B. Kim Barnes is the CEO of Barnes & Conti Associates, Inc., of Berkeley, California, an independent learning and organization development firm. She has had over 30 years of experience in the fields of management, leadership, and organization development, working in both internal and external roles in a broad range of industries.Kim is a frequent speaker at national and international professional conferences. Her articles have been published in professional journals in the U.S. and abroad.

She is the primary developer of leadership programs such as Exercising Influence, Constructive Negotiation, The Mastery of Change, Inspirational Leadership, Intelligent Risk-Taking, Creating a Culture for Risk and Innovation, C.O.A.C.H. for Peak Performance, Applied Creativity, The Art of Communication, and Leading Global and Virtual Teams, all of which are copyrighted programs of Barnes & Conti. She co-developed the popular program, Managing Innovation, Driving Ideas from Strategic Initiative to Value Creation along with Dr. David Francis, of the University of Brighton's Centre for Research in Innovation Management.

Kim's work has been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Danish, German, Hebrew, Thai, Korean, and Chinese. She was a contributor to the book, Profiles in Coaching: The 2004 Handbook of Best Practices in Leadership Coaching, published by Linkage Press. The second edition of her book, Exercising Influence: A Guide for Making Things Happen at Work, at Home, and in Your Community, was published by Pfeiffer/John Wiley in 2007. Her most recent business book, co-authored with Beverly Scott, is Consulting on the Inside: A Practical Guide for Internal Consultants, published in April of 2011 by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD). After completing this book, Kim was inspired to begin writing a tongue-in-cheek corporate mystery series with an internal organizational consultant, Sarah Hawthorne, as the protagonist. The first book of the series, Murder on the 33rd Floor, is being published in early 2012. Kim holds a master's degree in Human Development. Her clients include Abbott Laboratories, Cisco Systems, CitiGroup, the Haas Business School of the University of California, Medtronic, NetApp, San Francisco General Hospital, and the U.

S. Department of Energy, among many others. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.