Kim is Professor Emerita of music education at Illinois State University and adjunct professor at New York University and the University of Bridgeport. She received her doctorate in music education with a secondary emphasis in special education from the University of Northern Colorado. Her accomplishments include performing in professional rock and jazz groups, decades of teaching experience in public schools in Colorado and Illinois, serving the International Society for Music Education (ISME) as a Board member, founding and being first chair of the ISME Jazz Special Interest Group, and as the past chair of the ISME Commission on Music in Special Education. She founded and served as the first chair of the National Association for Music Education Special Research Interest Group on Children with Exceptionalities, and was a co-author for Exceptional Music Pedagogy for Children with Exceptionalities and author of Teaching the Postsecondary Music Student with Disabilities published by Oxford University Press. Kim is the founder of JAM and the lead teacher of all groups and private lessons at JAM in Shelton.