Michael L. Venn, Ph.D. is a founding Partner of Tradewinds Consulting, LLC. He has more than twenty years experience as a consultant, leader, and educator. Before co-founding Tradewinds Consulting, LLC he was responsible for leadership development as the Director of Organizational Development at Kohler Co. and Director of the Amoco Management Learning Center at Amoco Corporation. He has consulted to numerous Fortune 500, smaller publicly and privately held companies, and government agencies. Mike's areas of interest and expertise are leadership development, strategy formulation and execution, change acceleration, assessment, organization development, facilitation, and training.

Dr. Venn’s work with the Manitowoc Company led to Tradewinds Consulting, LLC receiving a prestigious Excellence in Practice Citation from the American Society for Training and Development. Mike has presented and taught globally on the topics of leadership, change management, motivation, performance management, and the use of continuous improvement tools for planning and management. Mike is the co-author of The Manager as Leader (2006, Praeger Publishing).He also contributed a chapter to the book In Action: Conducting Needs Assessment (1995, American Society for Training and Development).

Mike earned his Ph.D. with an emphasis in computer-based training and testing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also earned a Masters in Jazz Pedagogy from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and a B.S. in Music Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


B. Keith Simerson, Ed.D. is a founding Partner of Tradewinds Consulting, LLC. He has two decades of experience working for and consulting to large corporations, privately held companies, professional services firms, and government agencies. B.K.’s areas of interest and expertise are leadership development, change enablement, strategy formulation and execution, strategic HR management, and organization development.

Dr. Simerson’s work with the Manitowoc Company led to Tradewinds Consulting, LLC receiving a prestigious Excellence in Practice Citation from the American Society for Training and Development. B.K. has been a frequent presenter at conferences and seminars, has contributed materials to various journals and periodicals, and was the lead author of the book Evaluating Police Management Development Programs and the book on career transitions, Fired, Laid Off, Out of a Job: A Manual for Understanding, Coping, Surviving. B.K. is also co-author of The Manager as Leader.

B.K. earned his Ed.D. with emphasis in management and organization development from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He earned an MA with emphasis in administration, supervision, and higher education, from Appalachian State University. He also possesses BA and AAS degrees and specialty certifications.