Howard Keim | Coach

Howard Keim is an Associate Certified Coach through the Kansas Leadership Center and the International Coach Federation. Clients include business, higher education and faith community.  He is a Senior Lecturer in Business at Bluffton University (OH), where he teaches graduate courses in leadership, management, strategy and ethics. During his tenure as President at Hesston College (2005-2016), the college recovered from a significant financial deficit, increased endowment, raised funds for $12 million in capital improvements, and developed new academic and athletic programs. 

Throughout his career, Howard has enjoyed interactions with executives in the business community.  He walked with agricultural and financial services people during the farm crisis years in Iowa, worked with business and nonprofit organizations to develop an internship program at Tabor College, and formed fruitful relationships with board members and donors at Hesston College.  Students in his courses at Bluffton University are professionals across business and nonprofit sectors.

Howard grew up working alongside his father and mother, owners and operators of a small dairy farm in the Thumb area of Michigan.  Here he learned responsibility, project management, cash flow, revenue streams, and dealing with environmental factors such as weather, markets and financing costs.  Formative experiences included taking on the chores of the entire farm for six weeks during his 8th grade year while his father recovered from surgery. 

Called to lead early in life, Howard served as president of his youth group, captain of the fast pitch softball team, president of the student body at Hesston College, and chosen by his peers to direct the Alpha Psi Omega theatre production at Central Michigan University. As a pastor in Iowa during the farm crisis years of the 1980s, Howard put his growing-up experience to good use as he walked with people who were carrying the weight of high interest and inflation rates, falling land prices and foreclosures on farms and businesses.  Since moving to Kansas in 1987, Howard has been a faculty member and administrator at Hesston and Tabor Colleges.  While at Tabor, he led the college to be the first private college to adopt the Academic Quality Improvement Program and became a facilitator for AQIP with the Higher Learning Commission.

Howard’s academic work is in communication studies with degrees from Hesston College, Central Michigan University and the University of Kansas. His Ph.D. dissertation in Organizational Communication consisted of in-depth case studies of four practicing leaders in the Wichita area.  Since leaving Hesston, Howard has turned his attention to teaching and leadership development. In his coaching and teaching he emphasizes the concepts of “foresight” from Robert Greenleaf and “purpose” as explained from Heifetz and Linsky and taught at the Kansas Leadership Center. He is especially interested in exploring the intersections of performance, spirituality and leadership.

Phone: 620.327.7399

Email: [email protected]