Dean Yannis C. Yortsos, Kathy “Coach” Kemper and Jim Valentine, her late husband. Kemper and Valentine cofounded CS@SC. (Photo/Courtesy of Kathy “Coach” Kemper)
Kathy “Coach” Kemper remembers the conversation well.
Kemper – the former coach of Georgetown University’s women’s tennis team; founder of the Institute for Education, or IFE; and one of most connected people in Washington D.C. through her tireless nonprofit work and private tennis lessons to some of the capital’s biggest power brokers – was talking to Megan Smith, then chief technology officer of the United States. Smith told Kemper that by enlarging the talent pool, the country would benefit from more young women and minorities in STEM.
Listening with rapt attention, Kemper agreed. She decided to do something about it.
Known affectionately as “Coach,” Kemper had long committed herself to helping people realize their potential, whether on the tennis court or in the classroom. More than most people, Kemper also believed in the power of technology to make the world a better place. Around the same time as her conversation with CTO Smith, Kemper’s Institute for Education had just begun to include tech leaders in its mission of bringing together politicians, businesspeople, ambassadors and journalists to find common ground and learn from one another.
Kemper wasted no time.
She began reaching out to university presidents she had privately coached to gauge their interest in creating a coding camp for under-resourced and other children. First up was then Harvard President Larry Summers, former secretary of the treasury. He liked the idea but asked for time to “run it up the ladder.” Kemper received similar responses from then Georgetown President Jack DeGioia and from Donna Shalala, University of Miami’s president at the time and former secretary of health and human services.
“They all said, pretty much the same thing, which was wait and see in essence,” Kemper said.
Slightly dejected but not defeated, she pressed on. A friend suggested Kemper try USC, which she knew well because she had sent her two daughters there. A few days later, Kemper shared her vision for a coding camp with USC Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos. Within a week, she, her late husband Jim Valentine, and USC Viterbi had reached an agreement on what would become CS@SC, with the Institute for Education providing much of the funding and Coach Kemper sharing her insights and enthusiasm, which she continues to do to this day.
“That experience just reinforced everything I believe about SC, about how amazing it is, how scrappy and entrepreneurial it is, and how they just get things done,” Kemper said.
“A crown jewel”
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, CS@SC provides campers with an early education in computer science, engineering and applied physical science, including coding, app development and robotics.
CS@SC Director Darin Gray (Photo/Courtesy of Darin Gray)
“CS@SC is a crown jewel of our K-12 programs,” said CS@SC Director Darin Gray, who also leads the USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center. “Coach K is a force multiplier for uplifting people.”
Launched in 2015 in conjunction with former USC Viterbi Professor Jeffrey Miller – the program’s first director – CS@SC has educated more than 10,000 K-12 students from across Los Angeles. Thanks to the generous donation made through Kemper’s Institute for Education, about 90% of camp attendees receive full or partial scholarships, making elite high-tech education widely accessible. Most of the learning takes place in one- to two-week summer sessions on the USC campus, giving participants access to the university’s faculty, students and facilities.
CS@SC, like technology itself, continuously evolves and improves, Gray said. In 2021, Kemper, in honor of her late husband, established the Jim Valentine Scholarship, which annually awards 13 fellowships worth $3,000 apiece to the top summer campers. A couple years ago, CS@SC added AI education at the behest of Kemper, who regularly stays in touch with Gray over Zoom.
“CS@SC helps [campers] with computational thinking, in being able to analyze a problem, and adds to their ability to think,” Gray said.
Said Kemper: “I think CS@SC is such an exciting program because we show young people that it’s not just reading, writing and arithmetic anymore. It’s reading, writing, arithmetic and algorithms. And [we’re] giving them a foothold on the ladder of social and economic mobility.”
CS@SC has inspired many camp alumni to study math and engineering at USC and other topflight universities. Taking classes at USC, Gray said, makes participants feel like a part of “the Trojan family,” and, in the process, demystifies higher education. “I think that CS@SC helps them to think about themselves as college students,” he said.
Such is the case with Janessa Techathamawong.
The sophomore USC Viterbi computer science major started attending CS@SC as a fifth grader and went every summer through her second year at Eagle Rock High, a low-income school. At camp, she learned how to code in Scratch, Java and Python and mastered web development with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. “The camp made programming feel both fun and accessible, which left a lasting impression on me,” she said.
Techathamawong enjoyed the camaraderie with fellow campers, the high-quality teaching and the ambiance of the USC campus. She said CS@SC literally changed the trajectory of her life.
“The experience motivated me to keep exploring STEM throughout middle and high school and is a big reason why I am currently pursuing computer science at USC,” Techathamawong said. “It showed me how creative and rewarding problem-solving could be.”
She so enjoyed CS@SC that she went back to camp as an adult, this time as a student instructor. “It’s incredible that younger students today are developing the same passion for STEM that I did all those years ago through the program,” Techathamawong said.
CS@SC campers on the USC campus in summer 2025 (Photo/Courtesy of Darin Gray)
Looking forward, Gray said he wants CS@SC to offer certifications in AI and cybersecurity to deepen campers’ technical knowledge and improve their job and academic prospects.
He credits two people for making all this possible.
“Without Coach K and her husband and their vision, this premier program, CS@SC, wouldn’t exist,” Gray said.
From Chicago to the Capital
Coach Kemper grew up in Northfield, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. From her father, a city of Chicago tennis champion, she inherited her grit, drive and determination. Those traits, along with her natural athletic gifts and competitive fire, separated Kemper from peers at an early age. She even played tackle football with boys from first grade to fifth grade, starring as quarterback. Her father, the team’s volunteer coach, eventually made her quit, much to Kemper’s dismay.
“He said, ‘I think they might be tackling and getting [handsy] with you for other reasons.’ I kind of got it,” she said. “I ended up becoming an elementary school cheerleader.”
At 10, Kemper picked up a tennis racket and hasn’t put it down since. In 1971, she went to Marymount College in Boca Raton, Florida, on a tennis scholarship. She turned pro a year later, eventually playing in the U.S. Open, Wimbledon and the French Open. After her professional career, she decided to move to Washington D.C. to find work.
That decision changed her life.
In the nation’s capital, Kemper landed a job as a junior tennis coach at “fancy” Chevy Chase Country Club. She gave lessons three times a week to Nina Auchincloss, Jackie Kennedy’s stepsister and close friend. Auchincloss, fond of her young coach, invited Kemper to one of her famed dinner parties, seating her next tennis lovers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Larry Pressler, respectively President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and a senator from South Dakota. They both soon took private lessons from Kemper.
“I always make a joke that if I had been sitting next to pro football players or pro basketball players, then I would have probably become the tennis coach to all the athletes in Washington,” said Kemper, noting that Sen. Pressler later introduced her to Valentine, her future husband, and is godparent to their daughters. “But those two were politicians, and so I became the tennis coach to all the politicians.”
And to Supreme Court justices, kings, queens, movie stars, ambassadors and elite TV and newspaper reporters.
An entrepreneur at heart, Kemper served as head pro at several area clubs and had 50 junior tennis coaches running programs for her. Kemper won legions of fans with her blunt but empathic coaching style, never shying away from constructive criticism while boosting her students’ confidence and skills.
In 1978, she became coach of Georgetown’s women’s tennis team, which was starved for resources and had long existed in the shadow of the men’s program.
Kemper immediately set out to change the culture and, in her words, “level the playing field.” She leveraged her professional experience to bring out the best in her players and to recruit blue-chip prospects.
Ever the innovator, Kemper started holding star-studded fundraisers that raised the profile of the Hoya women and filled the program’s coffers. “We invited big shots to play doubles with the women on my team,” said Kemper of the annual Women At The Net events. Participants included Secretary of State George Shultz, Judge William Webster, FBI and later CIA director, Treasury Secretary James Baker, several Republican and Democratic senators and humorist Art Buchwald, among others. Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, sponsored the events.
Kemper generated enough money to begin offering players athletic scholarships. Under her direction, former cellar-dweller Georgetown won a Big East championship and became a national power. Kemper, as she would do decades later with CS@SC, had used philanthropy as a force for good.
“Bringing out the best in people, helping them reach their potential, I guess that’s what motivates me,” she said.
Kelsey Kemper Valentine (B.A. ’13) and her mother, Kathy “Coach” Kemper (Photo/Courtesy of Kathy “Coach” Kemper)
Connector-in-chief
After Kemper left her coaching position at Georgetown in 1990, her husband, Valentine, an investment banker, asked his wife if she could introduce him and his finance colleagues to some of her high-powered political friends for an off-the-record conversation. The goal: share ideas and information in an informal setting to learn from one another and bridge differences.
Soon thereafter, Les Aspin, one of Kemper’s tennis students and future secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, came to her house to converse with Valentine and his business friends over breakfast. From those humble beginnings, the Institute for Education was born.
Founded in 1992 by Kemper and Valentine, the nonprofit has promoted education and bipartisan dialogue ever since. Invitations to IFE breakfasts and lectures have become one of Washington’s hottest tickets. Famous guests and speakers have included CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Hillary Rodham Clinton. No wonder U.S. News once dubbed Kemper the capital’s “Networker-in-Chief.”
“However bad the shape of the world is, it’s better than it would’ve been without her,” said former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer – one of Kemper’s tennis students –at an IFE event.
The thousands of campers who have attended CS@SC over the past decade would undoubtedly agree with Breyer, as does Dean Yortsos.
“Coach Kemper understands deeply and intuitively the importance of our kids acquiring digital literacy early and regardless of their background or economic status,” he said. “In a world where technology and society are intertwined as never before, to learn how to reap the benefits of technology while keeping humanity at the core of our actions has been her guiding light and vision.”
Published on November 10th, 2025
Last updated on November 10th, 2025
