EPISODE 42: Luke Keller — The Entrepreneurs Guide to Positive Social Impact

Luke serves as the Executive Director for Tekton Training as well as the founder and CEO of Kicky.com.

Growing up Luke played American football in College at Samford University. He studied Social Entrepreneurship and Spanish. After a pretty severe injury he started his first company that did concrete pressure washing and staining on golf courses and high end homes. This was his first experience building a team and working with people with diverse backgrounds.

After graduating he had a job offer to run a foundation and do sales for a large construction and engineering company based out of Texas. This new role gave him the opportunity to travel the world learning more about business for good. Eventually he launched what is now called Tekton Career Training (tektontraining.org) Tekton provides construction trade training, leadership development, and job placement for men and women living in the refugee community in Clarkston.

After a number of years working for the foundation, construction company, and Tekton Luke helped launch a for-profit staffing company connecting the refugee community to great jobs. He pivoted all his time and energy to this new startup and saw very quick but tough growth. Eventually he grew that company to five cities throughout the USA and helped connect over 2000 refugees to great jobs. In only a few short years of launching and running that company, Luke learned many incredible lessons on team building, scaling, and leading others. Eventually he sold his equity and moved on to join a quickly scaling technology company.

After a number of years in the tech industry rejoined Tekton which by this time was ready to merge with an amazing organisation called Refcode (refcode.org) Refcode provides software engineering training for the refugee community.

Luke's vision is big. He hopes that we can build dynamic, competitive, businesses that provide opportunities for training and upward mobility for our refugee friends globally. He believes that advances and needs in technology have giving us the opportunity to see men and women stuck in refugee camps or in very harsh situations thrive educationally and vocationally in ways not previously possible.

You can email Luke at Luke@tektontraining.org, and connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Instagram.

This podcast was produced by the master, himself, Jose Biotto… with a little help from me. The featured music is from the song “Turning Over Tables” by The Brilliance. Lastly, to my Patreon Community out there… thank you so very much for your support and generosity, without you this podcast would not be possible.

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