Kim Stephens

Dr. Kim Stephens is the founder of InclusiveThinking. Her desire is to share the expertise she learned developing IBM's diversity & inclusion strategy with other companies. Kim feels her entire career and life experiences have led up to her branching out on her own to share her knowledge about diversity and inclusion with others.

Kim was formerly the Global Diversity & Inclusion Communication and Education Lead for IBM. In this role, she developed and oversaw diversity learning programs to attract, retain and develop diverse talent. Kim developed and implemented the unconscious bias training used across IBM globally, translated into 10 languages and rolled out to 400K employees. In addition, she created the general diversity and inclusion education self-paced online module used by the entire company. Kim has spoken at conferences around the world and conducted workshops and webinars on unconscious bias, cultural awareness, women's leadership, accessibility, rare disease, and other topics.

Kim was also responsible for IBM's diversity and inclusion strategy and implementation of that strategy through Business Resource Groups, individual constituencies, internal communications, and externally through social media. Kim was the communications lead for the recently conducted Advancing Women at IBM Research Study and is the co-author of the study paper, Your Journey to Executive.

In her 20 years with IBM, Kim worked as a software engineer, accessibility advocate, technical writer, senior editor, senior communications manager and diversity leader. Kim spent 12 years in various global corporate communication roles in IBM. She has worked in executive, workforce, global delivery and HR communications. Kim worked a number of years in the IBM Accessibility Center and became a sought-after subject matter expert on Web accessibility. In this role, she spoke at conferences around the world on how to make Web pages accessible to people with disabilities.

Kim received her Doctorate of Business from Georgia State University. Her dissertation,

Managing Implicit Bias with Transformational Conversation: A Qualitative Field Study of Social Identity Theory, adds to the latest research on implicit bias and explores the role of social identity in behavior change. Kim graduated from Clemson University with a Master of Arts degree in Communication and holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Tennessee.

Kim first heard of Hunter Syndrome when her son Cole was diagnosed in 2012 at two and a half years old. Since that time, she has been focused on finding a cure for this disease. She frequently speaks as a rare disease advocate at conferences and events and serves as a mentor and resource for newly-diagnosed families.

Kim previously worked in the non-profit space as Director of Fundraising for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Prior to that she worked for IBM for 20 years in communications, product development for the IBM Accessibility Center, and most recently as the Diversity and Inclusion Communications and Education leader. She is the founder of Inclusive Thinking – a consulting company dedicated to increasing diversity and inclusion through research, education, and strategic planning. In addition, Kim is an Associate Professor at Lincoln Memorial University teaching management and leadership in the MBA program.

Kim received her Doctorate in Business from Georgia State University and focused her dissertation on implicit bias and the role of transformational conversation and social identity on behavioral change. Kim received her Master of Arts in Professional Communication from Clemson University and her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Tennessee.

Kim lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her husband Jeff, her older son Connor, Cole and a dog named Rosie. She enjoys running, swimming, cycling and playing outside with her boys.