Kim Lan Grout

Kim Lan Thị Grout is a San Francisco–based nonprofit leader, public speaker, and multidisciplinary creative with deep experience in advancement, community engagement, and mission-driven strategy across complex community-centered organizations. She currently serves as Chief Advancement Officer at Cameron House, where she leads fundraising, communications, and strategic partnerships in support of youth development, social services, and community programs serving San Francisco’s Chinatown and the greater Bay Area. Kim Lan is especially skilled at stewarding organizations that sit at the intersection of cultural legacy, social justice, and faith-adjacent histories, bringing clarity, trust, and forward momentum during periods of growth and change.

Previously, Kim Lan worked with multifaceted community centers that integrate social services, youth and adult programs, and robust member and alumni communities, including as Chief Advancement Officer for Jewish for Good in Durham, North Carolina. She has built and strengthened major donor and planned giving programs at a national scale through her work as Senior Director of Advancement with the Washington, D.C.-based League of Women Voters, training dozens of state and local leagues around the country to fundraise, and has led strategy and impact production for the award-winning independent documentary Farmer/Veteran, which premiered on PBS’ Independent Lens on Memorial Day 2017. In parallel with her nonprofit leadership, Kim Lan is a photographer, web developer, editor, and culture and community journalist, using storytelling and digital platforms to amplify underrepresented voices and drive civic engagement, authoring “The Great Pho Appropriation Debacle of 2016”, as one example of her work. Her career reflects a long-standing commitment to BIPOC advocacy, disability justice, and community-rooted impact through her Redefining Disabled Project, leading to an invitation to be a TEDx speaker, and her academic tutoring academy Rhyme & Reason Tutoring. She has also held governance and civic leadership roles with Southern Documentary Fund and Disability Rights North Carolina, and serves as PTSO President of Willie L. Brown, Jr. Middle School. A single mother of two teenagers, one of whom lives with Type 1 Diabetes, Kim Lan brings both professional rigor and lived experience to her work—grounding strategy, storytelling, hard truths, and leadership in care, equity, humanity, levity, and community accountability.

She is a University of San Francisco alumna (2005), a Bay-Area native, and proud daughter of refugees: her father is a Polish Holocaust survivor, having been born on a labor camp in 1944; her mother is a Vietnamese Boat Person who survived a grueling escape from war-torn Vietnam. Motivated best by food, music, and bad punny jokes, Kim Lan announces her entry into a space with her loud, ear-splitting cackle of a laugh.

Kim Lan would love to meet you. Click here to schedule a meeting: https://calendar.app.google/5scyVpUGwrx6sXAN9