Leadership

Diana Whitney, Ph.D. – Founder, Consulting Partner

Diana Whitney is a global social entrepreneur. She is founder and president emeritus of Corporation for Positive Change, a global consulting cooperative; a founder of the Taos Institute, an international think tank dedicated to relational processes in business, education, families and communities; and a founding advisor to the United Religions Initiative, a global network of 530 interfaith cooperation circles working for peace and social justice.

Dr. Whitney is a positively powerful keynote speaker, whose messages of hope, positive change, and the call for appreciative leadership offer practical guidance for new ways of working, living and being. Diana’s unique style of ‘interactive storytelling’ inspires audiences from 50 to 1500 at national and international conferences and leadership symposiums in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Diana’s presentations are rich tapestries of experience, research and innovative practices that transform leadership and enliven relationships.

Diana is a prolific, provocative and practical author. Her award winning books on Appreciative Leadership and Appreciative Inquiry, the revolutionary process she helped to develop, have been translated into over a dozen languages and are used as text books in business schools, universities and corporate learning centers around the world. The International Organization Development Network (ODN) honored Diana’s written contributions to the field with the Larry Porter Award.

As a master consultant, Dr. Whitney’s work spans the globe. Diana consults with executives and their teams in support of strategic planning and organization development, organization culture creation and transformation, and leadership capacity building. With over thirty years of experience, her clients include British Airways, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, Merck SA, City of Regina, Calgary Health Region, UVA Health System, Idaho Department of Education, and the Sisters of Good Shepherd. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) recognized her Appreciative Inquiry work at GTE (Verizon) with their award for Best Organization Culture Change.

Diana serves as Distinguished Consulting Faculty with Saybrook University, and a Ph.D. advisor with the Taos Institute. She is Expert Faculty for the NCR Picker Patient Centered Care Institute and a Fellow of the World Business Academy.

Dr. Whitney received her Ph.D. from Temple University in Organizational Communication. Her research on the dissemination of educational innovations was funded by the National Institute of Education and used to create an agenda for the development of educational R&D laboratories in the United States.

Diana Whitney’s legacy is apparent in the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who work, live and lead using Appreciative Inquiry. She is described as one of the top five thought leaders in the field, forging a positive revolution that is radically transforming knowledge, understanding and practices in human organizing, leadership, and management – for the good of the people.

Ralph Weickel – President

Ralph Weickel brings 35+ years-experience developing organizations, executives, managers and teams to work at their best and in a positive environment to achieve and exceed performance targets.

He is an expert at facilitating the discovery of one’s best self and then bringing that forth in the work environment. He is able to help executives and managers identify and leverage their strengths while building similar capacities within their Teams.

Ralph’s work is based on the principles of appreciative inquiry, positive psychology and the science of peak performance which allows him to co-create highly successful engagements with clients. He has worked across a broad spectrum of industries including healthcare, manufacturing, finance, government and utilities.

Ralph works globally and has experience in many cultures providing insights into the nuances of different workplace norms. He works on-site and virtually, tailoring the engagement to the client’s needs and preferences incorporating both the personality of the individual and the organization in which they work.

Ralph is seen by his clients as being highly innovative and able to connect at multiple levels to create success and high-performance. One of his strengths is being able to formulate and ask positive questions that result in new thinking and the co-creation of new habits and behaviours for implementing a process that works best for the individual, team or organization.

Prior to his Positive Change Consulting and Coaching practice, Ralph spent 19 years in the financial service industry building high-performing teams and consistently exceeding performance targets. He has experience with a variety of assessments tools and the use of 360 assessments.

Being a native of Germany, Ralph is also fluent in German, in addition to English.