Family-owned Kimball Midwest supports women’s careers through targeted leadership development programs, mentorship, and inclusive policies. In turn, the firm’s women leaders offer strength, strategy, empathy, and innovation to support the company’s growth. - BY Debra Jenkins

What enables phenomenal growth and lasting success? At Kimball Midwest, a family-owned nationwide distributor of high-quality industrial maintenance, repair, and operations products, one key ingredient has been the firm’s female leaders. Some worked their way up through the various functions, while others were hired in from the outside. Guided by the McCurdy family’s leadership culture, they have worked to preserve and enhance the relationship-based business philosophy and develop a robust people-first culture that encourages excellence.

Driving Continuous Improvement

Kimball Midwest has been in business since 1923, growing from humble beginnings to over $500 million in sales. Indeed, the firm sets the goal of doubling sales every five years, facilitated by a commitment to attracting and developing the best sales team and corporate staff. Adopting new technologies, such as the upcoming ERP system implementation, creates additional opportunities for innovation and organizational growth.

Meeting the growth-focused goals of the organization depends on skilled leadership from key women able to put Kimball Midwest’s ambitious strategy into action. The following are just three of the women leaders so essential to the company’s success.

Kate Callison, Director of Human Resources

Kate Callison came to Kimball Midwest after 17 years working for AT&T. Over the past 20+ years, she has grown the Human Resources (HR) function within the company. Callison is responsible for the Total Rewards Program, compensation and benefits, HR compliance, and attracting and developing sales representatives and sales managers.

In Kimball Midwest’s organizational culture, leaders are leaders. “We don’t differentiate between female and male leaders, even though we are in a male-dominated industry. We consider what people are contributing,” says Callison. “A huge portion of responsibility in our HR department is identifying, developing, and supporting our sales team that drives revenue for the organization.”

Jennifer Pinkstock, Former Director of Supply Chain Management

Jennifer Pinkstock, who just recently left Kimball Midwest for a family business opportunity, spent 21 years with the company and worked her way up through marketing and purchasing. Kimball Midwest has 1,600+ direct sales associates, and Pinkstock’s procurement team manages the order entry interfaces with procurement to ensure products are available to meet customer demand. She brought varied experience with her, having worked for the Ford Motor Company and a now-closed foundry. She did production scheduling, customer service, traffic management, and manufacturing. This background and her experience in distribution when she first started work at Kimball Midwest have enabled her to develop strong communication skills, which allows her to have conversations with manufacturers and others that someone without manufacturing experience could not.

Like Callison, Pinkstock led her team through change and reorganized the supply chain management function. She spearheaded the implementation of a new and complex ERP system that will be effective in 2027. It has taken a year and a half of planning, and keeping associates up to date has been a priority. This was collaborative leadership at its best because, as she says, change is hard.

Pinkstock also helped develop other women leaders in her department, such as Planning and Logistics Assistant Manager Leslie Boothe and Change Management and Development Manager Lindsay Knadler.

Megan Steele, Senior Director, Strategic Finance

With a background in financial planning and analysis, Kimball Midwest recruited Megan Steele about 4.5 years ago to strengthen the organization’s financial planning and analysis (FP&A) team. She began by implementing best practices in budgeting and forecasting, then expanded the work to financial modeling and strategy development. Eventually, she assumed responsibility for all finance - the traditional accounting functions, FP&A, and finance data and analytics. To help grow the company, Megan partners with leaders across the organization, bringing a financial perspective. “While bringing our own perspective and ideas to the table, my team and I ask leaders from our seat how can we support our company's growth, and that information helps me lead my team in prioritizing their work to provide the data and insights needed.”

Common Themes of Leadership Culture Drives Everything

The Kimball Midwest culture has always been one of associate engagement and support. Callison emphasizes that departments or groups do not refer to “people” in general, instead acknowledging individuals who contribute to the company’s ability to meet goals. Associates are encouraged to bring their authentic selves to work.

For her, the transition from a Fortune 500 company where people feel anonymous to a culture of individualized recognition was eye-opening. “The President will come into my office knowing my name and sit down to chat about projects I am working on.”

This type of culture needs collaborative leadership to thrive. That describes Callison’s style. As a collaborative leader in the shared-20-square-feet culture, she strives to create an environment where everyone can contribute and be part of the solution. This approach leads to innovation and better solutions. “It is exciting to be part of an HR group that’s so tied to the bottom-line results and organizational success.”

The people-focused culture and collaborative leadership have been instrumental in helping the company manage serious challenges, such as a recession and COVID. One reason Callison’s HR function has been so successful is that many on her team started in a different role. They leaned into the culture, embraced it, and took advantage of learning and career development opportunities to upskill and progressively advance through roles.

To give everyone the ability to follow this path, Callison has focused on developing career paths and curricula for associates across the organization. “We have a learning management system that offers career journeys for sales associates, sales managers, internal associates, and general managers. We also have a mentoring program.”

On the supply side, Pinkstock is a collaborative, empathetic leader who supported the organizational culture. “I have the ability when I'm in a difficult situation with our team or cross-functionally to put myself in the other person's shoes to understand their perspective. That allows me to tailor solutions and responses to meet people where their needs are.” The high level of emotional intelligence makes her more effective because she can “read the audience.”

As the company grows, says Pinkstock, the “two customer” philosophy is a foundational operating principle. External customers and internal customers are treated with the same respect. “It is harder to maintain it without feeling like we're becoming bureaucratic. So, there's a constant battle to keep ourselves nimble and responsive and people-centered,” says Pinkstock, referring to the leadership challenge.

The focus on people is the company’s biggest strength, according to Pinkstock. As a leader, she keeps people engaged and feeling valued by meeting regularly with associates, being transparent about the company's direction and the tasks her team assigns, and showing appreciation. Her joy, she says, comes from helping people develop their best selves and achieve their highest potential, making her a perfect fit for the Kimball Midwest culture.

“My leadership strength is empathy,” says Steele, “I used to think that was my weakness, but now I know it’s what makes me successful in my role. My strength as a leader is my ability to connect with my team, my peers, and other leaders, and to understand what's important to them. How can I help support them, and how do we successfully reach a common goal?” In the Kimball Midwest collaborative culture, this leadership style is a best fit. “I’ve been able to mentor and coach several people who reported to me directly or indirectly, and seen them get promoted or manage a successful project. This mentorship, and really overall relationship building, enables me to influence outside of my 20-square-feet.”

Looking Ahead to New Technologies and Artificial Intelligence

The women agree that artificial intelligence (AI) will bring opportunities and changes. People will need reskilling. Callison considers how AI will affect her team’s ability to maintain HR compliance and which administrative functions AI can assume.

“I am excited about it because I think that allows us to spend less time administering and more time influencing, so we can use the skills that our HR practitioners have to interact with other people and really influence results for the organization, as opposed to tracking and monitoring and reporting on things.” Reskilling people is a current focus, and she is adding a team member who will focus on how AI can be used as a tool and determine how to leverage it to support the organization more effectively. One point Callison wants to make clear is that AI will not fully replace human intervention because humans bring the checks and balances that ensure fairness and inclusion.

Pinkstock led supply chain management, sourcing, and procurement into a new tech-based future. “We are designing our future ERP system that's going to be moving into a cloud environment. We're still in an on-premises environment today, but while we're doing that, we're also looking to adopt AI solutions where we can to improve efficiency. So we're exploring agentic AI to help our procurement team with purchase order maintenance, supplier communication, and sourcing. ”

One of Pinkstock’s abilities is to understand software logic. She does not write software, but she innately understands what software developers need to execute solutions. This talent enables her to facilitate conversations between business units and technology teams.

Steele focuses on keeping people engaged by offering different ways to connect. One of the most successful has been involving them in planning. This strategy has been particularly successful in the company's ERP implementation. “It’s going to be a change for everybody, but keeping people engaged through the process and including them in the decision-making process keeps people excited and engaged.”

In the finance and accounting function, Steele anticipates AI will have an impact. She believes it has the potential to perform tasks such as pulling data from different systems and freeing up time to give the information it presents more thought. “AI may augment our work, and people can spend time doing other things, like doing more analytics and more thinking about ways to support the company's growth. We know that where we are today will be different as we move forward.”

Family Matters

The three women leaders appreciate working for a family-owned and operated business because the top leaders understand the challenge of balancing work and family responsibilities. As Steele describes it, “I don't think that there's necessarily a balance of work and life. Sometimes work is heavier than life, and sometimes life is heavier than work. I think Kimball Midwest allows you to have those ebbs and flows depending upon the business need at the time.”

Pinkstock's recent departure also reiterates this family focus, as she left for a family business opportunity and her former team now is led by a member of the McCurdy family.

Words of Advice

Work-life balance is challenging for women. Callison advises other women to form supportive networks, including with other women leaders. She connects regularly with Steele, and other women leaders, and they bounce ideas off each other, including how to manage work-life balance. As Pinkstock says, “Find your support network and lift each other.” The network includes co-workers, family, and friends.

They also advise other women leaders and those aspiring to leadership positions to take every opportunity to learn and develop. Patrick McCurdy, President of Kimball Midwest, says that if you do not invest in yourself, then you are inherently not investing in the people on your team. The women leaders agree, as evidenced by their embracing of learning and development opportunities. Indeed, Callison, Pinkstock, and Steele exemplify successful women leaders who use their talent and knowledge to support the organization’s vision and culture.