Shaunté Kinch

WHY I STARTED EMPACT GLOBAL

I’ve never been satisfied with accepting that a difficult problem is simply the way things are.

I was drawn to engineering because I loved math and science. But I became an engineer for another reason.

One day, someone told me that people like me weren’t engineers.

I decided they were wrong.

That moment shaped more than my career choice. It reinforced something I have carried with me ever since: I have never been comfortable accepting that something is impossible simply because the world has decided it is.

Over the years, I found myself leaving roles when the work felt too narrow.

I left a healthcare consultancy because too much of the work began and ended inside medical buildings. I wanted to work further upstream—to understand and change the conditions that determine whether people need those buildings in the first place.

I later left a Lean consultancy because I did not believe every problem should be forced through the same methodology. Complex problems deserve approaches built around the problem—not around the consultant’s favorite tool.

And I rarely saw Black people doing this kind of work.

That mattered to me. Communities carrying some of our most persistent challenges should be able to see themselves represented among the people helping to understand those challenges and shape what comes next.

The areas Empact focuses on are personal.

Health matters because I have experienced what happens when systems fail people I love. My mother and my sister both died in circumstances shaped, in part, by systems that did not work as they should have. I cannot know what different systems would have changed, but I know enough to believe we can build better ones.

Education matters because it runs through my family. My father, mother, and sister all worked in education, and I have seen how access to learning can change the trajectory not only of one person, but of generations.

And community matters because community was our original safety net. It is where people have always found belonging, support, knowledge, care, and possibility. I believe we need to strengthen that fabric again.

For me, health, education, and community are deeply connected.

Lives are saved. People thrive. Generations move forward.

That is why I built Empact Global.

Better futures should not be left to chance.