About Gene Gendel

Organizational Design Consultant | Enterprise & Adaptive Coach | Product-Centric Transformation Leader

Gene Gendel’s professional journey spans more than twenty-five years of progressive experience in product management, enterprise coaching, large-scale agility, and systemic organizational design. His work reflects a steady evolution—from hands-on product leadership in complex enterprise environments to globally recognized coaching, training, and executive advisory roles. Throughout his career, he has remained grounded in practical delivery experience while steadily expanding his influence toward enterprise-wide organizational transformation.

Early Career: Foundations in Product Management (Late 1990s – Mid-2000s)

Gene began his career in the late 1990s, working in product management and strategic delivery roles within financial services and enterprise organizations, including engagements with CSFB, AIG, Fitch, and Prudential. During this period, he developed a strong command of requirements definition, backlog prioritization, stakeholder alignment, and customer-centric product thinking.

Operating in highly structured, process-heavy environments, Gene witnessed firsthand both the strengths and limitations of traditional project-based approaches. These formative years shaped his appreciation for disciplined delivery while simultaneously revealing the need for more adaptive, feedback-driven models. His early exposure to early Agile Manifesto co-signers and Scrum and Kanban co-creators, made his learning very authentic/original and led him to deepen his interest in adaptive ways of working.

Transition to Agile Leadership and Enterprise Coaching (Mid-2000s – 2010)

By the mid-2000s, Gene expanded his work in product management to education and learning.   His new career trajectory stared including both: hands-on delivery and teaching/training/coaching.  In 2008, Gene supported early agile practices at the NYC Economic Development Corporation. Shortly thereafter, he served as Senior Scrum Master at Second Market Holdings (2009–2010), guiding cross-functional teams through iterative delivery and helping organizations adopt more collaborative, incremental development methods.

These roles marked an important inflection point. Rather than focusing solely on delivery mechanics, Gene began addressing broader systemic constraints—organizational structure, funding models, and leadership behaviors—that influence team performance. His work increasingly bridged tactical execution and strategic alignment.

Expanding Enterprise Impact (2010 – 2018)

From 2010 onward, Gene’s responsibilities broadened significantly. He served as a Senior Agile Coach at GuidePoint Global, Inc., and subsequently held senior coaching and product leadership roles within McGraw Hill’s Platts/Aviation Week/Construction and Standard & Poor’s divisions. In these environments, he worked not only with development teams but also with business stakeholders and senior leaders, helping align product strategy with adaptive delivery practices.

Between August 2013 and April 2018, Gene served as a senior organizational agility coach at JPMorgan. In one of the world’s largest financial institutions, he supported large-scale product development efforts across departments, coached product owners and leadership teams, and introduced system thinking into enterprise transformation efforts. His work increasingly focused on the structural conditions required for sustainable agility—team design, governance models, funding mechanisms, and leadership development.

Founding KSTS Consulting (2018 – Present)

In April 2018, Gene co-founded KSTS Consulting, where he serves as Chief Product Owner and Managing Partner. Gene’s small boutique firm was established to help organizations move beyond superficial Agile adoption toward deeper organizational design and product-centric transformation.

Through KSTS Consulting, Gene provides a comprehensive set of services that integrate coaching, consulting, and training:

• Organizational (Re)Assessment and Enterprise Advisory
• Organizational Design Consulting
• Executive and Leadership Coaching
• Product-Centric Transformation Enablement
• Education on scaling (SAFe, S@S) and de-scaling (LeSS, Nexus) frameworks
• Internal Coach Development
• Lunch & Learn and Knowledge-Sharing Sessions

These services reflect Gene’s belief that sustainable improvement requires more than new ceremonies or tools—it requires rethinking how organizations define products, allocate funding, structure teams, and make decisions.

Product Discovery & Definition Expertise

One of the hallmark offerings Gene leads is the Product Discovery, Definition & Management Workshop. This workshop is designed for organizations that feel stalled in their Agile transformation or uncertain about their true products. It addresses common missteps such as rebranding legacy applications as “products” without changing organizational dynamics.

In this workshop, Gene guides participants through:

• Clarifying what constitutes a true product versus a project or component
• Aligning product strategy with long-term customer value
• Embedding discovery practices into daily work
• Avoiding superficial “Agile theater” in favor of measurable outcomes

The program emphasizes systemic clarity, enabling organizations to ground their transformation in customer-centered product thinking rather than terminology.

Organizational Design for Executive Leadership

Complementing the product discovery work is Gene’s Organizational Design for Large-Scale Adaptive Development Executive Workshop. This private executive-level session engages senior leadership in examining structural assumptions around HR policies, budgeting, governance, and decision-making models.

Rather than prescribing frameworks, Gene facilitates structured dialogue around:

• Why many large-scale transformations fail
• How organizational structure influences behavior
• What legacy constraints must be reconsidered
• How to align leadership intent with adaptive system design

This workshop reinforces Gene’s long-standing conviction: sustainable agility is an organizational design problem before it is a process problem.

Training and Global Community Contribution

In addition to consulting, Gene offers a broad portfolio of professional training at a high level, including:

• Certified Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) training
• Executive and leadership-focused adaptive workshops
• Organizational design sessions
• Product ownership and product management training
• Enterprise agility education programs

As one of a limited number of Certified Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) Trainers-Coaches globally, and as a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC-Emeritus), Gene combines deep theoretical understanding with decades of applied experience. He also played a role in shaping professional coaching standards through his involvement with Certified Team Coach (CTC) initiatives.

Since 2015, Gene has built and moderated global professional communities focused on Lean, Agile, and product-centric development, collectively serving close to 10,000 practitioners. Through speaking engagements, panels, workshops, and publications, he contributes to ongoing discourse around organizational evolution and adaptive leadership.

Professional Philosophy and Continuing Impact

Across all phases of his career, Gene’s work has been characterized by thoughtful progression rather than abrupt reinvention. From product manager to enterprise coach, from Scrum practitioner to organizational design consultant, his trajectory reflects a consistent deepening of perspective.

He approaches transformation as a systemic endeavor—one that requires clarity of product definition, alignment of leadership behavior, and structural coherence. His work remains practical, measured, and grounded in experience, avoiding overstatement while remaining optimistic about the potential of organizations to evolve.

Today, Gene Gendel continues to help organizations rethink how they design, fund, and manage products at scale—supporting leaders who seek not merely incremental improvement, but thoughtful, sustainable change.