Karen Kalish, Troublemaker of the Best Kind

Serial social entrepreneur Karen Kalish established this scholarship opportunity to encourage troublemakers of the best kind, people who identify injustice and work mightily to affect positive change. Karen, founder of nonprofits Operation Understanding DC, Cultural Leadership, Books and Badges, and Home Works! The Teacher Home Visit Program, creates programs that work to improve literacy, eradicate racism and level the playing field for students living in poverty. She started this program to honor the life of her brother, Ralph, a St. Louis attorney who wrote and starred in a play about Branch Rickey, the executive who assured the desegregation of Major League Baseball by signing Jackie Robinson in 1945.