Karl Schmidt

Market Researcher and Strategic Planner

Karl comes to Hulings and Associates, L.L.C. with over three decades of market research and strategic planning experience executed across a national roster of hundreds of clients representing virtually every sector of the U.S. economy.

In 1995 he founded Emicity, his Troy, MI based research consultancy. The firm now consists of six professionals, and the team’s primary specialty is qualitative and quantitative research designed to identify consumer needs and assist clients in fulfilling those needs better than their competition.

In 2011, Karl was elected as a Board of Education Trustee in Troy, a highly diverse district of over 12,000 students in suburban Detroit. He immediately turned his passion for data-based decision making to public education, serving as Board president for more than half of his tenure. Since his time on the Board, the Troy School District has successfully developed and executed two powerful strategic plans that have driven what was already a top Michigan district to become one of the best districts in the country.

Under Karl’s leadership, the Troy Board has become a highly functional board focused on its own learning and improvement in governance. In 2020, Karl worked with another board trustee to develop a Board annual self-assessment tool based on educational expert Michael Fullan’s work around Coherence. Karl has since shared that self-assessment tool via seminars at both the Michigan Association of School Boards and the National School Board Association annual leadership conferences.

Recently Karl led a districtwide research effort that resulted in a detailed “Portrait of a Graduate” document, which defines the ideal traits the district should be fostering in its students. The document ties back to the district’s strategic plan and provides the board and central administration with clear criteria to be used when evaluating efficacy of curriculum and quality of student work.

Outside of work, Karl has always had a passion for the protection and advancement of at-risk youth, volunteering as a mentor, foster parent, and most recently as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for foster youth.

For fun, Karl and his wife, Karen, are always up for international travel, camping trips across our beautiful state of Michigan, and cross-country trips to see America’s amazing National Parks.

Karl holds a B.A. in Advertising from Michigan State University and a M.B.A. from Oakland University (where he also serves as an adjunct professor in the School of Business Administration).