Randall Kempner is founder and president of Prosperity Strategies. For more than two decades, Randall has been advising private and public sector leaders about innovation-based and climate-smart economic development.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Randall served as a consultant at Monitor Group (now part of Deloitte) and rose to be a leader of the firm’s country competitiveness practice. He led national competitiveness projects in Bermuda, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru and served as the lead advisor to the Clusters of Innovation Initiative, the Council on Competitiveness’s seminal regional economic development research project. In 2003, Randall served as chair of the City of Austin, Texas Economic Development Task Force that developed a public sector strategy to foster cultural vitality and the regional creative economy.
In 2003, Randall began his service as Vice President for Regional Innovation at the U.S. Council on Competitiveness. As the leader of the Council’s Regional Innovation Initiative, Randall directed regional economic development initiatives in nearly a dozen U.S. regions. He also led the Council’s policy guidance and technical assistance team that supported U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation in Regional Development (WIRED) initiative. During this time, he also served on the board of the Climate Prosperity Project, an early effort to promote sustainable economic and workforce development.
In 2009, he joined the Aspen Institute as the founding executive director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a global network of diverse organizations that propel entrepreneurship in emerging markets. As executive director, he was the global face of the organization and built a team that launched ANDE from an idea to become an influential global development network of nearly 300 dues-paying organizations. He also directed the ten-year strategy refresh that led to a new focus on entrepreneurial approaches to environmental action.
After serving as the CEO of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, the largest sustainability-focused family foundation in Texas, he returned to the Aspen Institute as a Senior Advisor to the Aspen Energy and Environment Program. In that capacity he focused on policy and practice related to climate-focused economic development, investment, and philanthropy
Randall is a frequent speaker and commentator on the topics of climate-smart economic development, climate philanthropy, the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems and impact investing. His work has been published in the MIT Innovations Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Randall is the primary author or editor of multiple economic development publications including:
- Regional Innovation: National Prosperity
- Measuring Regional Innovation
- Illuminate: A Roadmap to Regional Asset Mapping
- Engage: A Practitioner’s Guide for Effective Engagement of Business Leaders in Regional Development
- Cluster-Based Strategies for Growing State Economies
Randall has extensive experience as a facilitator and moderator and has participated as a lecturer in dozens of training sessions and conference sessions on economic development and climate action, teaching in both Spanish and English.
Kempner graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with an M.B.A and an M.P.Aff. He earned his bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University. He presently serves on the advisory boards of the Millenium Challenge Corporation, the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Center for Global Business at the University of Texas, Generation Climate Alliance and the 1.5°Climate Strategies Group. He is Board Chair of the Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund, a place-based family foundation focused on Galveston, Texas.