Dave Kuhlman, Managing Partner

Dave Kuhlman is Managing Partner at Axiom Consulting Partners. He brings over 30 years of operational leadership and consulting experience helping leading consulting, accounting and law firms grow and transform their businesses.

At Axiom, Dave leads engagements that involve strategy development, organization and governance, organic growth and transformation efforts.

Making change in a professional firm is finding the overlap between what the firm needs and what people are willing to do, stretching and expanding that space to maximize the impact.

Experience

Over the course of his career, Dave worked at Sibson Consulting, serving clients, managing two offices, leading their professional services practice, and serving as chief operating officer. Additionally, he was Global Head of Human Resources at Russell Reynolds Associates, where he was instrumental in improving RRA’s partnership model and standards, solidifying worldwide performance management, training, client feedback and upward feedback programs.

Some of Dave’s experience highlights include:

• Strategy – developed a new strategic framework for a leading public accounting firm which led to substantial increases in organic growth, service expansion, and client engagement.
• Revenue Growth – led the team that developed the first AI-driven organic growth initiative for a major law firm, resulting in $36M in organic growth and the firm winning an FT innovation award.
• Organization and Go-to-Market – reimagined and restructured the partner model for a major strategy firm, balancing a one-firm approach with more focused roles, clearer accountabilities, and improved focus.

Dave has a BA degree in English literature from Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Leading Firms: How Great Professional Service Firms Succeed & How Your Firm Can Too.

He is also a Vice Chair of the Governing Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The Bulletin believes that advances in science and technology should make life on Earth better, not worse. They equip the public, policy makers, and scientists with the information needed to demand, recognize, and support public policies that reduce man-made existential threats such as nuclear war, climate change, and disruptive technologies.