Kent B. Rhodes

Senior consultant Kent Rhodes is a leading expert in the field of conflict management in family-owned businesses. He brings firsthand experience equipping executives and sibling/cousin management teams with leadership skills that build value, reduce discord and leverage personal capacities for success. He works with some of the most successful family-owned companies in the world, helping them plan for change and implement ownership and management continuity strategies.

Kent also maintains a successful executive coaching practice for a variety of privately held and family-owned enterprises, both domestically and internationally. A politically savvy guide, Kent is an Organizational Development expert who cultivates emotional, social and business intelligence, helping senior-level leaders become more effective. He’s lead author of Managing Conflict in the Family Business: Understanding Challenges at the Intersection of Family and Business, published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

Kent founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of OnCourse Network, Inc., an Internet Education Company. He negotiated the sale of the company to a Silicon Valley publicly traded corporation and subsequently, served as managing director with that company in San Jose, California until successfully completing its acquisition and integration growth strategies in 2001.

In addition to consulting, Kent serves as core faculty with Pepperdine University’s Doctoral Programs in Organization Leadership and the Master of Science in Organization Development. He served as an Ombudsman for Pepperdine for more than a decade and is a guest lecturer for the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution with the Pepperdine School of Law in Malibu, the Institute for Conflict Management with Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee and numerous Family Business Centers across the U.S.