Brent Lager Reflects on 11 Years as UKC President

When Brent Lager first started Uncover KC, he never could have anticipated how far it would take him. At the time, he was a sports reporter writing for numerous small papers. Despite receiving offers to write for others newspapers out of Kansas City, he always felt himself pulled back to his home city. 

All things considered, life was good. He had a steady income, his own place, friends, but something was missing for Lager. Led both by his faith and the desire to find a bit of purpose, he started volunteering, but was frustrated by the lack of options and barriers preventing potential volunteers from finding great nonprofits. This led him to start Uncover KC with his good friend, Lobdell, in 2013–and the rest is history. 

Today, the organization has a range of different programs oriented around civic engagement, but its core has never changed. 

“When we started this, we wanted to help people volunteer and make an impact the way that they wanted to,” says Lager. “I’m very proud that we’ve stuck to connecting people and helping them make the most of that connection since the beginning.” 

Over a decade later, Lager reflects on what has changed throughout UKC’s lifetime.

“I think I’ve gotten to a good point in my life where [Uncover KC] is not my everything,” says Lager. “It’s not what defines me anymore. If I was to move on or leave, it would still go forward with new people, and it’s just grown beyond me.” 

As the organization has continued to grow, it’s also given him a chance to step back and appreciate what got him to where he is now. He’s not just the founder and President of Uncover KC, but also a friend, an avid traveler, a husband, and someday, he hopes–a father. 

“What I’m probably the most proud of is my wife, who she is, the life we’ve built together over these last five or six years, and the family we’re hoping to start. I’m also proud of the time we have now with both our parents, our siblings, our nieces and nephews,” Lager says. 

He credits all these things–his wife, a supportive family, his faith–as allowing him to grow and change over the years. 

Even though UKC is expanding beyond him, the organization is still very much a product of Lager’s experiences, struggles, and values. Inclusion, community, good stewardship–these things run deep in UKC because that’s where it started. 

Throughout the years, there have been many achievements over the years as Uncover KC steadily grew. But that’s not to say Lager hasn’t encountered significant, severe challenges. 

“I suffer from acute manic depression that I had buried for years,” says Lager. “I just never really came to grips with that until I got older. And it wasn’t because I chose to. When I went full-time on Uncover, by our third year I was back to not having a job and relying on so many other people to help me kind of get by and survive,” he explains. 

“That stress really built up on me, and it started to kind of trigger all this emotional trauma and issues underneath the surface that I had either buried or ignored.” 

Things came to a head during UKC’s second year of existence, when a mental health crisis forced him to pause his nonprofit work. Up until that point, Lager had been telling himself that his nonprofit was his life’s purpose, the reason he was put on the Earth. For a while, that was enough to keep him going, but this breakdown made it clear that wouldn’t be enough. He took a step back from UKC for three months to work on his mental health. 

Even outside of his mental health, there’s still been many hoops he’s had to jump through over the years, whether in terms of fundraising, handling capacity, or building out UKC’s business operations into a set of processes. All presented challenges, and all required patience and a lot of learning, according to Lager.

Over the past 11 years, Lager’s experiences, both personal and professional, have changed him in many ways. His outlook is now more grounded in reality than lofty dreams—although his mind still has space for both. His time delegation skills have vastly improved and he’s accepted that he can’t be involved in every single task at UKC.

“It’s so easy just to want to have your hands in on everything and make sure it all works out as you envision in your mind. Very rarely does it happen that way– and you can’t do it alone,” says Lager. 

Most importantly, he sees failure differently than he did years ago. 

“Failure is not when something doesn’t work or something fails to happen. Failures make learning points and data, opportunities to grow. Maybe it’s your opportunity to decide, ‘Hey, this is not something that’s going to work out.’ But at least you know that now because you tried.“

“So failure to me—it’s just not trying,” says Lager. 

Reflecting back on his career with UKC, Lager is most grateful for the supportive and kind people who have helped him in his professional and personal life over the years. 

“What I do wouldn’t be possible without all of the great people in my life. I think that’s what makes my life and Uncover KC so special.”