Seul (Kathy) Ku

About Seul (Kathy) Ku

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Seul (Kathy) Ku immigrated with her family to the Chicago suburbs at age three. Growing up, she attended a high school with a predominantly low-income student population speaking more than sixty languages, where a free clinic in its basement sparked her early interest in delivering essential resources to underserved communities.

At Harvard University, Kathy earned her AB in Molecular and Cellular Biology alongside an SM in Engineering Sciences. During her first summer break, she traveled to Uganda to teach a health course at an all‑girls academy serving pregnant mothers. While living with a host family frequently afflicted by waterborne illness, she became motivated to design an affordable, effective, and socially acceptable water filter. She paused her studies to co‑found SPOUTS of Water, a local manufacturer of ceramic water filters. To gain operational and strategic insight, she also interned at McKinsey & Company and the Boston Consulting Group.

Upon completing her degrees at Harvard, Kathy relocated to Uganda full time for three years to scale SPOUTS. Today, SPOUTS has provided clean drinking water to more than 1 million people and employs more than 200 staff members.

She then pursued her MD and MBA at Stanford, where she managed a student-run free health clinic and led cost-effectiveness research to optimize care delivery.

Today, she is a Venture Partner at Sazze Partners, an early stage fund focused on investing in the Korean diaspora. She is also a Partner at Ren Capital, focused on investing in growth stage healthcare companies. Outside of investing, Kathy continues to serve as President of SPOUTS Impact, the nonprofit arm of SPOUTS of Water. Over the course of her career, she has been honored with awards including the Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellowship and Takeda Young Entrepreneurship Award, and has been featured by National Geographic’s Chasing Genius.

Kathy lives in Menlo Park with her husband, two daughters, and her parents, who still keep her well supplied with Korean food.