Karen Brethower, Ph.D., Executive Consultant with The Advisory Alliance, has over 25 years of experience as a business-focused executive leadership consultant, with extensive experience in executive assessment, succession planning, talent management and C-suite executive coaching. She has been a consultant to executives, teams, and organizations making change in the face of industry restructuring, de-mutualization, divestiture, deregulation, and merger & acquisition.

Karen assists companies in clarifying their strategic options and projecting the talent needed to deliver against those options. Karen partners with executives in a variety of ways. Conducting Executive Assessments (Board-initiated and other) Designing and preparing Board presentations on Executive Talent Revitalizing and designing Executive Succession Planning Creating Talent Review/Management processes Analyzing strategic plans and deriving key talent issues.

Karen has facilitated successful organization changes in a variety of settings. Her organization effectiveness work has included:

- Conducting Board-initiated Executive Assessment of the internal CEO successor in recently merged company. Subsequently assessed top three layers of executives.

- Upgrading the Country Manager success rate via changes to candidate assessment, selection and placement for a global Fortune 500 company with predominantly domestic senior management.

- Created a post-divestiture process for Headquarters and Field units. Re-established "at risk" sales levels and customer service quality.

Karen has extensive experience in the manufacturing, marketing, pharmaceutical, finance, telecommunications, defense, energy and research industries.

She has held national offices in the American Society for Training and Development in the areas of research, evaluation, organization development and national issues. She has also been a member of the Training Research Forum, National Society for Performance and Instruction, Organization Development Network, Conference Board Development Council, Environmental Scanning Association and Human Resource Planning Society.

Karen holds a Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences from the University of Michigan. She also attended The University of Mexico and taught an executive development program in Mexico in Spanish. She has taught in numerous executive development programs and has been a keynote speaker in the U.S., Latin America and the Pacific Rim.