Dan Kowalski is a Human Resources Management Consultant in the VHA Human Resources Management Group, a virtual self-managed team of internal consultants providing HR support to senior VHA Leadership.

Robert Petzel, MD, is the Director of the VHA Network 23, a network of health care facilities in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and portions of northern Kansas, Missouri, western Illinois, Wisconsin, and eastern Wyoming. He also chairs a national committee focusing on health care measures and performance improvement.

Rita Kowalski is an original member of the Project Team and since February 2003 has served as VA Workplace Stress and Aggression Project's Special Projects Manager. She has worked on a number of change efforts in the Department of Veterans Affairs including organizational measures, executive appraisal and learning.

Joel H. Neuman is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizational Behavior and Director of the Center for Applied Management at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He was among the first to explore the nature and prevalence of a wide range of both overt and covert forms of workplace aggression.

Lyle Yorks is Associate Professor of Adult Learning and Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University. He has written widely on action learning and collaborative inquiry as processes for facilitating adult learning.

Mark Braun is a Project Manager at BioSquare, a research park developed by Boston University and Boston Medical Center. In this capacity he is responsible for managing the industry/university relationships with companies seeking core services, collaborative agreements, and companies that are co-located on the campus. He is a member of the Management Team of the recently opened BioSquare Discovery and Innovation Center, a life science incubator. Mark has worked with the Center for Quality of Management on collaborative projects

Joseph Raelin is the newly appointed Asa S. Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern. In this role, he has overall responsibility for the Center for Work and Learning. In particular, his initial interest is to seek common ground among the many disciplines and traditions that support POE, document their effectiveness, and bolster policy initiatives that sustain NU’s commitment to this approach to educational provision. Joe was formerly Professor of Management at the Boston College Wallace E. Carroll School of Management. He received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research has centered on executive and professional education and development. He is a prolific writer having contributed articles for the foremost management journals, among which are some frame-breaking works that are now heavily cited.His publications include: The Salaried Professional: How to Make the Most of Your Career (Greenwood/Praeger, 1984); The Clash of Cultures: Managers Managing Professionals (Harvard Business School Press, 1991), considered now to be a classic in the field of managing professionals; the most recent Work-Based Learning: The New Frontier of Management Development (Prentice-Hall, the 'OD' Series, 2000); and the soon-to-be-released Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone (Berrett-Koehler, 2003).

Patrick O'Brien is co-founder of Performance Consulting, Inc. Performance Consulting, Inc. has been doing business for 24 years. Our focus is on helping our clients learn how to create sustainable stakeholder value. Stakeholders are customers, employees, investors, and the community at large. We work in the areas of Organizational Research, Strategy and Policy Development, and Performance Systems. Additional educational and professional achievements include an Undergraduate Degree and Masters in Classical Language, Fordham University, NY, Masters degree in Education, Loyola University, Chicago, Secondary School Teaching and Administration [Principal], Vice-President, Secondary Education, Central Community College, Chicago, Certificate in Advanced Management, University of Chicago, Industrial Relations Center, Director: Training & Development, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida.

Daniel K. Saint is a PhD candidate at Benedictine University and an organizational consultant and co-owner of Appreciative Inquiry Consulting, LLC (AIC) where he serves on the Global Board of Trustees. AIC is a global firm with several of the world's leading thinkers and practitioners of appreciative inquiry. He has broad consulting experience serving a wide variety of organizations in large-scale change projects. Clients served include DaimlerChrysler, Intel, General Motors, The World Bank, Navistar, and Boeing. Previously, Dan was a partner with Deloitte & Touche where he served in national leadership roles. In industry, he has served in senior executive roles as CFO, COO and head of corporate finance for a large financial institution. Dan has worked in North and South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. This diverse experience heightens his awareness to the modern challenges of leadership and organizational complexity. His expertise is in appreciative inquiry, organizational learning, dialogue and social construction, team performance, and organizational development from a Gestalt perspective.

Dr. Jacqueline M. Stavros is associate Professor at the Graduate College of Management, Lawrence Technological University and a charting co-owner of Appreciative Inquiry Consulting, LLC. She is a trainer and consultant specializing in appreciative inquiry, strategic change, leadership, capacity building, international marketing, cross-cultural communications and e-learning. She has been using Appreciative Inquiry to help her clients identify their positive core and get focused for profitable growth. She works primarily with small-to-medium sized organizations in a wide variety of industries: automotive, banking, information technology, education, healthcare, government, NGOs and professional services. She has served as a consultant and trainer to ERIM International, General Motors, HCR-Manorcare, Michigan Small Business Development Centers, Global Marketing Insights, Tendercare, Girl Scouts of U.S.A., ASPCA in New York City, and Tuffy Mufflers. Her most recent presentations and publications include: “Global Capacity Building Using Appreciative Inquiry”, “Appreciative Inquiry in Total Quality Action for AQP”, “Cultivating a Positive Culture Through Appreciative Inquiry”, and “Celebrate the Stories: West Springfield Public Schools” (with Marge Schiller and Debbie Morris). She most recently co-authored the Premier Edition, The First Appreciative Inquiry Handbook: For Leaders of Change (with co-authors David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney).

Dennis Sandow is a research trustee of the Society for Organizational Learning and sole proprietor of Reflexus Company and Oregon research organization. I started a business in 1978 that employed people whose lives were at risk in the backwards of institutions for people with developmental disabilities. My business, Dynatron became Hewlett-Packard’s highest quality vendor in the early 1980’s and the demonstration led to the closure of institutions and the creation of investment in community services. At the University of Oregon I was responsible for two research grants. One studied the social effects of employing people with severe disabilities. Multiple research methodologies were used to do so including quantitative research, qualitative research, social network analysis and employee explanations. The second grant studied the economic effects of employing people with disabilities and cost benefit analysis was used along with human and social capital measures.Since joining SOL I have been participating in the Global SOL efforts and in the Knowledge and Innovation Network with Goran Carstedt and Nick Zenuik. I believe that SOL is changing the world. I live in Eugene, Oregon with my sweetheart of 31 years, two adult children and many animals. I enjoy gardening, bicycling, bird watching and community involvement.

Katherine Holt established Peakinsight LLC to foster catalytic connections between people, organizations, and the environment to impact how business will operate profitably and evolve sustainably in the future. As a ZERI practitioner, she promotes the adoption of practices to eliminate waste and achieve triple bottom line results. She challenges clients to take a systemic view of change and engage the “kokoro” (i.e., heart, mind, spirit, and will) of everyone in the enterprise. Her collaborative learning approach stimulates new awareness about possibilities for the creative evolution of organizations. Katherine sees the world differently, asks penetrating questions, and is not afraid to spark controversy. She is passionate about people making changes that make a difference. Katherine received her Ph.D. in Industrial Relations from the business school at the University of Minnesota. She worked as a consultant for Personnel Decisions International (PDI) for 16 years and managed their office in Tokyo from 1994-2000. She left PDI to immerse herself in change research and sustainability practices prior to starting her own firm.

Terrie Conway (MPA, CHRP) is Regional Manager for Organization Development and Learning with the Vancouver Island Health Authority, in Victoria, BC, Canada. As leader for VIHA's Centre for Excellence in Learning Terrie is responsible for implementing VIHA's world class Leadership Development program - `Leading in a Learning Organization'. Terrie has focused her career on facilitating learning and developing potential - in herself and in others. She holds various professional degrees including a BA, BSW, and an MPA as well as professional certifications such as: Certified Human Resource Practitioner, Executive Coach, MBTI Qualified, Inner Quality Management Facilitator, Open Space Facilitator and Master Trainer.

Eve Mitleton-Kelly is the director and founder of the Complexity Research Programme at the London School of Economics, UK; Visiting Professor at the Open University; Coordinator of Links with Industry & Government in the European Network of Excellence, Exystence; Executive Director of SOL-UK (London). The focus of her research has been the strategy process in the business and information systems domains, with over 90 companies in the UK and USA. Her recent work has concentrated on the implications of the theories of complexity for IT legacy systems, organisational learning and the emergence of organisational forms and has developed a methodology for identifying conditions that enable and constrain those processes, using the principles of complexity. She has written on complex social systems and on the application of the theory in practice and has edited a book on complexity and organisations with 14 international authors, ‘Complex Systems and Evolutionary Perspectives of Organisations: the Application of Complexity Theory to Organisations’, Elsevier 2003, ISBN 0-08-043957-8. EMK’s chapter outlines 10 principles of complexity and enabling infrastructures.She has been an Advisory Board Member on Complexity to Citibank New York, 1997-8; Adviser to the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Education, 1988; and has led Complexity Thinking Workshops for senior teams in the World Bank (Washington DC), Shell UK, GlaxoSmithKline UK, BT, Citibank (New York), and several major organisations in the Aerospace industry. Her first career between 1967-83, was with the British Civil Service in the Department of Trade and Industry, where she was involved in the formulation of policy and the negotiation of EU Directives.

Jim Ritchie-Dunham is President of the Institute for Strategic Clarity and a visiting scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Co-author of Managing from Clarity: Identifying, Aligning and Leveraging Strategic Resources (Wiley, 2001), he helps individuals and groups gain greater clarity about their organization’s strategy. He sits on the board of directors of SoL and the Pine Hill Waldorf School.

Rafael Callejas has been the Regional Director for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Region since January 2001. Prior to that, he was the Country Director of CARE El Salvador after having worked nearly 15 years in development and in the private sector as a civil engineer.

Barbara Heinzen is a strategic consultant based in London, working with multinational companies and public institutions. Her consulting practice was founded in 1987 following two years with Royal Dutch Shell's scenario planning team after the completion of her PhD at the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London. She takes an empirically-based, hands-on approach to assignments and is as comfortable working with board level corporate teams as she is with villagers. Recently she has specialised in societies in transition with clients in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Currently she is facilitating national civil society scenario building projects in East Africa and has just finished a book on the invention of ecological societies.

John R. Ehrenfeld is Executive Director of the recently formed International Society for Industrial Ecology. He retired in 2000 as the Director of the MIT Program on Technology, Business, and Environment, an interdisciplinary educational, research, and policy program. He continues to teach, do research, and write. His current projects focus on industrial ecology and sustainability. At MIT, from 1985 until he retired in 2000, he was Senior Research Associate and Lecturer in the MIT Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development, where he taught in the MIT Technology and Policy Program. His research at MIT focused on how businesses manage environmental concerns, seeking models leading to organizational and technological changes to improve sustainable practices. He spent part of the1998-1999 academic year at the Technical University of Lisbon as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar and was Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Delft during the 2000-1 academic year. He continues to work with Delft as chair of, the Scientific Advisory Board, Design and Management of Infrastructures Programme. He also teaches each year in the Industrial Ecology Program at the Norwegian Technical University. In 2000-1, he was Visiting Fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Management. Since 2001, he is a core faculty member of a seminar series on sustainability and strategy for senior corporate executives, organized by York University. He serves on the faculty of the Bainbridge Island Graduate Institute and teaches industrial ecology as part of their MBA program. He also is part of the core team of coaches and researchers for the Society of Organizational Learning Sustainability Consortium, a group of firms committed to developing sustainable practices. In October 1999, the World Resources Institute honored him with a lifetime achievement award for his academic accomplishments in the field of business and environment. He received the Founders Award for Distinguished Service from the Academy of Management's Organization and Natural Environment Division in August 2000. He is associate editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. He holds a B. S. and Sc. D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT, and is author or co-author of over 200 papers, books, reports, and other publications.

John Carroll is a Professor in the Organization Studies Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His recent research focuses on individual, team, and organizational learning from experience, which he has studied in collaboration with the SoL Sustainability Consortium and the nuclear industry.

C. Will Zhang has over 25 years of experience in the Chinese energy cultivation and martial art tradition. He received advanced energy medicine training at the Lianhuashan Hospital, National Association of Traditional Medicine, Hubei, China, and has also studied at MIT, Ph.D. Program (history and social study of science and technology), and at Tsinghua University, Beijing (laser physics ’85, engineering management ’87). Will’s experience includes research/ teaching at Tsinghua University, MIT, Norwegian University of Science and Technology/ SINTEF, and the Norwegian Ministry of Health’s Chinese Medicine Seminar (2000). He is a Research Member of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and Director of Wufang Health and Wholeness.

Mette S. Husemoen is Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, hosted by Dr. Peter Senge, MIT/ SoL. Mette holds a Ph.D. (Technology Management ’98) from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where she also majored in engineering physics (’91). Her Ph.D. dissertation is the world’s first to apply traditional Chinese Yuanji energy cultivation theory in understanding the dynamics and bridging of engineering design and operations. Her experience includes studies at Institut Francais du Pétrole (IFP), Paris; work at Elf Petroleum Norway; research at NTNU/ SINTEF and Harvard University. She is coordinator of the NTNU Sustainable Innovation Initiative (SII).

Having been working together for ten years, Mette and Will shares a passion for bridging the ancient Chinese energy medicine/ science with modern medical science/ healthcare, and with an experiential, embodied human-Nature wholeness approach to organizational/ communal learning and cultural transformation toward socio-ecological health and sustainability.

Pete Carlson is a consultant on building healthy, high-performing organizations, based in the Washington, DC. area. For the past twelve years, he has helped companies build their capacity to manage in complex and turbulent environments, working with both management and union leadership to develop a clear and compelling logic for how to achieve success, to identify high-leverage opportunities for performance improvement, and to fully engage employees to address those opportunities. During that time, Pete has also managed collaborative networks of leading-edge companies to explore new strategies for managing and measuring the contributions of people to organizational success. Using action research as a tool for inquiry into what works, what doesn't, and why, the networks have generated new insights into what makes the biggest difference in performance improvement and organizational renewal. Prior to establishing his consulting practice, Pete served as an advisor to U.S. Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin on strategies to promote high-performance work organizations. As the director of a national advisory commission of business and labor leaders, he organized forums of leading experts and practitioners to identify what was working and what was getting in the way of spreading the adoption of total quality management. Pete also served as chief economist for the National Alliance of Business, where he conducted case studies of the competitive strategies and changing human resource requirements of several hundred companies in the United States and six foreign countries. Earlier in his career, Pete spent over ten years working in manufacturing plants.

Philip Mirvis is an organizational psychologist whose research and private practice concerns large-scale organizational change and the character of the workforce and workplace. He has authored eight books on his studies including The Cynical Americans (social trends), Building the Competitive Workforce (human resource investments), and Joining Forces (the human side of mergers). His most recent is a business transformation story, To the Desert and Back. Mirvis is a fellow of the Work/Family Roundtable, Center for Corporate Citizenship, and Corporate Branding Initiative and a board member of the Foundation for Community Encouragement. He has taught at Boston University, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China and the London Business School. He is adjunct faculty for the University of Michigan’s Graduate School of Business

Elena Antonacopoulou is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the University of Liverpool. She is founder and director of the GNOSIS Group, a Center of Excellence in management research bringing together an international pool of academics and practitioners across a range of sector and specializations, consultants and policy-makers. GNOSIS is funded by ESRC/EPSRC and a range of corporations. She is also joint Editor-in-chief of the international journal Management Learning.

Kristen Zecchi is a Research Analyst at The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College. At the Center, she is a primary researcher for the Executive Forum project. She previously worked as an organizational culture and change consultant and has a strong background in qualitative research with an AM from The University of Chicago in Anthropology and an AB from Brown University in Comparative Literature.

Julie Engel Manga is the Assistant Director of Research at The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, where she supervisors Center research projects as well as participates as a researcher on projects focused on corporate/nonprofit partnerships with a business and community development orientation and the Executive Forum on Corporate Citizenship. Prior to her work at The Center, Dr. Manga, a sociologist, taught at Boston College and worked as an organization development consultant, with a focus on enabling cross-functional work teams to work more effectively. In addition to her work at The Center, Dr. Manga has a practice as a professional and personal development coach, using an integral coaching methodology.

Steve Rochlin is the Director Research and Policy Development at The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, where he has worked since 1995. Prior to arriving at The Center. He works with Center members and on research that focuses on the measurement of corporate citizenship, strategic business and community development, and the integration of corporate citizenship into business strategy. Steve has worked extensively in the areas of technology-based economic development for both the National Academy of Sciences and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington., He has been a contributing author to a number of monographs, journals, and books including Accountability Quarterly; Business and Community Development; Business in Society; Benchmarks for International Corporate Community Involvement; Making the Business Case for Corporate Community Involvement; Management Consulting: A Guide to the Profession; Measurement Demystified--Determining the Value of Corporate Community.

Robert Sroufe is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management in the Operations and Strategic Management Department at Boston College. Research interests include Environmental Management Systems, ISO 14000, Environmentally Responsible Manufacturing, Green Supply Chain Management, Green MRP systems, Green Purchasing, New Product Design, and Performance Metrics. Mr. Sroufe received his first environmental research grant in high school for work on acid precipitation and impacts on natural and man-made lakes in south central Michigan. Since then he has worked in Aquatic research laboratories, been involved with environmental law enforcement and environmental grass roots groups before becoming a lab manager for the Research On Microbial Ecology laboratory at Michigan State University. While at the ROME lab, his research initiatives involved finding microorganisms, and the genetic evolution of these same organisms that degrade hazardous materials. After completing his MBA in Supply Chain Management, Mr. Sroufe worked with the Department of Defense at the Defense Logistics Services Center as a project manager and systems analyst. In this capacity, Mr. Sroufe helped with the assessment, design and development of information systems such as the Hazardous Materials Information Systems, and the Environmental Reporting Logistics System. The major portion of his time was spent developing the Environmentally Preferred Product Decision Support System. This middle-ware based system is designed to aid in the identification and purchasing of environmentally preferred products from several distributed IS platforms and programming languages. Mr. Sroufe is Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, facility compliance certified, and was a Defense Logistics Agency Environmental Task Force member for the transition of an Environmental Products Catalog to Battle Creek, MI. Mr. Sroufe has worked with the FTC, EPA, DoD, the DLA and several other Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) to find solutions to environmental problems within government and industry. Since leaving the government sector, Mr. Sroufe has been actively engaged in working with companies to better understand the development and integration of environmental management systems and performance metrics.

Sylvia Vriesendorp is an Organization Development Specialist with Management Sciences for Health, a nonprofit public health consulting group based in Boston, MA. She is frequently asked to facilitate organizational retreats, teambuilding and strategic planning exercises all with the intended effect of producing, not only tangible plans but also an improved organizational climate for collective learning. Ms. Vriesendorp has facilitated numerous such events, both in the United States and overseas, in English and French, ranging in size from 10 to 100 people over the last 25 years. These 3-4 day exercises are characterized by a high level of enthusiasm and outcomes such as shared visions, clarity and consensus on mayor obstacles and key strategies, the discovery of common ground among diverse stakeholders, a surge of energy towards the resolution of organizational issues and the creation or re-connection of organizational and personal relationships. Ms. Vriesendorp is a regular presenter at the International Association of Facilitators and the Organization Behavior Teaching Conference. Originally trained as a psychologist, Ms. Vriesendorp's special interest is in how people behave in organizations and the influence of culture and gender dynamics on productivity and morale.

Peter Rivard is currently a Research Associate at the Veterans Administration Center for Health, Quality, Outcomes, and Economic Research and a doctoral candidate in the Organization Studies Department at Boston College's Carroll School of Management. Prior to his return to academia, Peter worked for fifteen years as a health care manager. He is interested in organizational learning and action science, particularly in the area of safety.

Tom Bigda-Peyton has been a researcher, consultant, and educator in Organizational Learning since 1983. After working with Chris Arygyris and Don Schon in the mid-80’s, Tom was drawn to the project of learning how to cross the “chasm” between the early adopters of this work and the pragmatic majority in the academic and business worlds. He works with line organizations, research and development labs, and educational groups toward gaining wider adoption of organizational learning innovations.

Martin Welp is a senior scientist working with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Department of Global Change and Social Systems). His research interests include stakeholder involvement in climate change research and methods of participatory integrated assessment. Dr. Welp is the contact person for the European Climate Forum (ECF).

Karen Ayas is a research fellow at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, partner in The Ripples Group - a consulting practice specialising in growth strategies and change management - and associate editor of Reflections:The SoL Journal.

Beebe Nelson is the Working Forums Founder & President, and a consultant in innovation and product development. She is a frequent contributor to conferences and journals: "Product and Technology Roadmapping," co-authored with Rich Albright, will appear in the PDMA Toolbook next year. Beebe holds a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University and is a certified New Product Development Professional (NPDP). She is a Consultant Member of SoL, and is on the faculty of Sequent Learning Networks. Beebe is Chair of the Board of Partners in Ending Hunger, an organization which takes a strategic approach to ending hunger in the United States.

Barry Sugarman is a social scientist with a Ph.D. in sociology and anthropology from Princeton University. He has conducted organizational case studies and also collects other peoples' cases in support of his research into organizational transformation. As Research Coordinator for the Society for Organizational Learning he facilitates research in several areas with member organizations. Dr. Sugarman was Professor of Management at Lesley College for 20 years. Despite avoiding college committees as much as possible, he served one full term as Chair of the All-College Faculty Assembly. The move to his current SoL position was helped by his 1995 sabbatical, spent as Research Associate at the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management (before it morphed into SoL). This is not a straight-line career path. His first academic position was at Oxford University, England. After that he moved to the U.S. to become one of the first professionals to work with the new therapeutic communities for drug addicts in recovery. He later worked in the community mental health system, in planning and program evaluation. Then at Lesley College Sugarman designed and directed for ten years the unique master's degree program in management of substance abuse services. He is the author of four books, over fifty published articles and a lot of working papers (available on the SoL web site Knowledge Repository). He urges fellow SoL members to post their own work there too.

Marilyn Darling is president of Boston-based Signet Consulting Group, founded in 1989 to conduct research and consulting in strategies for corporate learning. Recent clients include such organizations as The World Bank, DTE Energy, Nortel Networks, Harley-Davidson and the Federal Aviation Administration. Prior to opening her consulting practice, Marilyn was president of Learning to Learn, Inc., providing critical thinking skills programs to universities and corporations. She is a charter member of the Society for Organizational Learning.

Richard Hagberg, chairman of the board and licensed psychologist, founded Hagberg Consulting Group in 1984. He is a personal advisor to more than 600 corporate presidents and CEOs and is widely published and recognized as an expert on effective leadership and organizational culture. Richard received his Ph.D. in Consulting Psychology from Washington State University.