Kara Carnahan
Vice President of Programs - Alameda, Napa & San Francisco Counties

Kara oversees housing and program operations in Alameda, Napa, and San Francisco counties, supporting director-level staff who have oversight of Abode’s teams on the ground. She is committed to program delivery that is low-barrier and serves the most vulnerable people in our communities. She is a staunch advocate for programs delivered, using the principles of housing first and harm reduction. Kara works to build and maintain key relationships with community partners and funders, develop new programs, and improve current program delivery systems.

Kara has been with Abode since 2004, after working more than 10 years managing programs and working with youth experiencing homelessness and/or with disabilities at Easter Seals of the Bay Area and Fred Finch Youth Center. For more than a decade at Abode, she had been Director of Health and Wellness while launching Project Welcome Home, the first Pay for Success program in California, Greater HOPE Full-Service Partnership, and THP+FC foster care placement program. Most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, she has led the agency's COVID response in Alameda County by leading her teams to stand up six Safer Ground hotel sites and three Isolation and Quarantine COVID positive sites, as well as designing and implementing the Project Roomkey Housing Transition program charged with housing more than 600 households at the hotel sites.

Kara holds a Bachelor's degree in psychology from California State University, East Bay. She proudly identifies as Hapa and enjoys her Filipino roots. She spends her spare time with her son and their rescue dog Rico, whom they adopted during the pandemic.