Introducing Kenzie Keck to the Untold International Board

I probably don’t need to tell you, dear supporter, how bad a job we’ve been doing keeping our supporters updated lately. We’ve still been doing things—some pretty exciting things, in fact—but the information hasn’t made its way to you, for which I sincerely apologize. The departure of Kaitlyn, who handled communications for years, left a hole that I evidently couldn’t fill myself. Thus, it became clear that we needed to bring someone on board to handle communications. Enter Mackenzie Keck, our new director of communications!

I’ve known Kenzie for about 19 years, not only as a loyal and uplifting friend, but also as a staunch supporter of Untold International since Kaitlyn and I founded the organization in 2015. A native of Colorado, she moved to Edmond, Oklahoma in 2006, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science in Family Studies and Child Development from Oklahoma Christian University. There, she met her husband, Garrett, with whom she’s now raising three kids: Scott (8), and twins Rhett and Anna (6).

Kenzie thus brings both theoretical and practical expertise in early childhood development, kept sharp by her teaching job in a nursery and two-year-olds class. She revels in being highly organized in whatever her kids don’t get their hands on, enjoys research, thinks in a solutions-oriented way, and actually loves filling out forms (yay!). She’s creative and crafty and will be bringing her knack for handmaking decorations to our social media posts. Perhaps the greatest asset she brings to our organization, however, is her passion for our mission, something that can’t be manufactured.

Kenzie and Garrett have been donating to Untold since the beginning, even through their own financially thin times, making them possibly our longest continuous donors. They passed this spirit of generosity on to their kids: Scott became an Untold Dollar donor at age 5 and at one point wanted to become an architect to build libraries in Africa. Kenzie felt a pull toward Africa since before she even met me and knew that she wanted to support a community there someday, so when we founded a language arts center in Asisiriwa, that gave her the link she was looking for. She loves that our goal isn’t to share English with the world, but to give people stories in their own language. She’s had this desire to get more involved in the organization for years, asking me every once in a while, “What can I do?” For years, I had no answer for her, but now I do.

Kenzie will be taking over all donor communications, which includes restarting our quarterly newsletter and revamping our social media accounts (she’s already started posting on our Facebook page!) She will be receiving all the pictures and videos from our people on the ground in Ghana, managing them in our media archive, and sharing them with our supporters. She’ll be managing our penpal program, facilitating the exchange of letters between students in Ghana and the USA. Additionally, she’ll be assisting Anne, our director of development, with fundraising, and helping to overhaul our Untold Dollar program to make it easier and more impactful. So she’s going to have her hands full!

I’d like to thank Kenzie for volunteering her time, talents, and treasure to our organization. I truly believe that with her in a leadership capacity like this, our organization will begin moving forward into the next era, and that era looks exciting (I’ll save that for future blog posts!)

Thank you for reading this blog, for supporting our organization through these strange past few years, and for being here now. Yɛda wo ase.