Dr. Jackie Stavros

Professor of Management at Lawrence Technological University (LTU) College of Business and IT​

Jackie Stavros, DM. Jackie’s 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.

Jackie 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 loveable dog, Rex.