Keynote Presentations
Year after year, OD Network Conferences offer stellar talks from the foremost thinkers—and doers—from within and outside the field of organization development. This year’s exemplary line-up will resonate with your needs and concerns, propelling your thinking to new heights!
Stewart Emery, Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters
Donna Latson Gittens, Doing Good by Doing Well: Using Creative Approaches to Inspire Change
Marcela Perez de Alonso, What OD Delivers to the Bottom Line
Frederick A. Miller and Corey L. Jamison, Passing the Baton: Strategies for Generational Shifts in Leadership
Eamonn Kelly, Thinking to Master Uncertainty and Tame Change
Featured Session: The World Café—Creating Tomorrow’s Organizations Today
Stewart Emery
Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters
The international bestseller Built to Last was aimed at discovering the approaches and behaviors of the most visionary companies of the past two centuries. These companies have made significant and enduring contributions over their many years of existence. But what about individuals who have a similar lasting impact? Is there anything common about them and the way they have built their lives? The research reported in Jerry Porras’s new book, Success Built to Last, is based on more than 200 interviews, conducted over six years, of people who have led lives that really mattered—mattered at a global level, a community level, or an organizational level. In this exciting keynote, Jerry Porras will share the common themes that emerged as the true secrets of their success!
SPECIAL NOTE: Due to personal matters, Jerry Porras has--with great regret--withdrawn as a Conference 2006 keynote. We are pleased that Jerry's colleague Stewart Emery has agreed to step in as Conference 2006 keynote. Our best wishes to Jerry and thanks to Stewart.
Stewart Emery is a best-selling author and co-author with Jerry Porras and Mark Thompson of Success Built to Last — Creating a Life That Matters (Wharton School Publishing, 2006.) Stewart is Co-Founder (with Joan Emery) and President of Belvedere Consultants and specializes in leading organizations through Vision — Values — Strategy initiatives. Mr. Emery studied economics, philosophy and psychology at the University of Sydney and he served as a creative director for J. Walter Thompson’s Sydney office. He moved to the United States in 1971 and in the late 70’s was selected by the national media as one of the ten most influential people in the human potential movement. Thousands of people in the United States and around the world have been touched by his writing and speaking appearances during the last three decades.
Back to TopDonna Latson Gittens
Doing Good by Doing Well: Using Creative Approaches to Inspire Change
The basic elements of social marketing are a great parallel to many tenets of OD. Using the robust framework of marketing’s four “P”s (product, price, promotion and place), Ms Latson Gittens will share how causemedia employs traditional and non-traditional marketing techniques to increase target audience awareness of a specific issue or cause leading to positive social change. She will also discuss how social marketing supports the work of non-profit organizations while helping corporations “do good” in the communities where they do business. She will present a number of case studies, each of which advance such familiar themes as building commitment through CEO leadership, energizing a brand using a “fan-friendly” approach, and employing incentives to encourage participation and change.
Donna Latson Gittens, Founder and CEO of causemedia, inc., is recognized and respected by her peers and clients alike as an authority on cause-related marketing. A visionary leader with intuitive business insight and foresight, Donna has succeeded in building an exceptional advertising/social marketing agency to partner with companies who are doing well by doing good. Donna and causemediaare dedicated to serving socially conscious corporations and non-profits. Possessing a distinct ability to reach and engage minority populations, causemedia is partner to some of the Boston area’s most savvy industry leaders including the Boston Red Sox, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and Mt. Washington Bank.
Back to TopMarcela Perez de Alonso
What OD Delivers to the Bottom Line
Hear how a Fortune 50 company’s global organization effectiveness initiative is spreading OD skills company-wide. Perez de Alonso will share her view of why this is important as Hewlett Packard faces the challenges of meeting the learning needs of 150,000 employees in 176 countries, developing leaders at every level, fostering innovation, and responding to rapid changes in a global marketplace. She will describe HP’s strategy to mainstream OD knowledge, tools, and approaches by making them accessible any time from any place in the company and how this strategy is expected to affect company performance.
As the Executive Vice President, Human Resources, for Hewlett Packard, Marcela Perez de Alonso has worldwide responsibility for HP’s human resources activities, including workforce development and organization effectiveness, benefits and compensation, staffing, global inclusion and diversity, and HR processes and information management. She is also a member of the board for HP Financial Services, the financing arm of HP. Perez de Alonso joined HP in 2004, bringing with her a deep HR expertise and broad business experience. A long-time executive at Citigroup, Perez de Alonso has held senior-level roles in both operations and human resources, including the lead HR role for Citibank’s Global Consumer Business. A native of Chile, Perez de Alonso earned an advanced degree in organizational psychology from the Catholic University in Chile.
Back to TopFrederick A. Miller and Corey L. Jamison
Passing the Baton:Strategies for Generational Shifts in Leadership
One of the most pressing and critical issues facing organizations today, for which most are not prepared, is the challenge that surrounds the transfer of leadership from baby boomers to younger generations.Can organizations survive and thrive in this huge generational shift crisis? How can OD professionals assist organizations in passing the baton of leadership in a smooth handoff? In this thought-provoking session, OD leaders Miller and Jamison will discuss the new skills and strategies that are critical for the future success and growth of all organizations, presenting new models for multi-generational leadership transition, learning, and partnership.
Frederick A. Miller, CEO of the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. (KJCG), speaker, and author, is a pioneer and leading authority on creating high-performing cultures of inclusion that enable all people to do their best work. He is the co-author of The Inclusion Breakthrough: Unleashing the Real Power of Diversity.
Corey L. Jamison, President of KJCG, speaker, and author, has spent more than 15 years partnering with leading corporations, municipalities, and not-for-profit organizations to develop the leadership, infrastructure, strategies, and implementation techniques needed for successful culture change.
Back to TopEamonn Kelly
Thinking to Master Uncertainty and Tame Change
We crave certainty and straightforward answers in our professional and intellectual lives, but are confronted by paradox and the unknown daily. The world has never been certain—the unexpected and unimagined have long been central to the human drama. Still, in the past two decades, numerous factors have set the stage for the radically increased uncertainty that organizations experience today—the imperatives of change and competition in an uncertain environment. Based on the writings in his book, Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of our Uncertain World, Eamonn Kelly discusses a new way of thinking that examines the context of our choices and encourages better decision making.
Eamonn Kelly is the CEO of Global Business Network (GBN) and a partner in the Monitor Group. He has consulted at a senior level to dozens of the world’s leading corporations in most sectors, including healthcare, energy, telecommunications, transportation, financial services, manufacturing, computing, professional services and consumer goods. Eamonn has also worked with key global and national public agencies, as well as several major philanthropic foundations. For more than a decade, he has been at the forefront of exploring the emergence of a new, knowledge-intensive economy, and the far-reaching consequences for society, organizations and people. Eamonn is the co-author of What’s Next: Exploring the New Terrain for Business; The Future of the Knowledge Economy.
Back to TopFeatured Session
The World Café—Creating Tomorrow’s Organizations Today: An Intergenerational Conversation with the OD Community
Join a multi-generational team led by Juanita Brown, the co-originator of the World Café process, with Billie Alban and Samantha Tan, in a conversation about the future of OD and our role in it. World Café conversations create a living network of conversation around questions that matter. A Café conversation is a creative process for leading collaborative dialogue, sharing knowledge and creating possibilities for action in groups of all sizes. This powerful process has been used in corporations, non-profit organizations and communities around the world to engage in meaningful inquiry. On Sunday night, conference attendees will create an inter-generational conversation about what matters to us as OD practitioners, to the organizations we serve, and to the OD field.
Juanita Brown, Ph.D., the co-originator of the World Café, collaborates as a thinking partner with senior leaders across sectors to create innovative forums for strategic dialogue on critical business and societal issues. She has worked with a wide variety of clients in the U.S, Latin America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. Juanita has served as a senior affiliate with the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, as a research affiliate with the Institute for the Future and as a Fellow of the World Business Academy. Her book, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations that Matter, co-authored with David Isaacs and the World Café Community, was published in 2005.
Billie Alban is President of Alban and Williams, Ltd., Consultants to Organizations. Prior to launching her firm, she served as Vice President and General Manager of Transpetroleo Corporation in South America. Since 1980, she has won distinction as a national and international management consultant, and currently serves as faculty for Columbia University, Pepperdine University and others. Billie’s book with Barbara Bunker, The Handbook of Large Group Methods, was published in June 2006.
Samantha Tan is a Café activist with a passion for intergenerational and intercultural conversations that call forth our collective wisdom. She actively seeks to learn from and connect with Asian voices that are shaping organizations and communities of the future. She is a founding partner of The Meristem Group, a leadership education and consulting practice that works with those serving the public interest. Most recently, as a Research Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, she examined the leadership challenges of US urban school superintendents.