Beacon Impact

Our People

Ken Meyer, Member of the Board of Directors

Ken Meyer has spent a career in the business sector where it intersects with public policy, influencing policy and people towards free market solutions to the policy challenges of the day.  He believes in small government, limited taxation and strong national defense and the security of our nation.

An economist by education, as a young businessman and community leader, Ken ran and served two terms as a state legislator in Tennessee where he distinguished himself as a leader among his peers and the public at large. After an unsuccessful run for the United States House of Representatives in 1994, he then took that experience, combined with free market principles, back to the private sector and has spent the last two decades working with policymakers and business leaders across the country to tackle and help solve complex problems facing our states, our country and the world, particularly in K-12 education, technology and the protection of individual data in our digital world.

In 2001 Ken took a sabbatical from the private sector when he was asked by then United States Senator Fred Thompson to join the administration of George W. Bush.  He accepted and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs in the United States Department of Education. His is job was to travel the country to explain and defend the newly passed complexities of the No Child Left Behind Act to policy and business leaders across the country to be sure that every child in the nation has access to a high quality education and that policymakers and business leaders understood the criticality of this new legislation.

Once completed, Ken left the Bush administration after the first term in 2005 and returned to the private sector, focused on issues involving education policy and education technology and the protection of personal data in today’s world of information flow.

He has consulted/advised tech startups and publicly traded corporations.

Ken currently serves as Senior Director of Government Affairs for K12, Inc, the largest provider of online curriculum in the country.  Again, his role is to work with Governors, legislators and other key influencers at the state and national level regarding education policy and education technology.

Ken manages public affairs operations for K12 in a dozen states as well as all federal affairs activities.

Ken holds a BS: Economics from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga College of Business, is married to his college sweetheart Sheena and they have one grown son who lives in Arlington.  He has held various leadership positions in his community and in business. He enjoys home remodeling projects, traveling and is an avid student of current world events.