ABOUT US
Hi. I’m Kristine.
I founded Knowledge Partners in 2015 after seeing the same pattern again and again: the strongest and most fulfilling work emerged when the right people came together around a problem, brought different kinds of knowledge to it, and were willing to question assumptions and build something together.
Knowledge Partners grew from that observation.
We are a collaborative practice built around shared purpose, complementary skills, and trusted relationships. We bring together people whose expertise fits the work and whose judgment, curiosity, and ways of working fit together.
Often, the people closest to a challenge already hold much of the knowledge needed to move it forward. What is missing is a way to connect the pieces, surface the real question, and orient the work toward action.
That is where Knowledge Partners is most useful. We help find the pattern, create clarity, and build momentum from insight to action.
Resilience and reinvention
Much of Knowledge Partners’ foundation was built through USAID and the international development community. That experience shaped how we think about partnership, learning, knowledge, systems, and change. It remains an important part of who we are, but not the boundary of where our work belongs.
The work asked difficult questions: How do institutions learn? How does knowledge move across large systems? How do people collaborate across differences in discipline, geography, power, and experience? How do good ideas become useful in practice?
It also gave me a community of colleagues who brought rigor, generosity, imagination, and an unusually deep commitment to work that mattered. My own professional life has been indelibly shaped by USAID’s mission and by the remarkable people I worked alongside.
The disruption of the USAID community brought real loss. But the knowledge, relationships, and sense of purpose built through that work did not disappear with the structures that once held them.
Today, Knowledge Partners is building new partnerships, forming new teams, and carrying this work into new settings in the United States and beyond.
One of those new horizons is a research and innovation partnership in Portugal focused on resilience, adaptive capacity, and translating research into practical use.
This experience has made resilience and reinvention more than subjects of interest to me.
I have come to think of resilience not as returning to what was, but as carrying forward what matters while becoming capable of something new.
Knowledge Partners is doing that now.
We’re building new partnerships, forming teams and finding new ways to put our collective experience to work.