Jane Magruder Watkins has worked in the field of organization development for more than forty years. She has worked in and consulted to organizations in the business, government, and not-for-profit sectors in over sixty-five countries around the globe. Since the mid-1980s, she has worked with David Cooperrider, who articulated the concept of Appreciative Inquiry as a theory and philosophy that has shifted the practice of OD from a deficit-focused process to AI’s appreciative perspective. This shift enables organizations to focus on their strengths and hopes for the future while valuing and learning from the best of the past. At the 4th Global Conference on Appreciative Inquiry in Katmandu, Nepal, in the fall of 2009, Jane was awarded the first “Lifetime Achievement Award” for spreading AI around the globe.

Because the emerging global environment and the accelerating pace of change is calling for new and innovative processes and approaches to change, Jane sees Appreciative Inquiry as a bridge that enables organizations, communities, individuals, and couples to embrace the emerging paradigm, re-creating themselves and their realities by imagining and living into their own unique visions of their desired future. As the rate of change in human systems has accelerated, the AI approach of focusing on what is working and what is desired has spread around the globe. As an early innovator in the use of Appreciative Inquiry, Jane has experimented with its application in all aspects of organizational life in multiple settings and cultures and in all aspects of personal growth and human development.

Jane has held director-level positions in two international development agencies, served on the director’s staff of the Action Agency, and has owned her own business. While she has consulted in organizations from the corporate and government sectors, her passion and focus since the 1960s has been on issues of justice and equality, with particular focus on race and gender issues in all organizations and cultures around the globe.

Since 1997, Jane has been co-owner with her husband and partner, Ralph Kelly, of the consulting firm Appreciative Inquiry Unlimited. She served as chair of the board of the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science (the organization that pioneered the field of organization development and change) and is an Emeritus member of NTL, currently serving as Steward of the Appreciative Inquiry Community of Practice. She established an Appreciative Inquiry Certificate Program with a partnership between NTL and the Weatherhead School at Case Western Reserve University that is offered in the United States, with expanding programs in the UK and Europe, South Africa and India. She is a founding partner of AI Consulting.

Jane teaches Appreciative Inquiry in Pepperdine University’s MSOD and Ed.D. programs and with the OSR master’s program at the University of Seattle. She also teaches AI through NTL and in client organizations. She has published several articles about AI and is lead author of Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination. Jane has an MA in English literature; an MS in organizational development and two years of post graduate research and study at Cambridge University, UK.

You may reach Jane at [email protected] and (757) 259-9942.

Bernard J. Mohr is the author of multiple books, articles, chapters, and journal issues dealing with collaborative organization innovation and design. Over the past four decades he has served as thinking partner, coach, and facilitator to clients in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, pharmaceuticals, education, and government in the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, Western Europe, Canada, and the Middle East.

In 2005, after twenty-five years as CEO of a professional services firm, Bernard co-founded Innovation Partners International. On the belief that organizations are the primary social institutions of our time, Bernard and his partners collaborate with clients in creating sustainable change at the intersection of innovation, human benefit, technical feasibility, and financial viability.

As one of one of the original pioneers in the field of Appreciative Inquiry, Bernard co-created the NTL Institute Certificate in Appreciative Inquiry and has served as dean of those programs. He is also co-inventor of the Innovation Summit and a primary contributor to the emerging field of generative design. In addition to the first edition of this book, he also co-authored:

• Essentials of Appreciative Inquiry: A Roadmap for Creating Positive Futures (Pegasus Communications)
• The Appreciative Inquiry Summit: A Practitioner’s Guide for Leading Large-Group Change (Berrett-Koehler)

He has taught collaborative organizational innovation and design at the Universities of Ottawa, Concordia, Dayton, and Cornell, as well as the Canadian Centre for Management Development and the Danish Center for Management.

Bernard is an advisory board member of the Taos Institute, Plexus Institute associate, and senior fellow of NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science. He holds a BA (cum laude) in organizational psychology (University of Waterloo), an Ed.M. in organizational learning (University of Toronto), and a diploma in organization design (Columbia University).

Send an email to Bernard at [email protected] or call (207) 874–0118.

Ralph Kelly, principle and managing partner of Appreciative Inquiry Unlimited, is a well-known teacher and practitioner of the Appreciative Inquiry approach to organization change. He is a very experienced organization development consultant who has been in the field since the late 1960s and has been an innovator in Appreciative Inquiry for over a decade. He teaches with his wife and partner in Appreciative Inquiry Unlimited, Jane Magruder Watkins, and offers training for consultants who want to be masters in the use and application of Appreciative Inquiry and for organizational leaders who want to apply AI in their management and leadership roles.

He regularly teaches the philosophy and concepts of Appreciative Inquiry in the Taos Institute; the NTL Institute; the Wilgespruit Fellowship Center in Roodepoort, South Africa; Pepperdine University’s MSOD program in Monterrey, Mexico, and San Jose, Costa Rica; Seattle University’s master’s program, Organizational Systems Renewal; The Roffey Park Business School in the UK; and in client organizations.

His interest in training people for outstanding performance began with his work as personal services division manager in Allstate Insurance Company, where he managed and provided training for excellence in customer relations and service throughout a four-state regional office with more than 200,000 policyholders.

From the late-1960s and for thirty years he focused on his role as priest in the Episcopal Church U.S.A., where he became a part of that church’s commitment to interpersonal, cross-cultural training for organizational excellence. He was a founder of the Program and Consultation Skills Service (PACS) in the southern United States. He did this work with individuals, in conferences, and with congregations. He founded and pioneered multi-racial camping programs for people with mental and physical disabilities and used his training and consultation skills to launch a medical service project with Episcopal churches in Latin America. For the past fourteen years, he has taught AI and has done organization development from the AI perspective in multi-denominational settings in the United States and abroad.

His work in the corporate sector includes, among others: GTE, Smith-Kline Beecham, Air Canada, and Zain Telecommunications in Bahrain, Jordan, and Lebanon.

In the not-for-profit sector, Ralph’s clients have included: The Academy for Education Development, Catholic Relief Services in the U.S.A. and Kenya; University of Hawaii Conflict Resolution Faculty; International Institute for Rural Reconstruction in the Philippines, Kenya, and Ethiopia; The Asian Development Bank in the Philippines; University of Wisconsin Medical School; the American University of Kuwait; Tompkins-Cortland Community College; La Guardia Community College, Williamsburg/James City County (VA) Schools; the Wilgespruit Fellowship Center in Johannesburg, South Africa; and HOPA Mountain.

He holds a master’s degree in theology from the University of the South and bachelor’s degree in psychology from Millsaps College.

You may contact Ralph at [email protected] or (757) 259-9942.