As Director of Innovation Kat Duncan leads RJI’s innovation team and their initiatives, programs and workshops.

She leads the Professional Innovation Fellowships, Student Innovation Competition, and the Student Innovation Fellowships. She founded and runs the Community-Centered Symposium, the Rural Revenue Transformation Workshop, Vertical Video Workshop and the Women in Journalism Workshop.

She manages the innovation team, which includes community-centered editors, project managers and student innovation staff. They collaborate on partnership projects with local newsrooms, organizations and individuals to build free to use tools, resources and platforms like Agenda Watch, Black News & Views and Luz Lab. The Innovation in Focus series, which she started in 2017, is a monthly series that tackles a new tech, storytelling method or idea through short-term experiments with newsrooms and journalists. Her team also hosts monthly community calls, webinars and panels. And she teaches Emerging Tech & Innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Her mission is to move journalism forward through collaborations that provide free, accessible, open source, practical and innovative resources for journalists, newsrooms and the communities they serve.

Duncan came to RJI from the San Francisco Chronicle where she was a photo editor, photographer, videographer and manager. Past roles include photojournalism, video journalism and visual manager/editor positions in New York, Utah, Texas, Kansas and Massachusetts. She won awards from the National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year International, multiple state press associations (New York, Texas, Kansas etc) and Best of Photojournalism.

RJI Innovation Hub: free resources, tools and platforms for journalists and newsrooms.

Sign up for her newsletter: The RJI Innovation Newsletter is a monthly wrap-up of our innovation deadlines, projects, programs and events