Michael Van Keulen has spent more than 30 years working inside Minnesota’s schools, public systems, and healthcare partnerships, not around them. Long before Open Path Resources existed as an organization, he was already doing the work: sitting with families, listening to what they needed, and building the kind of trust that takes decades, not quarters, to earn.
That work led him into a 24-year partnership with Imam Sharif A. Mohamed. In 2012, the community they’d both been serving asked them to formalize that partnership into an organization. Michael has co-led OPR ever since.
He’s also a published researcher and fellow at the University of Minnesota, the same rigor that goes into his academic writing goes into how OPR designs and evaluates everything it builds.
Michael didn't learn education systems, healthcare partnerships, or community-based research from a textbook. He learned them by sitting in enough rooms, at enough tables, for long enough that the skills became necessity, not theory. What that's built into:
- Education systems leadership
- Public and healthcare partnership development
- Community-based research design
- Cross-cultural relationship building
- Organizational co-founding and long-term strategy
- Co-Founder, Open Path Resources (formalized 2012, following a 24-year partnership with Imam Sharif A. Mohamed)
- Fellow, University of Minnesota
His research doesn't sit in a drawer. It shapes how OPR actually builds its programs, and it's shown up in print:
- Publication: Van Keulen, M., Meuers, A., Mohamed, S., Diri, W., & Wegner, M. “Fostering Identity and Civic Engagement Among Muslim Youths.” In Discourses of Human Rights Education (Springer, 2025)
- Organizational leadership: co-founded and has co-led Open Path Resources for 24 years, since its formal launch in 2012
Where This Work Has Traveled
From a research chapter to statewide recognition.
Michael’s research has been published in peer-reviewed academic work, and the organization he’s spent 24 years building has been covered by outlets including the Star Tribune and Sahan Journal, and recognized with the Minnesota Hospital Association’s Innovation in Healthcare of the Year Award. Want to see how far it’s gone?
