I am the founder and CEO of KS Insight, a leadership consultancy advising senior leaders in high-stakes contexts. I founded the Women Igniting Leadership Lab, a B2C cohort program where individual women leaders develop the practice of leading from where they sit. I am an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where I teach leadership in high-stakes environments.
I am writing a book — Manager to Leader — drawn from twenty years of practice and from the curriculum I have developed and taught at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, the United Nations, and KAUST.
How I got here
I trained as a lawyer and mediator and spent the first part of my career working in international conflict resolution — in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Ecuador, Haiti, and at the United Nations. I worked with the U.S. Department of State, the World Bank, and the Clinton Global Initiative. I have a doctorate in law from Oxford and a master’s in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School.
My parents left South Africa when I was young, refusing to be part of a political system they found unconscionable. We grew up in France, poor, outsiders. Then moved to Australia without connections, without networks, without any of the social infrastructure that makes career paths smooth. I was shy, conflict averse, uncertain of my role. What I had was a willingness to learn fast, an environment that demanded adaptation, and mentors who saw potential and invested in it. Every capacity I have as a leader was built.
I changed careers from peace mediator to leadership consultant after watching a pattern repeat — across diplomatic teams, government agencies, corporate boardrooms, scientific institutions, and humanitarian missions. Smart, capable people thrust into leadership roles they had no training for. Failing at the human side of the work in ways no professional credential prepared them to address. Carrying the cost privately. The work I do now exists to close that gap.
What I work on
KS Insight works with senior leadership teams on the structural changes that the standard interventions — coaching, offsites, comp plans, restructures — cannot reach. The clients are CEOs, CHROs, boards, and senior teams in finance, technology, scientific research, government, healthcare, and global development. The frame is Insight 4D and the Four Authority Functions. The unit of work is whatever shift will make the team’s next quarter different.
The Women Igniting Leadership Lab applies the same frameworks to the specific conditions women leaders operate in — asymmetric scrutiny, the narrower band of acceptable behavior, the double binds that show up for women in high-stakes moments with a force that male peers rarely encounter. The cohort programs run quarterly.
I am also partnering with the Clinton Foundation to launch the Hillary Rodham Clinton Women’s Leadership Program, a selective fellowship for senior women across democracy, national security, technology, and finance.
What this newsletter is
A working notebook. Every Tuesday. The essays draw on what I am learning right now from KSI engagements, WILL Lab cohorts, the Columbia classroom, the conflict zones where I learned the work the hard way, and the rooms where I have failed since.
If you want to subscribe, the answer is yes. If you want to talk about a specific situation, reply to any newsletter email. I read every one.
— Kirsti
