Ben Duncan joins Kearns & West as a Senior Director. Ben is excited to build on his nearly two decades of process skills and expertise working in the non-profit and government sectors focused on environmental justice, public health, criminal justice, and other public policy and equity related issues. He contributes his considerable skillset and strategic thinking towards the design and implementation of effective processes for collaborative decision-making. Throughout his career, Ben has worked at the intersections of lived and built environments and racial and ethnic disparities serving both professionally and personally to inform and facilitate policy, practice, and program changes that impact communities. Prior to joining Kearns & West, he spent 16 years with Multnomah County, the past seven of which he served as the Chief Diversity and Equity officer.
Ben designs and facilitates inclusive and engaging processes to build up foundational efforts, including the development of Multnomah County’s Equity and Empowerment Lens: Racial Justice Focus, a nationally recognized tool for equity analysis and led the development of the County’s first Workforce Equity Strategic Plan in collaboration with employees at every level of the organization.
Ben’s work emphasizes and orients stakeholders to the relationship between our social, economic, and environmental conditions and racial and ethnic disparities. Ben began his career working in Environmental Health as a community health worker. He has since worked as a health educator, policy analyst and manager of the Health Equity Initiative.
Ben was a founding board member of OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, an organization that organizes people with low incomes and people of color to build power for environmental justice and civil rights in the community. He has also volunteered his time with the Oregon Commission for Black Affairs, the Oregon Environmental Justice Task Force, and numerous nonprofit boards and advisory committees.