Jacqueline M. Stavros' (Jackie) passion is working with others to discover their purpose in creating positive change. She has over thirty years of leadership, strategy, organization development, and change management experience. The heart of her work is using Appreciative Inquiry (AI), one of the most popular approaches to positive change, which brings out the best in people to impact productivity, engagement, and performance in their organizations and communities. Jackie has been integrating strengths-based approaches into her research, teaching, training, coaching, and consulting work to strengthen relationships and inspire innovation. She works with organizations in leadership development, team building, and strategic planning. She helps them identify and articulate their values, vision, mission, strategy, and initiatives to build collaborative teams and communities. She has worked across all sectors, including for-profit, nonprofit, government, and a wide spectrum of industries.

Jackie is a professor at Lawrence Technological University (LTU) College of Business and IT in Michigan. She is a member of the AI Council of Practitioners for the Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and the Taos Institute. She serves as an AI Mentor for XCHANGE: Conversations for Exponential Outcomes. Before she joined LTU, her industry work included manufacturing, automotive, banking, technology, government, and professional services. Her first professional position was as a sales rep for Cutco Cutlery, whose leaders planted in her the seeds of positivity and possibility.

Jackie has coauthored many books and articles, including the second edition of Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement(www.cwh.today) and Learning to SOAR: Creating Strategy That Inspires Innovation and Engagement. SOAR is a positive approach to strategic thinking, planning, conversations, and leading that focuses on strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results (www.soar-strategy.com). Her work has been featured in Forbes, SmartBrief, Detroit’s Live in the D, People and Strategy, and DBusiness Magazine. She has worked in 25 countries using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to affect the lives of thousands or people and hundreds of organizations improve capacity to thrive and increase performance. She is a keynote speaker on AI, SOAR, and positive approaches to leadership development and change. She earned a Doctor of Management, dissertation: Capacity Building Using an Appreciative Approach: A Relational Process of Building Your Organization’s Future from Case Western Reserve University, an MBA from Michigan State University, and a BA from Wayne State University. She lives in Brighton, Michigan, with her husband, Paul, and lovable dog, Rex.

Diana Whitney, Ph.D. is President of Corporation for Positive Change, a consulting firm dedicated to the creation of collaborative advantage and life affirming organizations. She is an internationally recognized consultant, keynote speaker, and thought leader on Appreciative Inquiry, positive change, Appreciative Leadership and spirituality at work. Diana is a fellow of the World Business Academy, a Distinguished Consulting Faculty with Saybrook University, and a founder of the Taos Institute.

She is a coauthor or coeditor of fifteen books and dozens of articles, and chapters including The Power of Appreciative Inquiry (with Amanda Trosten-Bloom), The Appreciative Inquiry Handbook (with David Cooperrider and Jackie Stavros), The Appreciative Inquiry Summit and her newest Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Drive Winning Performance and Build a Thriving Organization. Diana is the 2004 recipient of the OD Network’s Larry Porter Award for contribution to the field of OD through writing.

Diana’s work is large scale and high engagement, focusing on culture change, strategic planning, merger integration, union-management partners and service excellence. Included among her clients are British Airways, CapGemini, Verizon, Glaxo Smithkline, PECO, NY Power Authority, Canadian School of Public Service, Merck, the Sisters of Good Shepherd and the University of Virginia Health System. Diana is a founding consultant and ongoing advisor to the United Religions Initiative, a global interfaith organization that now exists in over 450 locations worldwide.

Diana lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and can be reached at diana@positivechange.org.