About me
The Official Bio:
Kirsti Samuels is the founder and CEO of KS Insight, a leadership and strategy consultancy based in New York City. She also served as the Executive Director of the Adaptive Leadership Network in its start-up years, and is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, where she teaches Leadership in Action, Leading and Managing in Moments of Adversity and Opportunity, and Managing Yourself as a Leader: Skills and Practices for High Stakes Moments to Master’s students at the School of International and Public Affairs. Kirsti specialized in tackling complex problems with innovative approaches, and her work has spanned executive teams, senior country leadership, and even armed rebel groups. Kirsti holds a Doctorate in Law from Oxford University, a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Bachelor of Science and Law from Sydney University.
In my words;
I am a leadership strategist, educator, and founder of a NYC-based firm that works with leaders in high-pressure environments. For more than 25 years I’ve worked in places where leadership is not an abstract concept, conflict and post-conflict settings, global boardrooms, and state legislatures, helping senior teams stay steady, see clearly, and navigate the real dynamics shaping the moment.
My work starts from a simple premise: in hard moments, technical expertise isn’t enough. Leaders need the ability to interpret what’s actually happening around them, the system pressures, the competing truths, the tensions no one wants to name. They need to hold their nerve long enough to make sense of ambiguity, rather than react to it. When they can do that, teams stop spiraling and start moving with purpose instead of panic.
Through KS Insight and the Women Igniting Leadership Lab, I partner with executives and teams through tailored programs, coaching, and immersive learning. The work is practical and grounded in reality. We build the capacities leaders need in the situations they actually face, judgment, presence, system-awareness, and the ability to act without collapsing complexity into easy answers. We also cultivate peer networks so leaders can sharpen their thinking alongside others who are carrying equally complex challenges.
The through-line in all of this is straightforward: helping leaders become a steadier, clearer force inside the systems they lead. When they can do that, the work around them shifts, not just because they choose differently, but because they see differently.
What do you do and why do you do it?
What I do now is a direct extension of what drew me into the hardest work of my early career: the places where leadership is the hinge. I’ve worked in environments where the difference between progress and collapse wasn’t resources or strategy, it was whether the leader could read the system accurately, hold competing truths without flinching, and stay steady long enough to move people through ambiguity.
Again and again, I saw the same pattern. Brilliant teams, well-designed plans, genuine commitment, and still everything could unravel because the leader couldn’t see the real problem beneath the noise. Not because they weren’t smart, but because they didn’t have the frameworks, habits, or inner steadiness to interpret what was actually happening in the room or the system. That’s when I realized my leverage point wasn’t solving each crisis myself. It was helping leaders develop the kind of perception, judgment, and presence that make real progress possible.
KS Insight exists to strengthen that capacity. My work isn’t about giving leaders answers. It’s about teaching them how to see: to distinguish signal from noise, to understand the dynamics shaping the moment, to hold tension without defaulting to old instincts, and to act from clarity rather than reactivity. When a leader can do that, everything around them shifts, not because they made a different decision, but because they became a different force inside the system.
What changed for you after age 50?
For years, I’d been trying to convince my clients to provide focused leadership training for their women. I kept hearing the same response: “Great idea, maybe next year.” Then one day, I had this moment of clarity: Why am I waiting for someone else to tell me I can do this? It’s time to just do it.
I pulled together some of the most wonderful women leaders and educators I knew, and the Women Igniting Leadership Lab was born. It happened just as I turned 51, so maybe there was something to this whole turning-50 thing after all.
There’s no doubt that in the last decade, I’ve gradually found myself clearer about a whole lot of things. Who I like to work with and spend time with, brilliant, talented people who are driven and want to keep learning. How I like to live my life. What is a good use of my time. And just as importantly, what is not a good use of my time.
Yes to the things that bring me joy in small ways, petting the nose of a baby whale in a lagoon in Mexico, learning to dance salsa. No to small talk and responding to the question “Did you have a good weekend?”
What would you tell the 20 or 30-year-old YOU?
You do not need permission to lead. Waiting for validation from the very systems you are here to transform is a waste of time, energy, and talent. Trust that your voice is not only allowed, it is required.
What do you think you’ll tell yourself in retrospect at the end of your life?
I really don’t know. Probably something bland like: You were right – dogs are the best humans.
What impact do you think increased visibility can have on your business?
My entire career has been one surprising turn after another, from a summer doing research on arsenic at a nuclear research site, to drafting constitutional provisions for the Somali constitution, to building my own firm in New York City after growing up in a small village in the south of France.
Connections, relationships, hearing the right thing, or meeting the right person to create a spark, I’ve seen what happens when the right people find me. More visibility simply increases the chances of us connecting.
Who or what inspires you and why?
I’m an early adopter of all things innovation. My Uber driver didn’t touch the steering wheel once on my drive this evening, fully self-driving. I haven’t driven in 20 years, but I might take it up again if the car does the work.
I’m also fascinated by CRISPR technology and what gene editing might make possible. I don’t know exactly what will come of it, but hopefully some amazing medical breakthroughs.
I think it’s because I want to believe we can change the world in all sorts of important ways, make life better, kinder. But much of my work, in Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, the arc of change is slow. Whereas in technology and science, it changes before your eyes.
Something else I’d like to share
My son is 12 years old. By the time he graduates, AI will have reshaped our workplaces in ways we’re only beginning to understand. So I’ve been thinking a lot about what the future of work and leadership will look like.
If AI essentially steps in to remove the barriers of technical expertise, from coding to video editing to writing, it could unleash an age of entrepreneurship and creativity unlike anything since the Renaissance. But at the same time, it will undermine the already ineffective learn-by-trial-and-error approach to leadership. We can no longer afford to let people stumble into managing others and hope they figure it out.
We need to start teaching people how to be good colleagues, good managers, good leaders, deliberately and early. We spend so much of our lives at work. Happy, motivated workplaces require good leaders. And good leaders require proper skills.
