Faculty + Staff

Jacqueline (Jackie) Stavros’ passion is working with others to create meaningful results for positive change. She is recognized for her creation of SOAR, a positive approach to strategic thinking, planning, and leading. She is a professor in the College of Business and Information Technology at Lawrence Technological University (LTU) and Advisor for David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry. She is also one of the Faculty Athletic Representatives at LTU, where she enjoys working with student athletes to help empower them to navigate and advocate for themselves. She inspires them with lifework not homework. She co-authored many articles and books with two recent: books, Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement (www.ConversationsWorthHaving.today) and Learning to SOAR: Creating Strategy that Inspires Innovation and Engagement (soar-strategy.com). She has worked across all sectors, including for-profit, nonprofit, government, and a wide spectrum of industries. 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. Her work has been featured in Forbes, SmartBrief, Detroit’s Live in the D, dbusiness Magazine, and leadership and training blogs and podcasts. She is a keynote speaker on positive approaches to leadership, strategy, and change. She earned a Doctor of Management in Capacity Building Using an Appreciative Approach: A Relational Process of Building Your Organization’s Future.

Jackie has over 30 years of leadership, strategy, strategic planning, organization development and change, marketing, and international experience. Jackie started Lawrence Technological University (LTU) as an Adjunct Professor in 1997 and joined the faculty full-time in April 2000. Today, she is Professor and DBA Program Director for the College of Management, Lawrence Technological University. She teaches in the Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral programs: Leading Change, Principles of Management, Strategic Management, Organization Development, Qualitative Research Design, Creating Sustainable Business Value, and Leadership. She integrates strengths-based, whole system, and sustainability concepts and practices such as Appreciative Inquiry (AI), SOAR, and Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) into her research, teaching, training, and consulting work. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a person’s or system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. SOAR is a strengths-based strategic thinking, strategy formulation, and planning framework that allows an organization to construct its future through collaboration and a whole system approach. SOAR stands for: Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results (www.soar-strategy.com). She uses these approaches to work with individuals, teams, divisions, and organizations to build dynamic relationships and co-create and facilitate strategic change initiatives.

Her research interests are focused on the positive theories and practices of organization development and change, appreciative approaches to inquiry, relationship building, strategy (SOAR), social construction, effective leadership development, and sustainable development/sustainability. She is also involved in Business as an Agent of World Benefit to bring business and society together to create agendas that focus on the triple bottom line (people, planet, and profits). An article from her dissertation, “Capacity Building: Using an Appreciative Approach to Enhance Organizational Performance” won the North American Management Society Best Nonprofit Paper Award for 2008 (co-authored with Patty Castelli and Jane Seiling). She has 25 years’ experience in e-learning from course and curriculum design and development to teaching online. She has taught and guest lectured at Benedictine University, Davenport University, Illinois State University, Lansing Community College, Madonna University, Michigan State University, Oakland University, Schoolcraft College, Stockholm School of Management and Economics, University of Detroit – Mercy, University of Michigan, and Walsh College, William Davidson Institute – University of Michigan (faculty affiliate). Jackie truly enjoys working with students on their research agendas and career plans. She has served on over 55 dissertation committees.

She has co-authored 9 books, 26 book chapters, and 52 articles. Two new books: Learning to SOAR: Creating Strategy that Inspires Innovation and Engagement (published 2021 by Thin Book Publishers) and Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement – Second Edition (published in 2021 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers – Bestseller). Conversations Worth Having has been translated into Chinese and Spanish. CWH has a Focus Book Series with first in Conversations Worth Having for Clinicians, Caseworkers, and Coaches. Other books include: Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Transformation and Change, Fourth Edition (with William J. Rothwell and Roland Sullivan), Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change, Third Edition (with William J. Rothwell and Roland Sullivan), Thin Book of SOAR: Building Strengths-Based Strategy (with Gina Hinrichs), The First Appreciative Inquiry Handbook: for Leaders of Change (with David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney), and Dynamic Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Appreciative Inquiry in Daily Living (with Cheri Torres). Dynamic Relationships has been translated and published in French and Dutch. She recently completed two book chapters with Matthew Cole, “A Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results (SOAR) Framework for Coaching Psychology” in Meta-Theoretical Perspectives and Applications for Multi-Cultural Contexts of Coaching Psychology and “Promoting the Positive Effects of Team Diversity through SOAR: An Inclusive Approach to Strategic Thinking, Planning, and Leading in Positive Organizing in a Global Society: Understanding and Engaging Differences for Capacity-Building Inclusion by Taylor and Francis Press. She has also edited several books in appreciative inquiry, change, organization development, and social construction. She has done over 130 conference presentations.

She continues to work with executives, managers, staff and line teams, and organizations’ stakeholders to help them get organized collaboratively and creatively and focused for sustainable growth with a focus on strategies that align with the triple bottom line (TBL). Through executive coaching and whole system small and large-scale change methods, she helps organizations identify and articulate their values, vision and mission statements, strategy, and strategic initiatives and build collaborative teams and communities for inspired action that centers on the positive core. Clients have include ACCI Business System, Americhem, BAE Systems, Covenant Community Care, Edsel and Eleanor Ford Foundation, Facebook, Fasteners, Inc., Flint Intermediate School District, General Motors of Mexico, Jefferson Wells (a Division of Manpower), NASA, Tendercare Healthcare Centers, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Advisory University, Texas A&M, United Way, Girl Scouts, National Education Association, Orbseal Technologies, Washtenaw Literacy, U.S. Army – Team Warren, and several Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive suppliers, and primary, secondary, and higher education. She has worked across all sectors: nonprofit, for-profit, government, and social-entrepreneurs. She has worked and traveled to over 25 countries throughout Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America. She serves clients as an Appreciative Inquiry Advisor with the Flourishing Leadership Institute and Council of Appreciative Inquiry Practice with the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry.

She has done over 175 invited presentations on OD & Change as it relates to Appreciative Inquiry, SOAR, and Conversations/Communications, Creating Sustainable Value, Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), and Strengths-based Leadership Styles  at Australian Management Institute, Business Links, Cengage Learning – Asian/Pacific Rim, Hewlett Packard, American Dietetic Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers, gedas USA, National City Bank, National Multiple Sclerosis Society – Michigan Chapter, Oakland Leadership, Linkage’s National OD Conference, National Training Labs (NTL), Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), many national OD and management conferences, and the Detroit Chamber of Commerce.  In 2010, she completed a series of workshops and book tour of Thin Book of SOAR in Australia.  In fall 2013 and 2015, she traveled to Bangkok, Thailand to lead a workshop on Advances in AI, SOAR, and a summit on “SOARing to Positive Transformation and Change” at Assumption University’s John 23 Convention Center on the Suvarnabhumi Campus. In 2014 and 2016, she traveled on behalf of the Williams Davidson Institute (University of Michigan) to Turkey and Latvia to do workshops on positive approaches to leadership and leading strategic change with a focus on AI and SOAR.  In July 2015, she co-presented a case study on SOAR about building strategic capacity at the Fifth International Appreciative Inquiry Conference in South Africa and in March 2019, at the Sixth International Appreciative Inquiry Conference in Nice, France.

Her industry work includes manufacturing, automotive, banking, technology, education, healthcare, government, and professional services. In all her management positions, Jackie reported directly to the president and was responsible for strategic planning, marketing, sales, training, ISO 9000 and QS 9000 projects, and international business development activities. Jackie has worked with the Michigan Small Business Development Center Network (MI-SBDC). The MI-SBDC is part of a nation-wide SBDC network that provides counseling, training, and resources to small-to-medium sized companies. She held positions of certified business counselor, international trade specialist, and director of Metro-International Business Development Center. Her experience with business owners included assisting clients in developing strategic business and marketing plans, evaluating financial uses and sources of funding, accessing international markets, setting up global operations, and commercializing technologies.

She earned her Doctorate in Management at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Her Dissertation topic was Capacity Building Using an Appreciative Approach: A Relational Process of Building Your Organization’s Future. The focus of the topic was an exploratory study about capacity building reminding you that an organization’s driving force is its people and their relational nature.

The international NGOs that participated in this research are mission focused on the growth of civil society and sustainable development. Her dissertation has been cited in several published books and articles. Her M.B.A. is in International Business from Michigan State University, Eli Broad School of Management, and a B.A. degree in Marketing from Wayne State University.

Jackie is an associate for the Taos Institute and editor for Taos Institute Publishing and guest editor and quarterly AI Resource column writer for AI Practitioner: International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry. She is an advisor and reviewer for doctoral dissertations for Tilburg University (in Netherlands), Penn State University, and several other universities. In 2006, Jackie received the Outstanding Contribution Award from the Taos Institute and 2013 Lawrence Technological University Inaugural Presidential Colloquium – Honor for Exemplary Faculty Research and Scholarship

She is a board member of the Positive Change Core, a virtual global organization that focuses on strengths-based approaches to teaching and learning in primary education (Pk-12^th grade).  She is also on the editorial board of Engaged Management Review: A Journal of Engaged Scholarship, SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, and a special issues editor for the International Journal of Training and Development in OD, POS, and change. She is a member of the Academy of Management (AOM), Organization Development Network (ODN), and the Organization Development Institute (ODI). She has reviewed 34 manuscripts in Appreciative Inquiry, management, change, leadership, and POS for several publishers.

All books are available on www.amazon.com

Aligned with LTU’s motto of “theory and practice”, she continues to work with executives, managers, staff and line teams, and organizations’ stakeholders to collaboratively and creatively help them get organized and focused for sustainable growth with a focus on strategies that align with the triple bottom line (TBL). Through executive coaching and whole system small and large-scale change methods, she helps organizations identify and articulate their values, vision and mission statements, strategy, and strategic initiatives and build collaborative teams and communities for inspired action for positive change. She has worked across all sectors: nonprofit, for-profit, government, and social-entrepreneurs. She has worked and traveled to over 25 countries throughout Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to affect the lives of thousands or people and hundreds of organizations improve capacity to thrive and increase performance. Clients have include Americhem, BAE Systems, Covenant Community Care, Edsel and Eleanor Ford Foundation, Facebook, Fasteners, Inc., Flint Intermediate School District, General Motors of Mexico, Jefferson Wells, NASA, Tendercare Healthcare Centers, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Advisory University, United Way, Girl Scouts, National Education Association, Washtenaw Literacy, U.S. Army, and several Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive suppliers, and primary, secondary, and higher education.

She is Appreciative Inquiry Advisor with Council of Appreciative Inquiry Practice with the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry and AIM2Flourish Program at Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management. Jackie is an associate for the Taos Institute and editor for Taos Institute Publishing. She is member of the Academy of Management and Organization Development Institute. She is an advisor and reviewer for doctoral dissertations for Tilburg University (in Netherlands), Penn State University, and several other universities.