In Episode 17, Stacey speaks with Katie Hogarty and Molly Kruger of Climb Wyoming. They explore how Climb is changing the lives of low-income single mothers across the state. Their unique approach integrates job training with mental health support, offering a holistic model that provides participants with the skills and resilience needed to succeed both in their careers and personal lives.

Katie and Molly discuss the challenges of poverty, the effects of trauma, and how structured support can transform not only participants’ lives but also the futures of their children. The impact that group-based learning and community-building have on the women they serve is powerful.

Supporting Adaptability with Personal Connections

This episode highlights how empowerment comes from addressing the complex needs of families while creating long-lasting connections within communities. Listen now for an uplifting look at how meaningful change can happen when we focus on individual strengths and their collective impact.

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Resilience through Partnership

We envision a future where families are honored, supported, and empowered to thrive. Our conversation with Climb Wyoming reflects our belief in transformative action through partnerships that uplift individual strengths and promote family integrity, advancing the kind of change we work toward in child welfare reform.

Meet Our Guests

Katie Hogarty, CEO of Climb Wyoming

As a leader with vast experience in poverty alleviation through employment and training, Katie is passionate about policies that impact those most in need and has been invited to share Climb’s expertise with the U.S. Council on Economic Mobility and the National Governors Association. Katie is also a member of the governor-appointed Wyoming Workforce Development Council, a group of leaders that guide workforce development for the state. Prior to becoming Climb’s Chief Executive Officer, Katie served as Climb’s Director of External Relations, and as Laramie Program Director for a decade, managing a team that served moms with training for careers in healthcare, commercial driving, and office administration.

Molly Kruger, Chief Operations Officer of Climb Wyoming

Molly operationalizes a comprehensive and psychologically-informed program model with relationship-based direct services at its core. Molly’s lifelong passion for affecting positive change in her communities intersects with her expertise in mental health counseling, communications, and marketing to help her build efficient human-centered operations, create highly effective systems, and establish infrastructure that empowers staff to enact Climb’s best-practice model, ensuring a sustainable, impactful organization that supports families most in need in reaching long-term self-sufficiency.

About the Podcast

Launched in 2023, the Igniting Impact Podcast highlights our client’s and partner’s important work. We hope that this podcast drives impactful conversations that foster connections and progress in the field.  One of our core values at Public Knowledge® is Impact. We created this podcast around this fundamental principle because it is essential to our work. Impact to us means, “We approach every engagement with our energy focused on identifying the right goals, outcomes, and strategies. And we each have a personal responsibility to make a positive impact on our projects and our world.”