Kathy Lewis

Kathy joined Berenyi in 2019 as its Director of Strategic Impact. Grounded by her faith and an unwavering commitment to community, Kathy brings to Berenyi, and the City of Charleston, standards of excellence and compassionate counsel that has proven successful with the region’s businesses, educational system, and diverse communities. It’s that proven leadership that caught the attention of Tony Berenyi, founder of Berenyi, Inc., and prompted him to invite Kathy to the table in growing his namesake company, setting sites on a bold, multi-faceted vision for the company’s future as he moved towards retirement.

Dedicated to establishing cooperative, trusting, and lasting relationships with its customers, Berenyi places a high value on innovation and internal protocols to meet complex industry demands. In her role, Kathy is leading a progressive effort to share these proven, results-oriented Berenyi standards of excellence with the community it serves.

Kathy’ career began in the field of education. Public education does not traditionally adhere to the corporate business model and titles such as business executive do not apply in schools. However, interestingly, the business of a classroom teacher fundamentally involves putting plans and actions into effect, which is, by definition, executive action. During her career with Charleston County School District, she also served in administrative positions, and by the time she retired in 2017, Kathy was the director of school culture where she led her department to implement positive behavior interventions that fostered enhanced school culture, teacher performance, and student achievement outcomes.

Since retiring from education, her professional work has been in other areas of influence where she has had executive titles. Inspired, motivated, and driven by a belief that when people are unified around a common goal, they can leverage their gifts and talents, and work collaboratively to pursue and achieve something greater.

In addition to her work with Berenyi, Kathy dedicates time and focus to a non-profit organization she founded called Why Not Charleston (WNC). The offices of WNC are in Mt. Pleasant, SC and the mission of the organization is to provide experiences that equip people to discover, develop and deploy their God-given gifts. WNC affords Kathy the privilege of meeting and working with many people from various backgrounds offering an array of gifts. The organization is supported by volunteers who make an offering of time and talent to implement WNC community projects, initiatives, and programs.

Kathy is also the co-founded and National Thought Leader of The Promise Informed Institute™, a consortium of educator and business experts that develop and create tools, resources, training, and course certifications based on the Promise Informed framework and practices. The PI Institute is a resource development partner of Why Not Charleston among other businesses and organizations.

Kathy’s vast experience as an educator, her natural business instincts, and unique vision for transformative outcomes, culminated in the creation of both WNC and the PI Institute. It is these two organizations that serve as the foundation of the work Kathy brings to the Berenyi team as its Director of Strategic Impact.

###