Mike Tikkanen

Mike Tikkanen is the founder of Kids At Risk Action. In 1996, he was sworn in as a Hennepin County court-appointed CASA volunteer guardian ad litem, a role he held through 2012.

In 2000, Mike co-founded invisiblechildren.org with fellow CASA volunteer guardian ad litem David Strand, together with Bob Olson, Larry Walker, and Joe McCarthy. In 2005 he published Invisible Children, described as “an uncomfortably close look at the American cycle of abuse and its cost.” KARA received IRS 501(c)(3) certification in 2007.

Mike became a founding board member of CASAMN in 2010, and a founding board member of Friends of Children (with David Strand) in 2013.

“The premise is narrow and unforgiving: state child welfare systems are already measured by federal law, the measurements are public, and almost no one reads them. We read them, publish them with their gaps labeled, and keep two decades of reporting available without exposing a single child to being found by name.”

Source: KARA SIGNAL’s About page and history record, see kara-signal.netlify.app/about.