Katherine M. Gehl is a business leader, author, speaker, and political innovator. Katherine was president and CEO of Gehl Foods, a $250 Million high-tech food manufacturing company in Wisconsin. Her career includes roles in the private and public sectors including at Oracle Corporation, Bernstein Investment Research and Management, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Office at the City of Chicago, and Chicago Public Schools. In 2011, Katherine was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the Board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. In 2015, she sold her company to focus on the urgent need for non-partisan political innovation on both state and national levels. She is co-chair of the National Association of Non-Partisan Reformers, a board member of Unite America, co-founder of Democracy Found, founder of The Institute for Political Innovation and the CEO of Venn Innovations. In 2020, she published The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy along with her co-author and Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter. In the book, Gehl expresses her deep concern over the path our nation is on, focusing predominantly on the inability of our political system to address the vulnerabilities threatening the competitiveness of our country. Katherine graduated from the University of Notre Dame and holds an MA from Catholic University and an MBA from Kellogg.
