leadership
Dr. Kareema K. Martinez
Dr. Kareema K. Martinez is the founder of Rise Strong Consulting Institute — a people-driven performance consulting firm built on the belief that sustainable organizational results require both operational excellence and the human capacity to sustain them.
Before founding Rise Strong, Dr. Martinez spent more than 13 years as President of KST Family, Inc. — leading educational facilities for preschool and school-age students across the Raleigh area. She most recently served as Executive Head of School and Strategic Planner at Mishkah Montessori Academy in Cary, NC, where she oversaw all academic and operational aspects of the school, guided the executive board on key business decisions, and led the start-up planning for a new location.
Prior to her career in education, Dr. Martinez spent nearly a decade in the corporate sector at Genworth Mortgage Insurance, where she served as a Process Control Auditor — auditing organizational units for risk, enforcing regulatory compliance, and designing streamlined processes using Lean Six Sigma methodology. It was here that the framework for The RISE Process™ was first forged.
This cross-sector background — operational rigor from corporate process improvement, deep human insight from more than two decades in education leadership — is what makes the Rise Strong approach genuinely different. Dr. Martinez doesn't just understand organizational performance frameworks. She has lived every challenge her clients face, from hiring and culture to systems and compliance, from staff burnout to community engagement.
Rise Strong was built to offer schools and organizations the kind of consulting support she always wished had been available: structured, evidence-based, human-centered, and delivered by someone who truly understands the work.