Puzzlebox LLC.  They received a BS in Genetics and Geobotanical Field Ecology from George Washington University and an MBA in Sustainable Enterprise from Dominican University and served as President for the Dominican and SF Professional Net Impact Chapters winning the Chapter of the Year Award.