Kira Morin

Kira Morin is the Director of Data at Innovate Memphis, a nonprofit civic innovation organization that builds partnerships, products, and processes to help Memphians solve complex challenges through data and collaboration. Its Data Midsouth civic data hub connects government, nonprofits, researchers, and residents to the information they need to make data-informed decisions that strengthen communities. 

Kira is a former neuroscience researcher, science educator, and experienced servant leader who is passionate about improving community outcomes through user experience. She is skilled in aligning people, processes, and technology, with an emphasis on data management and analytics, to achieve business objectives sustainably. 

At Innovate Memphis, Kira manages data infrastructure, product development and a team of contracted data engineers, analysts, and web developers, overseeing the creation of technical requirements and ensuring alignment with project objectives and community needs. She has a strong record of success delivering excellent customer service and driving strategic initiatives from vision to deployment in the public sector.

What is your core conviction as a data leader, and how does it translate into your day-to-day activity?

My core conviction as a data leader is that data only creates value when it’s usable, trustworthy, and connected to real decisions. I don’t believe in data for data’s sake or dashboards that exist to look impressive. I believe in triangulating across messy, imperfect sources to reflect how the world actually works, then translating that complexity into tools policymakers, nonprofit staff, and community members can actually use.

In practice, that means doing unglamorous but high-leverage work: standardizing fields, building metadata and QA rules, documenting business logic, and pressure-testing assumptions with users. I bring community members into the design process early because they surface blind spots technical teams miss. I also push back on scopes, timelines, and shiny ideas when they threaten data quality, user trust, or long-term maintainability.

In your view, what is the key role of today’s data leaders in turning data into a lever for sustainable impact?

I think the key role of today’s data leaders is to act as translators and stewards, not just technologists. Translators between raw data and human meaning, and stewards of how data is collected, framed, and used, so it doesn’t quietly distort reality or reinforce existing power imbalances. Data leaders need to set standards for rigor, ethics, and clarity, while also creating practical pathways for organizations/communities to actually use data to change behavior, allocate resources more wisely, and evaluate whether interventions are working.

The job isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. It’s to make the room smarter — and to make sure data doesn’t just inform decisions, but improves outcomes for the people those decisions affect.