We lead innovation projects for mission-driven organizations tired of watching their boldest ideas get whittled down to minor adjustments.
To get there, we loosen what’s binding your ideas, giving them room to become as bold in practice as they are on paper.
We bring hands-on AI expertise into your idea’s development, exploring approaches the team may not otherwise have the capacity to try and building versions it can test. We also use AI’s newest powers to run ambitious learning loops.
We get to know the people doing the work. That trust creates room to question the limits the team has learned to work around.
We’re ambitious about what your idea could become and blunt about what you’ll need to do differently to succeed. We don’t gloss over how the system will resist change. We name the hard decisions early, including where authority needs to shift or established routines will have to change, then help the team work through them.
We join your team for a stretch, taking responsibility for moving the idea into practice. We work alongside the people trying changes in their day-to-day work, seeing what holds up and revising what doesn’t. We move between the details and the larger ambition, keeping sight of what made the idea worth pursuing
The Rithm Project focuses on reclaiming and evolving human connection in the age of AI. We lead its "equip youth" strategy and execution, working to scale these ideas to young people in schools and other learning systems and overseeing a number of fast-cycle tests and pilots.
Guided City Year’s national AI strategy, helping leaders prioritize opportunities across organizational functions while preserving its human development approach. Worked with staff to turn promising uses, from tutoring preparation to student support, into concrete pilots for testing and learning.
Helped staff use AI to put their whole-child competency approach more fully into practice, keeping consequential decisions and student relationships in human hands.
Nate is unafraid of big ideas that don't yet fit the current system, and he understands the system well enough to work within it. He sees the people, their competing commitments, and the incentives around them. Having a foot in both of those worlds matters enormously when you're trying to do something new
Nate brings an educator’s instinct to leading a project. He helps people clarify their roles, build the work together, and reach decisions. He’s also willing to say what needs to be said, with respect and enough levity to keep people engaged.
Nate can see the first five steps that would make an idea possible: who needs to be involved, whether we can finance it, what has to happen next. Working with him lets me keep thinking big while we figure out how to do it.
Nate is someone I trust to come in, understand what's needed quickly, and add value. Along the way, he'll help you see things you weren't seeing. He can address the immediate problem while keeping the whole picture in view
There weren't many models for the work we were trying to do. When it got messy, Nate stayed calm and willing to try something. We'd go away, work on it, and come back with ideas we could discuss. That steadiness helped us keep going when we didn't yet know the answer.
A former award-winning special educator, Nate Kerr has spent the last twenty years building youth development systems grounded in the science of learning and development. Over the last few years, that work has centered on the developmental impacts of AI use on both young people and the adults who support them.
Nate has served as a school administrator, teacher coach, graduate school teacher, and education nonprofit leader for organizations of all sizes. He currently leads The Rithm Project's youth strategy and partnerships.
Let’s chat about your ideas and what role I might play in bringing them to life.
