Jeremy Hegle is a senior community development advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He leads the Bank’s digital equity efforts across the Tenth District.

His efforts to narrow the digital divide are focused on three strategies:

• Expanding access to affordable home broadband. Collaborating with state broadband directors, federal agencies, and local government on broadband deployment strategies and increased access through affordable internet programs.
• Increasing the supply of low-cost computers by encouraging employers to donate their used computers to nonprofit refurbishers, schools and community organizations.
  
• Informing banks, foundations, government and policymakers of the complex factors that cause the digital divide, the latest research on the topic, and creative solutions to fix it.

Jeremy joined the Kansas City Fed in 2015. Previously, he served in the Army National Guard and later helped launch SourceLink, a small-business support organization that links thousands of entrepreneurs with resources to start, grow and accelerate their businesses.

He has a bachelor’s in business administration and an M.B.A. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and serves on the board of Digitunity, a national organization that helps get computers to those who need them.

Highlights of his work include:

• Disconnected: Seven lessons on fixing the digital divide. A layperson’s overview of the digital divide, it offers a primer on broadband access, economic impact, and solutions communities can use to narrow the digital divide.
• Bringing Broadband to Rural America: The Role of Philanthropy
• Can we measure the benefits of broadband, about his remarks to Missouri legislators.

About the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up our nation's central bank. We work in the public’s interest by supporting economic and financial stability. The Kansas City Fed’s territory includes Colorado, Kansas, western Missouri, Nebraska, northern New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Our headquarters is in Kansas City, with branch offices in Denver, Omaha and Oklahoma City.