Kim Schneider-Malek

Kim Schneider Malek (MBA, FBA, FWA), is a second-generation family business consultant, speaker, and educator.  The 2014 recipient of the Family Firm Institute's Barbara Hollander Achievement Award for leadership and educational contribution to the field of family enterprise, she is the founder of Family Enterprise Continuity Alliance and Kischma Consulting. Since 1997, Kim has been advancing individuals, organizations, and multi-generational business, real estate, financial, and philanthropic family enterprises from over 50 countries, including Belgium, England, Poland, Germany, China, Mexico, Brazil, and Canada.  Through collaborative consulting, facilitating, teaching, mentoring, and speaking Kim focuses on:

• Continuity and Succession Planning
• Governance
• Next/Rising Generation Leadership
• Family Enterprise Advising
• Board/Family Governance
• Family Meetings
• Family Unity
• Retreat Facilitation
• Shared Decision-Making
• Entrepreneurship/Innovation
• Enterprising Cultures
• Conflict Management
• Collaborative Learning

Kim has been an adjunct faculty member, guest lecturer, and content expert for several professional associations and universities including, since 2001, the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business where she received the Diamond Award for Teaching Excellence. She has over 25-years of experience in training and educational speaking and a wide array of content and program design. She has developed and taught graduate and professional courses, plus custom workshops and plenaries in high performance management, family and enterprise succession, family enterprise consulting, group dynamics, leadership in governance, interpersonal communication, and public speaking.

A Family Firm Institute Fellow, Kim was a founding co-editor of The FFI Practitioner, an internationally-oriented online publication for family enterprise advisors.  She currently serves on the Family Business Review Executive Summary Advisory Board and is also a faculty member of FFI's Global Education Network.  She has served on the FFI Body of Knowledge committee and as faculty at the Business Enterprise Institute for Exit and Succession Planning. Kim has published several articles, authored a variety of white papers, and wrote monthly columns for nine-years for the Denver Business Journal. She has been an active participant in the "think tank" called Psychosocial Dynamics of Family and Business since 1997 and serves on the Governing Board of Collaboration for Family Flourishing.

Kim holds an M.B.A. from University of Denver, a B.S. in Communication from Boston University, and certificates in family therapy, family business advising, the family dynamics of wealth, group facilitation, and conflict management. She also attended Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Prior to entering this field, Kim spent over a decade in technology-based training, distance education, and corporate university programming. She transitioned industries following a three-month stint in Southeast Asia where she backpacked, taught English, and discovered a passion for working with enterprising families.

Active on several community and national governing boards and committees, Kim has chaired and presented at multiple 1,000+ person philanthropic events. A "40-Under-40" Denver leadership award recipient, Kim is a graduate of several year-long executive development programs including the Chamber's Leadership Denver and INFLUENCE.

Kim lives in Colorado with her husband, pre-teen daughter, twin sons, and giddy Golden Retriever, Maggy McPickles. Kim remains very close to the family of her Ethiopian medical foster son who was placed in her care by the Joint Distribution Committee's Dr. Rick Hodes, a 2007 finalist for CNN Heroes and the subject of both the award-winning HBO documentary, "Making the Crooked Straight" by Susan Cohn Rockefeller and the book, This Is A Soul, by Marilyn Berger.