Description
Karl leads the Talent Plus research team while focusing on maintaining and enhancing excellence in research, innovation and the strategic application of The Science of Talent to best serve clients. Karl revels in applied research around your most important resource, your people, while working closely with executive leaders and teams to simplify and streamline data-driven insights to inform people strategies, and guide leadership decision-making and organizational leadership and culture. He deeply enjoys enabling and empowering leaders to use their data to drive meaningful change in people management, selection, development and people analytics to deliver better business outcomes and experience. He brings in-depth experience in the study of psychology, politics, human behavior and statistics, as well as years of applied expertise working with numerous clients and leadership teams to guide their business strategies and implementation of their people strategies around data.
During his career, Karl has managed various teams and innumerable research projects, including big data projects such as the collection of millions of data points from brain research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) under multi-million-dollar grants from the National Research Foundation. He also helmed the UNL Biopolitics Behavioral Lab while teaching courses regarding American politics, public policy and bureaucracy—each with an emphasis on the psychology of human behavior. His own doctoral research was funded by several grants. Karl enjoys teaching and mentoring others and has served as a mentor for UNL Honor’s Theses, teaching research techniques and data analysis.
An accomplished researcher, writer and instructor, Karl has had scholarly work published in PLOS ONE, a highly regarded academic journal. He has been recognized in The Wall Street Journal for his article, “Voting at Home is Associated with Lower Cortisol than Voting at the Polls.” He recently authored “Sensemaking and Storytelling through Data Visualization” published in the recently released Cambridge Handbook of Technology and Employee Behavior.
Professional Experience
Executive Vice President of Research and Innovation; Director of Research; Research Associate, Talent Plus
Instructor, Biopolitics and Behavioral Lab Manager, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
UDiscover Scholar, University of South Dakota
Legal Researcher, South Dakota Attorney General’s Office
Education
Ph.D. Candidate, American Politics, Political Psychology, Biology and Politics, Advanced Quantitative Statistics and Modeling (minor), University of Nebraska-Lincoln – Dissertation: “The Social Brain and Politics: A Genetic and Neuroendocrinological Perspective on the Stress of Social Pressure and Politics”
M.A., Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
B.A., Political Science and Criminal Justice, University of South Dakota
