ARE: A Renewal Enterprise was co-founded by Kelly Fryer and Tana Kjos, who were on similar paths before teaming up in 1993.
Fryer graduated with a concentration in Economics from the honors college at Valparaiso University and held a variety of ground level jobs after graduation; she has worked in banking, telemarketing, door to door sales; and, for a time, ran her own muffin baking business. In 1989 she earned the first of her masters’ degrees from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Kjos has a degree in business and design from Harrington Institute of Interior Design and did a stint working in the corporate world, where she managed six million feet of commercial and retail space. Kjos earned a masters’ degree in leadership in 2005.
The two met shortly after Fryer was hired to lead a congregation in the Chicago exurbs. At the time, this congregation was on the verge of closing. Kjos joined the staff about a year later. From 1993-2003 the Fryer-Kjos team led the congregation through redevelopment and renewal. Membership increased 500% under their leadership; the congregation relocated and built a new 11,000 square foot community center; and three new nonprofit organizations were started – a book store, a preschool, and a community counseling center.
This experience taught the pair of lot. One organizational guru is known to say that managing a volunteer organization is “the purest form of management.” Indeed, Fryer and Kjos learned:
How to motivate people – even when they’re not getting paid!
How to get people working together – even without a “boss” in the room
How to identify and unleash the creativity, talent, and passion people have – even when resources are scarce and they’re not used to taking risks
What’s more, they saw the really positive effect it can have on people’s lives when they feel like they are part of a healthy and purposeful organization.
But they also learned some other things: They saw the “personal” side of people’s lives, the side most “bosses” never see. And they saw the terrible impact that “work” can have on people, their families & friends, and their communities. They saw the stress, the exhaustion, and the depression that result when people spend their work lives in unhealthy organizations disconnected from the bottom line, disinterested in the future of their company, and disengaged from their coworkers. Furthermore, they learned that unhealthy organizations exist everywhere – on Wall Street, on Main Street, even on Church Street.
Fryer and Kjos formed A.R.E. in 2003 to help organizations of all types and all sizes build a culture of commitment, collaboration, and creativity for the sake of building a better world. It just so happens that a culture of commitment, collaboration, and creativity can also improve your organization’s bottom line…no matter what that bottom line happens to be. Fryer also teaches these principles to other leaders at Spertus College in Chicago, Illinois, where she is an adjunct member of the faculty, teaching in the Nonprofit Management Graduate program; previously, she taught on the faculty of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.
