Kimberly D. Gayle, Chief Program Officer

Kimberly D. Gayle is the Chief Program Officer at Wacif, where she provides leadership and management oversight of Wacif's small business and entrepreneurship advisory services and technical assistance initiatives. Before Wacif, she was the Regional Director for the Minority Business Assistance Center led by the State of Ohio’s Minority Business Development Division and hosted by the Columbus Urban League. The Columbus Minority Business Assistance Center served the needs of Ohio’s small, minority, and socially economically disadvantaged businesses in 18 counties. She is a certified business advisor with extensive experience driving business growth in start-up, turnaround, and well-established cultures.

Her professional career began as a Business Consultant at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, LLP after earning her Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and master’s degree in Public Administration. While Kimberly had many careers in the financial sector including banking, auditing, and mortgage lending, she quickly realized that her education, expertise, and consulting background could help small businesses. She knew that having meaningful work driven by her values, purpose, and mission would lead her to a more fulfilling career. She is a business strategist who brings ideas from conception through completion as she designs cost-conscious solutions and initiates successful programs for both for-profit and non-profit organizations.

Ms. Gayle's professional experience also involved working as the Director of Business Education and Incubation Services for the Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI) where she led the Training and Development Services Department, a division that provided training, technical assistance, networking, and client-support functions. She served as the lead project manager for micro-enterprise training initiatives for wealth-building strategies and other collaborative grant programs. As a certified GrowthWheel® Business Advisor, she provided one-on-one technical assistance to clients assisting them with growth development plans and financial assistance for loan preparation. She also designed and developed ECDI’s signature entrepreneurship program, the Small Enterprise Education Development (S.E.E.D) training series.

For the past 10 years, she has taught a variety of business management and entrepreneurship courses also serving as an Adjunct Professor for Columbus State Community College and Franklin University. Ms. Gayle is an advisory board member for the African American Leadership Academy and Founder for Black Tech Columbus. She has served in previous volunteer roles as the Co-Chair on the education committee for the National Coalition of 100 Black Women of Central Ohio, Forward Cities Innovation Council, Columbus Equity NOW Coalition, Columbus Small Business Agenda Committee, Greater Linden Development Corporation and Drug-Free Action Alliance board of trustees.