TOP 100 MAGAZINE

Megan Goddard

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Megan Goddard’s path to becoming CEO and co-founder of Kizuna began long before the company itself took shape. At just 16 years old, she developed a deep curiosity about the criminal justice system after witnessing the impacts of crime and recidivism on the people around her. What started as an academic interest quickly became a driving question: why did the systems designed to protect people so often fail everyone depending on them and what would it take to get them right?

 

Over the next decade, Megan immersed herself in the field, studying domestic and international justice models, leading prison and reentry programs, and eventually moving into the hiring and background screening industry. That combination gave her unusual insight into the problem from both sides of the table. She witnessed job seekers with criminal records struggling to gain a foothold and saw firsthand how employers struggled to turn complex record data into decisions they could stand behind. Background check reviews were designed to protect organizations, but too often relied on manual, subjective processes that slowed hiring, introduced legal risk, and caused companies to lose qualified talent at the final and most expensive stage of the process.

 

Determined to address this issue at scale, Megan moved into leadership roles that allowed her to influence systems more broadly. She oversaw product compliance and corporate social responsibility at Checkr, one of the nation’s leading background check providers, and advised large employers on their hiring and screening strategies at the Center for Employment Opportunities. These roles deepened her understanding of what organizations actually need: not just data, but efficient and reliable tools grounded in evidence that enable them to act with speed and confidence.

 

That discovery drove Megan to dig into the research and what she found exposed a critical gap between what the evidence showed and the assumptions that grounded real-world decision-making. Advances in criminology and labor economics have consistently demonstrated that factors like age, time since last conviction, and number of prior offenses are far more predictive of future conduct than the past conduct alone. Yet that evidence was rarely accessible or actionable for the compliance teams and hiring managers who needed it most.

 

In 2025, Megan co-founded Kizuna Solutions to bridge that gap. As a decision intelligence layer for background checks, Kizuna transforms complex records into clear, evidence-based signals that help businesses hire smarter and manage risk with confidence. Kizuna’s embeddable solution takes the guesswork out of every decision — applying policy automation, flagging relevant risks clearly, and keeping the process compliant. As CEO, Megan leads the company’s vision, business development, and product design, drawing on both her deep technical expertise and real-world implementation experience.

 

At its core, Kizuna reflects Megan’s vision for a smarter screening system that’s built on trust from both sides of the table. By giving organizations the tools they need to make evidence-based, defensible decisions, she is working to establish Kizuna as the authority businesses rely on when conducting high-stakes risk assessments. For Megan, the work is not just about improving hiring processes—it is about reshaping opportunity itself so organizations can manage risk without losing great candidates.

 

 

Megan Goddard
CEO/Co-Founder
Kizuna Solutions Inc.
Website: https://www.kizuna.solutions

LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megangoddard