Kathy Gornik has served as chairman of the board of directors of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions since 2005.

Gornik is the co-founder and president of Lexington-based Thiel Audio, a privately held engineering-driven organization that performs research, design and manufacturing of 13 models of high-end performance loudspeakers for the home and office. The company celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2007.

Gornik’s leadership role in the electronics industry is long and illustrious, including serving as 2003-2004 Consumer Electronics Association chairman and 2005-2006 immediate past chairman. Previously, she also served as chairman of the CEA’s audio board from 1995 to 1997 and vice chairman of the executive committee from 2000 to 2002. She currently chairs CEA’s audio division.

As a CEA executive board member, Gornik also served as a member of the Electronic Industries Alliance board of governors from 1995 to 2000, and was a member of the National Science and Technology Education Partnership board of trustees and its predecessor, the Electronics Industry Foundation, from 1995 to present.

She also is immediate past chairman of the Small Business Council, which she helped create.

Gornik recently was named the first-ever recipient of the Bastiat in Business Award in recognition of her distinguished effort to promote free-market ideas. The Bastiat Society is a nonprofit foundation created to spread free-market ideas among business people.

She also has been honored as Kentucky-Southern Indiana Entrepreneur of the Year, an award sponsored by Ernst and Young Inc. Magazine and Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., and was selected as one of the Top 40 Women in Business by “The Lane Report,” which also named THIEL Audio “Small Business of the Year” in 1994.

In her spare time, Gornik enjoys reading, skiing and promoting individual liberty, limited government and benefits of the free market.