Kim Zentz loves a challenge.


Zentz has been at the helm of Sirti, a Washington state economic-development agency that assists technology startups here, for the past three years after taking the post when the agency was in the midst of a tumultuous evolution and expansion.


Over the past three years, Zentz has overseen Sirti as it has more than tripled its leasable technology space, has created a multimillion-dollar loan fund, and has launched a collaborative effort called BizNet with Gonzaga Law School and Spokane-area lawyers to help local tech companies obtain patents for their inventions and innovations.


Her role at Sirti is one of a number of professional challenges Zentz has taken on during her career.


Zentz, who was educated as a civil engineer, says she has a passion for technology and that her position at Sirti is right up her alley.


You couldnt ask for a better position than one where you get to help people pursue their wildest dreams, she says.


Currently, Sirti boasts a 68.4 percent 10-year survival rate for its clients, among both off-site clients that utilize its consulting services and clients that lease space in one of its two buildings in the University District near downtown Spokane. In the first year of the BizNet program, 77 Sirti clients filed invention disclosure paperwork or patent applications.


Currently, Sirti is seeking about $400,000 in state funding to develop further its bootstrap financing program, through which it teaches entrepreneurs to invest some of their own capital to finance their companies themselves one order at a time, reducing the amount of debt they have to take on.


Its also seeking what Zentz calls pre-seed capital to grant entrepreneurs up to $40,000 to get their products or services ready for market by, for example, creating prototypes from their designs.


As if the challenges of her job as executive director of Sirti werent enough, Zentz serves on numerous community, technical, and charitable boards.


In her spare time, she likes to fly-fish and cook gourmet cuisine with her husband and three teenage children.


Before joining Sirti, Zentz oversaw the Spokane Transit Authority as it regrouped after Initiative 695 took a bite out of state transportation funding, but she spent the majority of her career at Spokane-based Avista Corp. and its spinoff she helped launch, the former Avista Labs (now ReliOn Inc.).


Armed with a bachelors degree in civil engineering from the University of Idaho, Zentz started her career as a design engineer for Avista in 1987. Throughout her 16-year career with Avista and Avista Labs, she worked in every business line Avista has, beginning in the electrical engineering department and migrating to its generating projects, then regulatory matters.


Never one to do just one thing at a time, Zentz also obtained her masters of engineering management at Washington State Universitys Spokane campus while working full time at Avista. She also met her husband, electrical engineer Robert Pierce, at Avista.


For a time, Zentz was manager of engineering at Avista, a position that evolved, making her director of gas and electric technical services, including corporate research and development.


Zentz says that through her research-and-development role, she became interested in hydrogen fuel cells. She helped launch Avista Labs and was its president and COO until it reached a pivotal point at which it considered a public stock offering, then pursued private partnerships and other financing, resulting in a need to change from a leadership structure designed for a public company to one that would be private.


At that time, Zentz says she decided to take some time to figure out what she wanted to do next.


She says that on the same day she received a call encouraging her to apply for a position as CEO of Spokane Transit Authority, she had looked in the mirror and realized that what she really liked was problem-solving and a lot of challenges.


She says that post was a challenge, as she was charged with helping restore public confidence in the agency and deal with massive state funding cuts. She held that position from 2003 to 2005.


Zentz says she pursued the opportunity at Sirti three years ago because she had been involved with Sirti through her work with Avista Labs and had a sense of the direction in which she thought Sirti should move as it ended its life as a grant-making organization under a federal program.


I seem to be drawn to the types of problems where youve got good people, but youre short of time or money, she says.


Zentz says Sirti had yet to find the right business model after its grant money from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ran out in 2000, and she believed it needed to have more people who had been involved in technology companies on its staff and board of directors. Sirti had begun a management reorganization before she came on board, and she has helped guide it in that direction.


Zentz says she also believed it was important, as Sirti shifted its focus, to measure its results. The agency has now completed its third year of measuring how companies assisted by Sirti fare.


She satisfies her need for variety in part through membership on a number of boards. Since January, she has co-chaired, with Idaho state Sen. John Goedde, the Inland Pacific Hub, an organization that is conducting an inventory of transportation benefits to support economic development in an area between the Canadian border; Lewiston, Idaho; Ritzville, Wash.; and the border of Western Montana.


Zentz also recently completed an 18-month stint as chairwoman of the United Way of Spokane County executive board. She had been a member of the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce board and now is on the board of Greater Spokane Incorporated. She recently joined the Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership board, at Gonzaga University, and the Washington Technology Center board, connections she says directly benefit Sirti.


Zentz says shes not sure what shell be doing in five years, but for now, her position at Sirti is satisfying her desire for variety, and shes looking forward to helping the agency continue to grow.


One thing that keeps me here is the constant variety, but I always get the most excited about the people I work with, Zentz says.


She says she anticipates that with the pressures the economy faces, Sirti will see more startups. She says Sirti has its eye on developing more Web-based course materials and meetings to help it reach more clients, and shes looking forward to the challenges that will bring, too.