Dr. Kimberlee Guenther, Chief Impact Officer at the United Way of Metro Chicago, has been bringing diverse voices together to strengthen neighborhood health and safety in Chicago for more than 20 years. Now, she’s bringing this unique experience—and perspective—to UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI) Advisory Board. 

Early on in her career, Dr. Guenther recognized the incredible potential of communities’ knowledge and creativity; this realization fueled her passion for engaging various stakeholders, ranging from community residents to senior executives, to develop impactful and sustainable solutions for social issues. As her interests further developed in the housing sector, she pursued her Ph.D. in sociology, focusing on public housing redevelopment and community-based participatory research to co-create transformative solutions for healthier cities. 

Her current work with the United Way revolves around strengthening Chicago’s neighborhoods, particularly addressing the safety of homes. Dr. Guenther is keenly aware of the challenges faced by community members who rely on space heaters, lack proper ventilation, and have no working smoke alarms. She understands the trauma resulting from fire-related incidents, which is often compounded by limited financial resources to replace even the most basic necessities or obtain insurance to cover damage or relocation. To address these concerns and many other social issues, she helped design a new funding model to expand social service infrastructure. It has led to the development of cross-sector partnerships and recently expanded from 10 to 17 neighborhoods in and around Chicago. 

As an advisory board member, she is excited about leveraging her expertise to forge partnerships and creatively engage underserved communities in fire safety outreach and employment paths. She hopes to support the amplification of research findings and public education efforts and understand the impact of that work in communities across the country.

“FSRI brings together incredible minds with the core objective of saving lives. There is so much complexity in the research… [but] the goal is still very simple: use this information to create strategies and education that improve safety.”

-Dr. Kimberlee Guenther, Chief Impact Officer at the United Way of Metro Chicago