Kimberly D Osborne

Hall of Fame Class of 2023

An internationally recognized adult educator, Kimberly D. Osborne has significantly shaped how people use information and power to inform and influence others, make sense of the world, and negotiate their place in it. Her leadership has been especially impactful at the intersection of mass communication as a means of informal and incidental education and strategic program planning. Her scholarship and practice inform how power relations and interests shape outcomes, and she has been consulted worldwide in leadership development and change management.

From January 2013 to April 2014, she served as the chief strategic communication adviser to the Afghan National Security Forces at the end of Operation Enduring Freedom, the longest NATO mission in history. Osborne led a multinational team of senior advisers and was assigned to “fix” the “broken” communication function in the Afghan National Army. Using research and training in adult education, she conducted an organizational analysis and presented a remediation plan to the Afghan Minister of Defense, resulting in unanimous approval and orders to implement her recommendations. For her achievements, she received numerous awards and medals from the U.S. Department of Defense, NATO, and the government of Afghanistan.

In faculty roles, Osborne served as the inaugural recipient of the endowed C-SPAN Chair in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. She also taught numerous study abroad courses at the University of Georgia as well as graduate-level adult education courses in UGA’s Mary Frances Early College of Education. She was a full professor and director of the Center for Leadership Development at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, an accredited, degree-granting school inside the U.S. Defense Department. As a peer to the provost, she was a senior adviser to the Command Group and was responsible for leadership development for approximately 2,000 multinational civilian faculty across 29 sites worldwide. She currently serves corporate and nonprofit organizations as a coach, speaker, and consultant.

Osborne was a Fulbright Scholar in Myanmar’s Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief, and Resettlement where she taught communication, leadership, and disaster management. She also was an international consultant to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission in Kosovo, and she advised the Kosovo Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology about the development of a national media literacy curriculum. She was a founding adviser to the Ethiopian Diaspora Fellowship for whom she led the development of program infrastructure and selection processes. From the Academy of Human Resource Development, she received the Bierema Award, which honors a critical human resource development scholar or practitioner who has demonstrated research and activism with impact in HRD. In addition, she was honored in 2016 with an invitation to speak to senior leaders from partner nations at the NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia. Osborne has served as the inaugural chair of the Mentorship and Leadership Committee for the National Communication Association, and she has been a board member for the National Association for Media Literacy Education, the Jeannette Rankin Foundation, and the Central Coast Chapter of the American Red Cross. She has been an invited speaker about leadership topics to the National Security Agency’s National Cryptologic School, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The University of Georgia’s Adult Learning, Leadership, and Organizational Development program cited her as one of their 50 most distinguished graduates.