Meet Kathe
Dr. Kathe Pelletier is the founder of Confluence Network. After more than 20 years leading organizational change from the inside—at institutions, associations, and foundations—she is convinced that lasting capacity is built one honest conversation at a time.
Kathe is known for making complex change feel human, navigable, and possible.
“Lasting capacity is built one honest conversation at a time.”
Smart people are rarely the missing ingredient.
Kathe has spent her career working on complicated problems that do not belong neatly to one person or department—from digital transformation and new models of education to AI, organizational strategy, professional communities, and large-scale collaborative initiatives.
Again and again, she has seen that organizations rarely lack smart people or good ideas. The harder problem is connecting what people know, creating the conditions for good decisions, and turning collective expertise into action.
That is why she created Confluence Network.
Confluence Network helps people work through complex change together while strengthening the knowledge, relationships, decisions, and learning that will matter after the immediate challenge has passed.
Curious, structured, and grounded in what is already there.
Kathe begins by making existing strengths and knowledge visible. She asks questions that surface different perspectives, helps people see patterns across boundaries, and creates room for honest conversations about priorities, power, tradeoffs, and what needs to happen next.
Her work draws on appreciative inquiry, systems thinking, facilitation, foresight, and organizational learning. The methods stay in service of the people and the work—not the other way around.
Experience from inside complex organizations.
Kathe’s perspective comes from more than 20 years of leading change inside higher education institutions, associations, and foundations, as well as from national research, board, and advisory work.
Her research experience includes leading multi-institution qualitative and mixed-methods studies; serving as principal investigator on research examining advising technology and holistic advising transformation; leading national horizon-scanning and foresight research; and collaborating on the design, analysis, and interpretation of large-scale higher education survey research. She translates complex findings into actionable insights for institutional leaders and cross-sector partners.
Her selected experience includes senior leadership in teaching and learning and community programs at EDUCAUSE; academic leadership and educational model development at Capella University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Rasmussen University; board service with 1EdTech; and advisory service with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bring the complicated problem.
You do not need to make it neat before you reach out. Kathe will meet you in the complexity and help identify a useful place to begin.
Talk with Kathe