Derek Özkal · Kansas City, Missouri
Translating rigorous research into plain language.
I've spent more than 20 years in economic research, philanthropy, and journalism, most of it at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. There I directed $31.9 million in research on entrepreneurship, labor markets, and what AI is doing to both. Agents and Agency is where I write about keeping people's judgment and sense of purpose at the center of the AI debate.
Featured · Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
The Legacy Project
Led by Derek Ozkal, senior officer, strategic initiatives, RLE
From A project to learn from, and honor, 60 years of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Foundation's account of the work.
Sixty years of foundation history sat in boxes, binders, and file shares that nobody could search. I led 46 volunteers in turning tens of thousands of pages into a secure, searchable archive. Then I helped design an experimental AI tool so staff can ask the archive questions.
Finding what we funded, what we learned, and what we already tried in 1997 now takes minutes instead of days.
Explore
Four ways in
Each has its own page, so you can skip straight to what you came for.
Essays on AI, work, and agency
- Unprompted
- The Liquidity Crisis of Expertise
- The Rise of the Agentic Class
- Our Perfect Future
Plus nine Kauffman pieces going back to 2016, and data journalism from the Kansas City Business Journal.
All the writing
The Kauffman Indicators relaunch
The keynote video for the 2026 national relaunch, built from interviews I led, plus talks, forums, and a podcast.
All talks and interviewsThe research network
$12M across 60+ projects. 34 papers and reports that thank, quote, or cite my work.
See the network The LabPrototypes I built with AI
I build things with AI to test the ideas I write about. Everything here is a prototype, this site included.
About
From Nevada, Missouri
I grew up in Nevada, Missouri (pronounced Knee-vay-duh, because it's a rural Missouri town).
I studied economics at Truman State, then spent five years in market research and managing healthcare certification accounts, and two years as Director of Research at the Kansas City Business Journal.
The rest of my career has been at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, in two stints (2006 to 2008 and 2015 to now). My work covers entrepreneurship research, labor markets, inclusive prosperity, and the economics of AI. Along the way I earned an executive MBA from Washington University's Olin School, joined the Foundation's core AI working group, and led the Legacy Project.
Most of my work comes down to translation. Researchers and decision makers rarely speak the same language, and I connect the two so research gets used.
- Base
- Kansas City metro
- Role
- Senior Officer, Strategic Initiatives (Research, Learning & Evaluation), Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
- Education
- Executive MBA, Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis · BS Economics, Truman State University
- Honors
- Inaugural Alumni Fellow, Truman State University School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2022
- Elsewhere
- LinkedIn · Substack
- Curriculum vitae
- Download the CV (PDF)