Karen Tucker Thomas, CAE, President of KST Consulting, LLC (KST) brings you over 30 years of association management and leadership experience. Karen has nearly 10 years of leadership experience as a CEO of small to mid-sized not-for-profits.  As a Certified Association Executive, she has 15+ years experience in senior management positions in association management with large state and national associations including three years as Deputy Executive Director of a 200+ staff, $25M professional association.

Thomas founded KST Consulting, LLC in 2007 to provide strategic planning consultation, platform keynotes and workshop presentations, organizational development, team building, executive coaching, group facilitations, conflict resolution, and leadership development services to not-for-profit organizations. Thomas has achieved international recognition for effectively meeting the needs of her clients in times of challenge and opportunity in a dynamic environment. KST enjoys over a 65% repeat rate of business with first-time clients within the first year of serving them.

In consulting and coaching, KST’s work has included:

  • Facilitating and guiding development of strategic plans with success measures
  • Facilitating conflict resolution sessions between boards
  • Facilitating consensus decisions around a controversial medical issue for nomenclature and definition of a disease involving a variety of stakeholders including international representatives of physicians, patient advocates and other health care practitioners
  • Designing and facilitating team building and training sessions for staff and volunteers, providing effective guidance in resolving long standing conflicts between contentious individuals around sensitive issues
  • Guiding organizational development including providing individual behavioral assessments, 360 evaluations, and leadership coaching for CEO and senior executives
  • Coaching board leaders and staff through an executive termination and transition to an Interim Executive
  • Delivering keynotes to annual conferences and designing/ facilitating workshops on  ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership’s 7 Measures of Success: What Remarkable Associations Do That Others Don’t
  • Keynoting annual conferences and workshops on a variety of topics covering association management and leadership issues including Work/Life Balance: How to Reduce the Stress in Your Life, Dealing with Difficult People, Building Effective Boards, Effective Communication, and Emotional Quotient.
  • Facilitating Principles of Financial Management, Principles of Component Relations, Principles of Association Management and The Compelling Leader as faculty for ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership’s online courses
  • Publishing a variety of articles on association management issues
  • Designing and delivering two webinars on governance and one on effective teams for RSM McGladrey’s clients

Thomas has a Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA) from the University of Missouri—Kansas City, has been listed in Who’s Who in America, is a Certified Association Executive (CAE), and Fellow of ASAE.