TEAM + FACULTY
A Global Team and Faculty of Expert Practitioniers and Academic Scholars
Core Team
Dr. Dean Elias
PRESIDENT
Dr. Elias founded a school within a college, Antioch University Seattle, in 1976. He served there for over 12 years and then transitioned to Goddard College as Provost to support a new President dedicated to rebuilding Goddard and thence to CIIS, where he was invited to develop a new school of Transformative Learning and Change, developing MA and Ph.D. programs. After a brief stint with WASC, he became the Dean of Saint Mary’s School of Extended Education.
Ed Kang
EXECUTIVE PRESIDENT / CEO
Ed Kang has served as the Executive Vice President for SynergyWorks global operations and president of ISODC China while also serving on the board of ISDOC global. Ed is a certified executive coach and Registered Organization Development Consultant (RODC) teaching at private academies and universities. He has been the COO for a publicly-traded venture incubation company. Ed is also responsible for the technical development of the GSU global education platform.
Dr. Yongming Tang
CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER
Dr. Yongming Tang is the CEO and founder of SynergyWorks. Dr. Tang is recognized as the first person from mainland China to study management and organization development. He has a MA degree in management from Antioch University, a Ph.D. in Organization Development, and a leadership certificate from Harvard. He has also completed all requirements for a second doctorate degree in Chinese Philosophy and Culture from CIIS. Dr. Tang has over 25 years of consulting experience, serving 1,000 plus companies, including over a hundred of the Fortune 500. He has coached and facilitated over 20,000 employees in workshops and presentations across twelve different countries. Dr. Tang is also the published author of six books in Chinese and English and a host of other papers and articles for international publications.
Dr. Roland Livingston
FACULTY CHAIR
Dr. Roland Livingston is currently an adjunct associate professor at The American University (Washington, DC) and at Colorado Technical University. He is also an on-call faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership. Dr. Livingston is an active member of several professional societies, including The International Society for Organizational Development and Change (ISODC), where he serves as President, The International Leadership Association, and The Academy of Management. His most recent publication is “The Future of Organizational Development in a VUCA World” in The NTL Handbook for Organizational Development and Change: Principles, Practices, and Perspectives (2014). Dr. Livingston received his doctoral degree in Organization Change from Pepperdine University where his research is focused on evaluating the effectiveness of leadership development training and education. He received his Master of Arts Degree in Human Resource Development from American University. He has also done graduate study at New York University and has earned numerous professional certifications.
Dr. Richard Kettner-Polley
ACCREDITATION LIAISON OFFICER
Richard B. Kettner-Polley (Ph.D., Harvard, 1979) was most recently Dean of Academic Affairs at the New England Institute of Art. His most recent position prior to NEIA was as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer for Daniel Webster College. Prior to that he was University Dean of Business and Management for Colorado Technical University, where he transitioned the doctoral programs from local to national programs quadrupling the enrollments, obtained PMI-GAC accreditation, re-designed the MBA programs, designed and launched more than a dozen new programs at the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels. He also founded CTU's Institute for Advanced Studies and served as its first Chancellor. Before CTU he was the senior academic director at University College, University of Denver. As Academic Chair at Jones International University, he oversaw the design of the first all-online regionally accredited MBA programs. He has held Professorships at Northeastern University, University of Arizona, and Lewis & Clark College, and has held Senior Research Professorships in Norway, Sweden, and Germany under Fulbright and NSF grants. From 1985 through 2008, Dr. Kettner-Polley served as Editor of Small Group Research, an international journal of research and application. He served as chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the Academy of Management's annual meetings, held in Denver in 2002, and recently served on an NSF expert panel on small groups and teams. Dr. Kettner-Polley has published more than 40 scholarly articles and books. He was the first recipient of the William Jerome Arnold Award (Academy of Management).
Dr. David Jamieson
Faculty
David W. Jamieson is the former department chair of organizational learning and development at the University of St. Thomas. He has 40 years of experience in leadership, change, strategy, and HR. A past president of ATD (formerly ASTD) and past chair of the Management Consultation Division and Practice Theme Committee, Academy of Management, he is a recipient of OD Network's Lifetime Achievement Award. Dave is co-author of Managing Workforce 2000; The Facilitator's Fieldbook, Third Edition; Consultation for Organizational Change; and Handbook for Strategic HR: Best Practices in Organization Development. He has been published in numerous journals and newsletters and serves as editor of Seasonings, an online journal; as the associate editor for reflections of experience of Journal of Management Inquiry; and on the editorial boards for the Journal of Organization Change Management and The Organization Development Practitioner.