Brenda Sharpe is President and CEO of the REACH Healthcare Foundation, serving in this capacity since 2004. With more than 30 years’ experience in the nonprofit sector, Sharpe enjoys using her skills to strengthen the leadership and governance capacity of organizations, institutions and systems to support resilient people and communities. Sharpe serves on the Board of Directors of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Overland Park Partnership. She previously served on the Board of Grantmakers in Health, a national organization dedicated to helping foundations and corporate giving programs improve the health of all people. She also served as a Trustee on the Board of Mosaic Life Care, a rural regional nonprofit health system, the United Way of Greater Kansas City and the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts. 

Brenda has accepted numerous appointments during her career, including a recent appointment to the Kansas State Board of Nursing. Other appointments include Healthy Kansans 2020 Steering Committee, Kansas Health Insurance Exchange Steering Committee and the Attorney General’s Crime Victims’ Rights and Human Trafficking Grants Review Boards. She has been recognized by the Kansas City Business Journal as one of the area’s Power 100 in 2015-19 and was included in that publication’s Women Who Mean Business Class of 2020. She appeared in Ingram’s Magazine’s 250 Most Powerful Business Leaders in Kansas City in 2016 and 2017, and was presented the Urban League’s Difference Maker Award for Leadership in Health Equity and Philanthropy in 2015.

In 2021, Sharpe served as an appointee to the Johnson County, KS, Charter Commission, charged with reviewing Johnson County Government operations and presenting recommendations to the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners. As co-chair of ForwardOP, she helped facilitate a community visioning process for Overland Park, KS, where she resides with her family.