Karl Sommers

Thriving, growing organizations making a positive difference in the world.

Karl Sommers is a governance and leadership coach, strategic thinker, and change facilitator who became a Principal in the Haines Centre for Strategic Management in the spring of 2010. He has devoted a large share of his career to helping organizations combine their beliefs and values with state of the art business practices. He specializes in consulting and training for business and nonprofit organizations, focusing on improving board governance and strategic management systems. With over 20 years of experience in working with strategic planning and change initiatives, he highly values the Systems Thinking Approach® as a framework that leads organizations to a successful future. In 2009 Karl formed a consulting company to devote full time practice in these areas.

Prior to 2009, Karl had a 35 year affiliation with Mennonite Mutual Aid (MMA), a nationwide US organization serving members of Anabaptist congregations, institutions, and related businesses. MMA provided insurance, financial services and a variety of charitable and educational programs. As Vice President of Planning, Karl’s responsibilities included:

• providing consulting for church related organizations, focused primarily on improving leadership and governance systems
• leading strategic planning activities throughout MMA
• handling government relations functions at both the state and federal levels as well as providing oversight of corporate legal and compliance functions
• providing leadership for a major healthcare access initiative of Mennonite Church USA to build healthcare models and resources to help the church put their beliefs into action.

Karl has experience working with healthcare from a public policy systems perspective. Informed by his actuarial credentials, he has worked with insurers, healthcare providers, employers, and government to deal with health insurance financial challenges and healthcare reform issues.

From 1997 through 2002, Karl played a significant consulting role in the formation of Mennonite Church USA, a merger of two large Mennonite denominations.  Responsibilities included creating the project plan, developing the organizational strategy blueprint for the new church, and managing the legal work.  Through this project, Karl served as a consultant and coach to develop skills in leadership and governance systems as entities were formed into new accountability relationships.  This work led to serving as a consultant to various institutions within Mennonite Church USA in their quest to implement the Policy Governance® modelⁱ.

Karl has years of experience in managing government relations activities.  He has led several legislative initiatives resulting in the adoption of provisions enabling fraternal benefit societies to work more effectively with health insurance and pension plans.

Karl’s early training and experience was in education.  He taught math in high school and served as a business analyst in a mortgage banking firm prior to joining MMA.  He became qualified as an actuary, and over the years led many new product development projects for insurance and financial services products.

Formal Education:

• Completed Gold Mastery Certification in Strategic Management, Haines Centre for Strategic Management, January 2010
• Facilitation Training Workshops in 2009:
  • The Effective Facilitator, Leadership Strategies, November 2009
  • Principles of Graphic Facilitation, The Grove, October 2009
• Policy Governance® Academy graduate, April, 2001
• Various industry seminars on strategic and scenario planning 1985 through 2006
• Post-graduate study in Actuarial Science, University of Michigan, 1981-82
• MS, Mathematics, Purdue University, 1971
• BA, Mathematics, Goshen College, Goshen, IN 1968

Professional Memberships:

• International Policy Governance Association
• Society of Actuaries
• American Academy of Actuaries
• World Future Society

References – Available upon Request

ⁱ Policy Governance is the registered service mark of John Carver.  The authoritative website for the Policy Governance® model can be found at www.carvergovernance.com.