Tom Keelin

Managing Partner

Tom, a founding partner of KR, has combined a career in decision analysis practice with innovations to advance multiple fields.

As a management consultant, Tom has supervised or led more than 150 strategic advisory assignments with more than 80 companies from Fortune 500 firms to venture-backed startups. As board member and Worldwide Managing Director of the Strategic Decision Group, Tom supervised or led dozens of client strategy engagements over two decades. From one such engagement, he co-authored the 1998 Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, How SmithKline Beecham Makes Better Resource Allocation Decisions. This article, which put forth a portfolio-management standard that was adopted across life-sciences, oil and gas, and other industries, is one of the most widely distributed and reprinted in HBR history.

Previously, with Decision Focus, Inc, Tom developed the award-winning Over/Under Capacity Planning methodology, which addressed demand uncertainty in electric power system planning. His Over/Under model was widely adopted by more than 100 U.S. utilities and by regulatory commissions in many states. Beyond training clients in its use, Tom served as an expert witness on how to recognize quality in decision-making related to multi-billion dollar nuclear and coal generation capacity investments.

As a founder and general partner of Turning Point Asset Management, a investment fund, his partnership acquired more than a thousand residential mortgages from the FDIC and worked through resolving them in service of both borrowers and investors.

Based on four decades of professional practice, Tom recognized a practical need for easier and better ways of dealing with uncertainty. He co-invented quantile-parameterized distributions and then invented the metalog distributions to meet this need. His 2016 article, The Metalog Distributions, is one of the most downloaded in the history of the Decision Analysis Journal.

Tom is a Fellow, Board Member, and Pioneer Award winner of the Society of Decision Professionals. He is also a founder and director of the Decision Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that helps youth learn good decision skills for life. Tom holds three degrees from Stanford University -- BA in Economics and MS and PhD in Engineering-Economic Systems.

tomk@keelinreeds.com