Dr. Kyle Gresenz (he/him) serves as the Director of Foundation Development at the ASU Foundation. He is an experienced fundraiser, with a specialty in charitable grants and foundation development. In Gresenz's role at the ASU Foundation, he advises faculty and staff on philanthropic grant opportunities to advance research and fund programs across the ASU enterprise.
In his scholarly works, Gresenz focuses on the intersections of healthcare, queer identity, and rural geography to understand the intersecting and compounding factors that contribute to distinct population-specific healthcare access limitations, utilization barriers, and relevant outcomes. Gresenz's dissertation, entitled "Queer Out Here: Inequities in Healthcare Access, Utilization, and Health Insurance for Rural Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Populations" serves as a national quantitative study on the status of queer rural healthcare, providing a foundational perspective that situates geography, social identity, institutional dynamics, and social structures together to understand how to advance health equity. He uses queer theory to disrupt the idea that health care systems are neutral or universal, interrogating how norms around place, productivity, and “deserving” patients are built into care delivery. Queer theory is employed as an analytic tool because it critically examines how institutions privilege particular ways of living, and redesigning society and healthcare requires rethinking how we organize time, space, place, labor, and care.
Across his work, he is interested in how resources move through society via institutions and the direct material impacts that are experienced through the distribution of resources. He views philanthropy as one mechanism that moves resources and creates a positive impact but recognizes the limitations and seeks to understand how to best decrease inequities via other mechanisms.
Gresenz has been engaged in numerous collaborative research projects, including his work at the ASU Global Center for Applied Health Research, the Arizona Youth Identity Project, the Phoenix Community Relations Project, and other collaborative endeavors.
A long-time Arizona resident, having been born and raised in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Gresenz received his undergraduate degree in Human Communications from Arizona State University and his Master of Public Health degree from the University of Arizona. He earned his PhD in Sociology at Arizona State University.