About

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

I lead the Professional Innovation Fellowships, Student Innovation Competition, and the Student Innovation Fellowships. I founded and run the Community-Centered Symposium, the Rural Revenue Transformation Workshop, Vertical Video Workshop and the Women in Journalism Workshop.

I manage RJI’s 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 I started in 2017, is a monthly series that tackles a new tech, storytelling method or idea through short-term experiments with newsrooms and journalists. My team also hosts monthly community calls, webinars and panels. And I teach Emerging Tech & Innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism.

My 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.

I came to RJI from the San Francisco Chronicle where I 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. I have 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.