Kimberly (Kim) Tholl is the Principal Consultant at Nexus Insights, where she designs and delivers executive programs in supply chain resilience and project management. With over 17 years of supply chain leadership experience, she has led multimillion-dollar spend portfolios and cross-functional teams to optimize supply chain operations across the public sector, academia, and retail. Kim also serves as Associate Faculty at Royal Roads University, teaching in the Master of Global Management program and contributing to curriculum design for the Graduate Diploma in Project and Supply Chain Management and the Marine Supply Chain Micro-credential.

A dedicated “pracademic,” Kim has a unique knack for bridging industry experience with academic inquiry.  She translates complex systems thinking into actionable operational strategies, ensuring that her doctoral research remains grounded in the practical realities of global trade while advancing the theoretical boundaries of the field.

Kim’s doctoral research investigates the interplay between governance mechanisms and firm behaviours in supply chains viewed through the lens of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). Grounded in a critical realist ontology and postpositivist epistemology, her work explores how patterns of alignment and misalignment between formal regulations and decentralized firm actions shape emergent system-level properties of resilience and sustainability. By identifying the tipping points that drive system-wide transformations, Kim seeks to provide policymakers and practitioners with actionable frameworks for designing supply networks capable of maintaining long-term viability in an increasingly uncertain global environment.

Kim holds a Bachelor of Mathematics (BMath) and a Master of Applied Science (MASc) from the University of Waterloo. She is a Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) and a Project Management Professional (PMP). Her academic excellence has been recognized through several honours, including the Doctoral Research Scholarship for Sustainability and the Doctoral Academic Excellence Award.