Karen Walch

Dr. Karen S. Walch is a Partner at Clair-Buoyant ™ Leadership and coauthor of best seller Quantum Negotiation: The Art of Getting What You Need®. She is an Emeritus faculty at Thunderbird School of Global Management, Phoenix, AZ. Karen’s research and coaching specialization is in social interaction skills of negotiation, collaboration, partnership, and inclusion. Her facilitation and coaching are focused on developing partnership mindsets and behaviors for maximum personal, organizational and social impact.

Karen served on the research team for the Thunderbird Global Mindset Project; the Bertelsmann Foundation Corporate Cultures Project; and the National Academy of Science Neuroscience research team. Karen has also authored 2 other books, Seize the Sky: 9 Secrets of Negotiation Power and The Power of Understanding: Achieving Buoyancy for Negotiation Impact, and co-authored Maximizing Business Results with the Strategic Performance Framework: The Cultural Orientations Guide. She is a contributor to a series of ClairBuoyant™ Leadership white papers on the impact of disruption on organizations and partnerships. Her focus is on how to nurture and accelerate our human capacity for creativity and engagement under disruption and uncertainty.

Karen’s program design and presentations for leadership and negotiation in class, online, and certification curriculum are highly rated in MBA and global executive education courses in over 40 countries, including Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Israel, Russia, France, and South Korea. As a facilitator and coach, Karen’s learning method addresses both the dynamic between the structural and external forces of disruption AND the disturbance to the collective and human nervous system and relationships under accelerating change.

As an educator and practitioner, she has witnessed how engaged individuals and teams can elevate from what's often thought to be impossible to significant measurable social results. Even in the most disruptive situations, participants have been able to create more meaningful and successful outcomes through mindful and powerful negotiation and collaboration preparation and debriefing. She has worked with clients and coachees in non-profit, global energy, manufacturing, telecom, and a variety of service and consumer products industries, including: Project Artemis, LG, SABIC, Exxon Mobil, Arison Investments, Islamic Development Bank, Kamehameha Schools, Merck, Indonesia Telcom, Northrop Grumman, Xylem, GE, Intel, and WWL – Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics. Past participants appreciate the level of expertise combined with both practical and academic knowledge, patience, and excellent teaching skills which make her well suited for the structural and personal commitment it takes to transform business models, relationships, and organizational culture.

Karen received a Ph.D. in international political economy and conflict resolution at the University of Wisconsin while working in business, political, and legal settings. She is a member of the International Coaching Federation and the International Applied Improv Network to learn more about improvisation and creativity in uncertain and unpredictable organizational settings.