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.

Cheri Torres, PhD , author and speaker, is CEO of Collaborative by Design. She partners with people to catalyze positive change in workplaces and communities. To support leadership and team excellence, she introduces two simple communication practices that give people the power to strengthen relationships, expand possibilities, and increase productivity and engagement through everyday conversation. These practices are grounded in neuroscience, positive psychology, and Appreciative Inquiry, one of the most widely used approaches for systems change. She’s worked with thousands of leaders and teams around the world to support high performance, engagement, strategic planning, culture transformation, and organizational success.

Among numerous books and articles she written, the second edition of her Berrett Koehler bestseller, Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement is now available. It includes a new chapter and tips she and her co-author have developed during their trainings to support deliberate communication. She’s been featured in leading media sources including Fast Company, Forbes, HR Magazine, SmartBrief, Training Industry, and Training Magazine. Her keynote presentations reach a broad range of people, including HR Directors, organization development practitioners, women leaders, educators, and corporate management. A perpetual learner, she’s accumulated a PhD in Collaborative Learning, an MBA, a Masters in Transpersonal Psychology, Level II certification in the Barrett Values Cultural Assessment tools, and Level II certification in Spiral Dynamics Integral.