World’s top Organization Development leaders speak at Benedictine in Lisle, Ill.

For more than 50 years, Benedictine University’s top-ranked graduate education programs in organization development have brought the foremost leaders in the industry to the Chicago area.

To celebrate and highlight excellence in this field, an entire lineup of these experts, thinkers and practitioners will descend on Benedictine for a series of presentations to discuss the acceleration of change in organizations and the future of Organization Development from 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 2, and from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 3.

This unique series offers an opportunity for attendees to hear from a large number of innovative and sought-after speakers such as David Cooperrider, Ph.D., W. Warner Burke, Ph.D., Christopher Worley, Ph.D., Richard Woodman, Ph.D., Allan Church, Ph.D., and more – all in the same location.

Tickets for the two-day event are $100 per person, which includes a continental breakfast and lunch on Saturday and a continental breakfast on Sunday. Tickets are available at www.ben.edu/50plus. Registration is required and space is limited.

The event is free for program alumni and members of professional organizations (Chicagoland Chapter of the American Society for Training and Development, OD Network, OD Network Chicago, Society for Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Association of Chicago and the International Society for Organization Development).

Speakers for Saturday’s “OD Past, Present and Future,” presentation include Cooperrider, the Fairmount Minerals Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He is past chair of the Academy of Management’s Organizational Development and Change Division, and has lectured and taught at such prestigious universities as Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago.

Cooperrider currently serves as faculty director of the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, a global business forum. He has published 18 books, more than 100 articles and has received numerous awards.

He was recently honored as the third Peter F. Drucker Distinguished Fellow for the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.
Cooperider is best known for his pioneering theory on Appreciative Inquiry. He has served as advisor to senior executives in business and societal leadership roles, including former President Bill Clinton and Nobel laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica.

Other speakers include:

•    W. Warner Burke, Ph.D., the Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
•    Christopher G. Worley, Ph.D., senior research scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and professor of organizational theory and management at Pepperdine University.
•    Richard W. Woodman, Ph.D., the Lawrence Fouraker Professor of Management at Texas A&M University.
•    Allan Church, Ph.D., vice president of organization development global groups, functions and corporate, and executive assessment and development at PepsiCo.
•    Janine Waclawski, Ph.D., vice president of human resources for PepsiCo’s commercial and corporate functions.

Speakers for the Saturday afternoon “OD and the World of Practice” presentation include Dalitso Sulamoyo, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies, a membership organization of 40 nonprofits and public entities that serve communities and economically challenged citizens in Illinois.

Sulamoyo is also the president and CEO of the Illinois Community Action Development Corporation, a statewide affordable housing development corporation, and the Illinois Community Action Fund, the advocacy arm for Community Action in Illinois. He has overseen the development of three affordable housing complexes worth more than $15 million in the downstate Illinois communities of West Frankfort, Beardstown and Hoopeston.

Sulamoyo is a senior executive scholar at Benedictine University at Springfield, where he teaches graduate-level Organization Development courses in human resources, business research methods and international organization development. He is also a distinguished visiting scholar for Benedictine’s Ph.D. in Organization Development program.

Other speakers include:

•    Matt Minahan, Ed.D., president of MM & Associates.
•    Tim Goodly, Ph.D., senior vice president of human resources for CNN Worldwide, Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

Speakers for Sunday’s “Chicago Style OD,” presentation include:

•    Bruce Mabee, managing partner at Milestone Partners LLC.
•    Richard Axelrod, co-founder of the Axelrod Group Inc., a faculty member in the professional program in Organization Development at Columbia University and guest lecturer at Benedictine University.
•    Emily Axelrod, co-founder and principal of the Axelrod Group Inc.
•    Jennifer Smith, manager of human resources process improvement at Molex.
•    Christopher Fernandez, Ph.D., director of organizational effectiveness, learning and change at Magnetrol International.
•    Philip Anderson, Ph.D., principal consultant and owner of BKD Consulting LLC, and an adjunct professor at Benedictine University.

Benedictine University’s Master of Science in Management and Organizational Behavior program is one of the oldest and most recognized programs of its kind in the country. Students learn from the foremost thinkers and practitioners in the industry and through advanced experiential learning classes, internships and special lecture series that communicate some of the most current research and trends in the field.

To further enhance the leadership acumen and values-bases business practices of high-performing CEOs and administrators, the University developed a doctoral program in Organization Development, which has earned more than 100 professional awards and special recognitions from national and international organizations.

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Benedictine University is an independent Roman Catholic institution located in Lisle, Illinois just 25 miles west of Chicago, and has branch campuses in Springfield, Illinois and Mesa, Arizona. Founded in 1887, Benedictine provides 55 undergraduate majors and 17 graduate and four doctoral programs. Benedictine University is ranked No. 1 among the country’s fastest-growing campuses between 2000-2010 in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s list of private nonprofit research institutions, and Forbes magazine named Benedictine among “America’s Top Colleges” for the third consecutive year in 2013. Benedictine University’s Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) program is listed by Crain’s Chicago Business as the fifth largest in the Chicago area in 2013.