Joel Strom

Background

About Joel Strom

Joel brings more than four decades of executive business management and strategic consulting experience to help his clients achieve substantive results. His experiences range from mid‐sized entrepreneurial companies to Fortune 500 corporations with functional roles as an engineer, manager, executive, CEO, business owner, strategic advisor, board member and growth consultant. After beginning his career with large corporations, he purchased a small manufacturing company and changed it from a tired job shop to an exciting growth-oriented manufacturing company. Joel sold that company in 1982 and founded Joel Strom Associates to help the owners of thriving businesses successfully reach their growth objectives and accelerate their enterprise value. Joel sold his Ohio-based consulting practice to a regional accounting firm in and relocated to Arizona where he became a founding partner of CKS Advisors. CKS Advisors works with middle-market closely held businesses to maximize and then realize their enterprise value. For are recent five year period, Joel served as the CEO of a 50-year-old family-owned engineering and manufacturing company. In that short time, Joel led that organization through a remarkable transformation. From a company on the edge back to a world leader in its industry, he maximized the enterprise’s strategic value by creating a world-class leadership team, shifting the company’s mindset to be forward-looking in the digital age, and by developing and implementing innovative and comprehensive go-to-market and operational excellence strategies. Under his leadership the company was awarded the 2019 Arizona Manufacturer of the Year Award by the Arizona Manufacturers Council. Following his time as CEO, Joel formed Chief Value Officers to continue his practice of helping companies maximize their enterprise value. He also authored his latest book, CEO to CVO, Moving Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary. Strom has and continues to sit on the boards of some closely held companies and is active in civic and industry associations. He frequently speaks on various business growth and value creation topics to industry and trade groups, as well as serving as a trusted advisor for CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs, and family-owned organizations. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Case Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management of Case Western Reserve University.