Schedule at a Glance
Times listed are U.S. Pacific Time.
Schedule is subject to change. The complete speaker line-up and other additional information will be added to the schedule as session details are finalized.
Schedule below – Sept 3 – Using Whova App code snippet
Test for Virtual Sessions
♦Virtual – Indicates session will made available for virtual attendees
Sunday, September 28
1:30pm-6:00pm Pre-Conference Workshop with Cara Wilson, Designed Learning (additional ticket required)
A Taste of Flawless Consulting with Designed Learning
In this highly interactive preconference workshop, participants will explore the foundational mindset and methodology of Flawless Consulting, Peter Block’s seminal approach to building trust-based, authentic client-consultant relationships.
Designed for anyone who needs to have influence where they do not have control, this session offers an accelerated, practical, and experiential journey through the core phases of consulting: Contracting, Discovery, and Feedback. Through guided dialogue, real-world application, and peer practice, participants will deepen their self-awareness and expand their consulting toolkit.
Together, we will:
• Clarify the distinction between “client” and “consultant” roles
• Build connection using Four Powerful Questions
• Explore the five phases of consulting and the goals of each
• Examine the Consultant Role Inventory and unpack the pros and cons of each role
• Practice applying the phases to a real work situation in a safe, supportive setting
By the end of the session, participants will leave with clear, actionable insights they can apply immediately to improve their consulting engagements and foster stronger, more honest relationships at work.
1:30pm-6:00pm PreConference Workshop with Omar Morales, Head of Organization Development at Microsoft (additional ticket required)
OD Fundamentals for Today’s Changemakers
Whether you’re new to the field or looking to refresh your foundation, this interactive session offers a powerful primer on the core disciplines of Organization Development. From aligning strategy and designing agile operating models to enabling high-performing teams and leading sustainable change, participants will walk away with practical frameworks, case examples, and tools that can be applied immediately.
Co-facilitated by Omar Morales, Head of Organization Development at Microsoft, and a second expert facilitator (TBA), this session is designed to ground participants in OD fundamentals while connecting them to the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of work.
Outcomes:
1. Clarify the role of OD in driving organizational strategy and transformation
2. Understand the building blocks of operating models and organization design
3. Learn practical approaches to enable team effectiveness and lead change
4. Strengthen your ability to partner as a strategic advisor in complex systems
Join us for this energizing kickoff to the conference and build the foundation to make a bigger impact in your OD practice.
6:30-8:00 pm WELCOME RECEPTION (no ticket required – all are welcome!)
Monday, September 29
9:00am-10:00am – KEYNOTE: Gary Muszynski ♦Virtual
Harmonizing the Workplace: Leveraging Music and Creative Engagement to Develop Cultures of Collaboration, Innovation, and Belonging
In today’s workplace, many employees are reeling from the stresses of an uncertain, fragmented, and fast-moving world. And leaders are being called upon to attend to the mental health and well-being of their teams during a time of accelerating disruption. Join organization development professional, experiential designer/facilitator, and award-winning musician Gary Muszynski for an interactive session that weaves together story, metaphor, mindfulness, and music-making. This heart-warming and thought-provoking session will demonstrate how leaders, consultants, and change agents can design holistic culture-shaping experiences that amplify joy, creativity, aliveness, and connection while boosting innovation. Orchestrating Excellence, the organization that Muszynski founded and has led for the past 30+ years, has designed music-based programs to further team, leadership development, and culture-shaping experiences for many large organizations including Kaiser Permanent, Apple, Google, Genentech, Pixar, Deloitte, Cisco, Ford, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Gary’s methodology combines neuroscience, mindfulness, and conversational immersive, multisensory experiences using music and creative engagement.
10:30am-11:20am – Breakouts
Gisela Wendling
The Change Maker’s Spindle: Navigating Human-Centered Transformation with the Liminal Pathways Change Framework™
When familiar ways of being and working no longer suffice and the “new” is still taking shape, we are called not just to manage or lead change, but to become the change. In this session, you will apply The Liminal Pathways Change Framework™ (LPF), a highly accessible and practical approach for navigating transformational change, to a current change challenge. And you will explore how the competencies outlined in The Change Maker’s Spindle help you integrate the LPF into your practice and activate your transformational agency across four essential dimensions: mind (change literacy), body (somatic awareness), heart (emotional fluidity), and spirit (inner and outer guidance and resources). These competencies enable you to engage in the most demanding yet rewarding aspects of transformational change, whether leading others, supporting change as a consultant, facilitator, or coach, or undertaking it yourself. The efficacy of the LPF and its application across diverse settings is well documented in The Liminal Pathways Study. As part of the session, you will receive a mini-workbook to support your learning.
Tatjana Ilic-Balas, Dennis Gallagher & Sean Mahar
Fast-Tracking Connection and Growth: A Dynamic Speed Mentoring Experience for OD Professionals
This interactive session is designed to energize and connect OD professionals—both seasoned and emerging practitioners—through focused, rapid speed mentoring conversations. Designed and facilitated by the OD Network’s Mentor Community, this session invites participants to reflect, share, and build relationships that advance personal growth, career development, and the broader practice of OD. The main section of the program will consist of short 5-7 minute speed mentoring rounds in which mentors and mentees will get a chance to present themselves to one another; in addition, mentees will practice articulating their professional goals, their elevator pitch and desired mentorship outcomes, while mentors will share key experiences and/or lessons from their own professional journeys. As mentees and mentors complete each speed mentoring round, they will rotate to different mentors and mentees, guided by suggested prompts and discussion questions. Rooted in the values of collaboration, service, and humanity, this session will bring the OD community together across generations, sectors, and experiences. Each conversation is a chance to foster curiosity, empathy, and mutual learning. By the end of the session and the 2025 conference, participants will have made multiple new professional connections, gained fresh insights into their own desired development and career paths, and contributed to building a culture of mentorship and support that strengthens the field of OD for the future.
Kristal Roberts & Tricia Rhine
The Power of Hope: Fueling Organizational Change from Within
How can organizations thrive in a world marked by chronic uncertainty, crisis, and despair? As OD professionals, we’ve long understood that transformation requires more than strategy, it requires belief in a better future. This session explores the role of hope as a strategic imperative in organizational development and change leadership. Our journey began during the pandemic, when remote work, collective trauma, and declining morale left leaders struggling to inspire their teams. Seeking new ways to reconnect and elevate leadership impact, we launched Lifting Leaders Podcast, a platform to explore leadership as a lever for change to make a better world. What emerged from this work was a discovery: hope is not a soft sentiment; it’s a system activator. Over two years, we asked every podcast guest, from CEOs to coaches, artists to activists, four essential questions about hope. We also launched a public survey and reviewed emerging research, including Gallup’s 2024 global finding that hope is the #1 attribute followers want from leaders worldwide. Using qualitative thematic analysis, we identified consistent patterns: Hope fuels action and creativity under pressure. A lack of hope leads to paralysis, disconnection, and disengagement. Hope-based leadership shifts neurological patterns, opening pathways for learning, connection, and resilience. Participants will experience a compelling blend of neuroscience, systems theory, and embodied practice, including breathwork, visual storytelling, and interactive reflection. We will share our findings, explore how hope transforms brain states and organizational climates, and guide attendees to consider how to cultivate hope as a leadership competency.
11:30am-12:20pm – Breakouts
Janet Livingstone
IFS Coaching for Teams: Approaching Team and Self from the Inside Out
If you’ve seen the movie Inside Out, you’ll know that our inner lives are complex and full of different parts. No matter how hard we try to leave our inner turmoil at home, we cannot help but bring our whole self to work in all its richness. This interactive session will present an innovative method for coaching teams and individuals to achieve impactful results regardless of industry, sector, or leadership style. The approach is known as Internal Family Systems (IFS). IFS-informed coaching introduces a powerful approach that provides clients with profound insights more efficiently than traditional executive and team coaching methods. As a coaching methodology based on parts work, it enables clients to gain a clearer understanding of their internal psychological landscape. Similarly, it can be leveraged for teams to increase connectedness, trust and performance by providing a framework for transformative dialogue. Originally developed for psychotherapists, IFS can be effectively adapted by executive coaches for individual and team sessions alike. It is versatile and suitable for various contexts, including ongoing coaching sessions and strategic discussions, as well as offsite retreats. Utilizing this approach facilitates self-awareness, presence, and enhanced communication skills while simultaneously offering relief from stress, anxiety, and preventing burnout. Participants will acquire techniques to explore their inner world when experiencing conflict or indecision, a novel, non-confrontational mode of communication across all hierarchical levels, methods to give and receive feedback with reduced reactivity, and an approach that improves team performance and functionality while also preventing burnout.
Julia Monaghan, MSOD
Meeting the Moment: Building People-Centered Cultures for Social Sector Resilience
Nonprofit organizations are in crisis. Reductions in federal funding, threats to tax-exempt status, and efforts to erode public trust in the social sector are making it harder than ever for mission-driven organizations to advocate for marginalized communities, deliver essential programs, and support the broader fabric of American life. Even as nonprofit staff remain deeply committed to this critical work, today’s environment places unprecedented demands on organizations. These include rapid shifts in strategy, adapting programs to emerging needs, identifying new funding sources amid intense competition, sustaining services with fewer resources, and navigating painful staffing cuts. Organizational resilience has never been more essential. One powerful pathway to resilience is cultivating people-centered cultures—environments that invite staff to bring their best thinking to the mission, uphold each person’s dignity and capacity, and embrace the full complexity of the human experience. This session will equip participants with tangible tools and approaches to strengthen organizational resilience—particularly within social impact and nonprofit settings—by building and sustaining people-centered cultures. Together, we’ll explore specific practices, then collaborate on how to bring them to life through the work of defining organizational mandate and strategy, building values-aligned ways of working, and shaping governance practices.
Robert P. Crosby
Spokane’s Riverfront Park: A Citizen Engagement and OD Case Study
In 1984 after conflict between the Parks Board and citizens led to a stalemate, Robert Crosby, with the assistance of his son Gilmore (in his first OD gig), was granted a contract to facilitate citizens in planning for the next phase of development of Spokane’s 1974 World’s Fair park. Five options were developed by the citizens. Architecture firms loaned artistic staff to create what became an excellent slide set featuring all options. The slide set was then viewed by thousands of citizens in school classrooms, clubs such as Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis, churches, and other community groups. Participants could vote their preference in this non-binding activity. The elder Crosby then shared the results to the Parks Board. But all was not well! Factions started fighting, and Crosby as the lead consultant became the center of rumors and resistance. However, Crosby was able to navigate the resistance while maintaining integrity and ensuring the voice of the people was heard. The day after the results were presented the Spokesman-Review newspaper reported that, “Park Board President Mary Black told Crosby and Group Members ‘You’ve done such a good job…I just feel like it’s Christmas.’ ‘I think you have performed a miracle’ said Councilwoman Sheri Bernard.” The park reflects the chosen option to this very day.
12:30-1:30pm LUNCH
1:45pm-2:45pm – KEYNOTE: Fred Miller & Judith Katz ♦Virtual
Rooted and Rising: The Journey of People in Organizations Unleashing Individual and Team Agency
Organization Development has always been a field grounded in values—participation, collaboration, learning, and human potential. As we look back on our rich history, we see a tradition of practice rooted in dialogue, systems thinking, and purposeful change. Today, OD faces both unprecedented challenges and powerful opportunities. At its core, the future of OD lies in deepening its commitment to individual and team agency, empowering individuals and teams to shape, influence, and lead change from where they are, from every seat, and to support organizational and individual betterment. We will bring our over 100 combined years of being OD practitioners to discussing OD’s journey from its early foundations to its current evolution, highlighting how individual and team agency can provide a critical force in navigating complexity, fostering greater inclusion, and cultivating resilience. And we will imagine what is next for OD.
3 – 4:30 – Kelly King
Moving Dialogues: An Embodied Practices Workshop
In a time of heightened anxiety, sharing tools for self-regulation, examination, and community building are vital and emergent needs. Embodied practices use the body as a primary means of exploration, expression, and learning. Moving Dialogues workshops offer participants the opportunity to practice harmony between mind, body, and spirit while building community with peers. This 90-minute workshop uses writing, small groups, movement, and reflection to guide particpants through deep sense making and beloging. Moving Dialogues has been in practice with thousands of participants over the years—from facilitating corporate board retreats to individual coaching clients to crafting long-form theatrical productions based on these practices. Participants feel and know that they are seen, heard, and that they belong. They release long-held emotional blocks and delve deeply into their own ideas and reflections. Trust and confidence are fostered on an individual and community level.
3 – 6:30 – World Cafe: OD Past, Present, Future – Details Coming Soon!
World Cafe: OD Past, Present, Future
Description coming soon!
7 – 8:30 – DINE AROUND – Details Coming Soon!
Tuesday, September 30
9:00am-10:00am – Keynote: Edward Beltran
More info coming
10:30am-11:20am – Breakouts
Angela Powell, MA
Planning With People in Mind: Strategy as Culture Work
Strategic plans often fail not because the ideas are flawed, but because the organization isn’t aligned or equipped to realize them. In today’s reality, where disruption is constant, pace outstrips most organizations’ capacity to adapt, and the future feels more like a shifting landscape than a fixed destination, having a static strategy is as good as having no plan at all. This session introduces a living strategy approach that centers alignment, organizational readiness, and relational capacity as core conditions for movement. We explore how strategic planning, when done well, becomes culture work, surfacing patterns of avoidance, unclear decision-making, and unacknowledged tensions that hold teams back. As teams increasingly span broad backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences, aligning around a shared path forward becomes harder—and even more necessary. Without acknowledging how differently people see the work, the organization, or the future, strategy conversations can devolve into surface-level agreements that mask deep misalignment. In this interactive workshop, participants will experience a facilitation approach that helps groups name the misalignments that matter most, build shared understanding, and address the “human blockers” to effective strategy. You’ll leave with tools to support clients or teams in creating plans that actually move, because the people behind them are ready to move together.
Moe Carrick
Beyond Broken Systems: The "Monthly Meet-Up" as OD Practice for Creating Effective, Healthy Organizations
We’re at a crossroads. Old paradigms are breaking down—including the annual performance review system that has dehumanized work for decades. Here’s the brutal truth: only 14% of employees strongly agree that their performance reviews inspire them to improve. If performance reviews were medicine, they wouldn’t pass FDA approval. Even worse, 95% of managers are dissatisfied with their performance management systems, while 59% of employees feel reviews aren’t worth the time invested. As OD practitioners standing at the heart of change, we’re called to center well-being and reclaim our shared humanness. The data is clear—annual reviews don’t change behavior. But here’s what does: authentic human connection paired with structured, ongoing dialogue that honors the whole person. The “Monthly Meet-Up” represents bold co-creation in action—a research-backed intervention born from over 30 years of OD practice that transforms organizational culture by replacing broken systems with meaningful monthly connections. Developed by Moe Carrick through consulting with brands such as Google, Mosaic Community Health, Nike, and REI, this approach recognizes that frequent, informal communication rooted in humanity is a stronger predictor of performance and development than annual evaluations. In a world where employee engagement has dropped to just 21% globally, this session offers visionary practitioners a proven framework for reimagining what’s possible—creating organizations where people feel genuinely seen, supported, and able to bring 100% of their greatness to work. Because when we put humanity at the heart of performance management, we shape the future of how we work and lead together.
R. Karl Hebenstreit, Ph.D., PCC, PHR
To Persevere or Pivot? Resilience Best Practices for All
Change is the theme and resilience is the response to everything that is happening around and to us in today’s VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) and BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, and Incomprehensible) global environment. Navigating and succeeding in a world of constant change requires us to be resilient, agile, and nimble. This is all dependent on adopting and practicing a non-binary mindset of “BOTH AND,” recognizing when and where our strengths, relationships, connections, and ability to persevere or pivot are assets, preventing them from becoming liabilities, and integrating multiple perspectives. Participants will be guided through an interactive journey where they will create their own personal resilience strategy to thrive through the unknown.
11:30am-12:20pm – Breakouts
Mark D Lester & Sohel M. Imroz, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP
Unlocking the Future: Using the Action Research Model to Overcome Community Resistance for Sustainable Spaceport Development
Space technology touches our daily life by enabling remote learning, emergency communication, and environmental monitoring. As launch activities accelerate, local communities find themselves navigating changing times in the world with new spaceports being widely proposed. OD has always lived at the heart of change. Building upon Lewin’s foundational principles, OD must help bridge the gap between rapid technological advancement and the people it affects, ensuring an inclusive, thoughtful approach to progress. A people-centric approach to spaceport development enables space transportation to enhance and broaden communities. Spaceports are essential to the betterment of humanity, enabling the growth of the half-trillion-dollar global space economy, and sustaining thousands of jobs. However, spaceport operations can threaten the stability of local communities. Not surprisingly, community resistance to spaceports is common, often delaying or halting these projects altogether. Applying participative OD approaches allow all community members to be heard and respected throughout the infrastructure integration process. Collaboration reduces power in-balances, creates shared empathy, and builds enduring partnerships across all stakeholders. Large infrastructure projects, like new highways, large distribution warehouses, data centers, expanded energy power grids, and spaceports, require complex, community-level OD interventions. Lewin’s action research model (ARM) provides an iterative, participative approach to surface issues and co-create solutions. Exploring ARM principles extends the proven strength of OD’s past into an exciting new future. This research advances OD practice by demonstrating how ARM can build community and make meaning connections in technically complex, community-impacting projects like spaceports. Attendees will collectively learn how to apply action research principles to resolve stakeholder conflicts in complex infrastructure projects. While spaceports are the lens, the participatory framework introduced in this session applies broadly to community-level change efforts across multiple industries, from transportation to energy to defense.
Tonya Jackman Hampton & Nancy Tavares
The Importance of Pre-Employment Physical Assessment, Impact of Physical Fitness on Job Performance and Emotions
As OD practitioners, we recognize that individual well-being and organizational performance are deeply interconnected. This session examines the often-overlooked strategic value of integrating physical fitness and pre-employment physical assessments into talent strategy and organizational culture. While the study we conducted focused on jobs that require physical movement we believe the organization development study, application and findings are worth spreading and discussing for other workers and across different industries and cultures. Beyond health compliance, these assessments can serve as powerful tools for aligning the right individuals to the right roles and sustaining their success beyond—both physically and emotionally. We will explore how physical fitness influences not only job performance, stamina, and injury prevention, but also emotional regulation, stress tolerance, and team dynamics. Participants will be invited to consider how physical readiness intersects with psychological safety, resilience, and leadership effectiveness—key elements of thriving, and establishing change-ready cultures. In alignment with this year’s theme, OD: The Heart of Change – Our Past, Present, and Future, this session invites us to reimagine workforce readiness as a whole-person imperative—grounded in the holistic values of our OD legacy while advancing practices that support sustainable performance and well-being. Together, we will examine how pre-employment physical assessment, when thoughtfully designed, can become a catalyst for future-fit organizations—ones that value not just capability, but capacity, care, and connection. Through an OD lens, this session will challenge conventional thinking around workforce preparation, capability and sustainability. Attendees will gain data based and actionable insights into how embedding physical fitness and well-being into pre-employment, onboarding processes and workforce job performance competencies can strengthen organizational health, enhance performance outcomes, and sustain long-term cultural transformation.
OD Review Info Session
Details coming soon!
Information coming soon.
12:30-1:30pm LUNCH
1:45pm-2:45pm – Panel Discussion with David Cooperrider
How OD’s ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ Propels Full-Spectrum Flourishing
Flourishing enterprise is something every leader wants. A flourishing enterprise is about people being inspired every day and bringing their whole and best selves to their work; it’s about innovation arising from everywhere; and, ultimately, it’s about outperformance and outbehavior creating sustainable value with and for all relevant and affected stakeholders, including nature, people, and the planet.
3:00pm-3:50pm – Breakouts
David Cooperrider
YODEL: Young OD Earthshot Leaders for a Better World
Description coming soon
Kelly Capra, PhD
What Got You Here Won’t Let You Go: Why Do We Struggle to Change—Individually and Organizationally?
We all have behaviors and mindsets that helped us succeed—at work, in leadership, and in life. But what happens when those same behaviors become barriers to our next level of growth? Whether you’ve tried to change a habit, lead differently, or shift your organization’s culture, lasting change often remains elusive. Why? This interactive workshop explores the hidden dynamics that keep individuals and organizations stuck, even when highly motivated to change. We’ll explore two powerful frameworks—the Immunity to Change (ITC) model and Intentional Change Theory. I’ll also share insights from my PhD research on the ITC process in coaching, including what helps people make lasting behavior change and what gets in the way. Through short exercises and group discussion, you’ll walk away with practical ways to apply these concepts in both personal leadership and organizational development.
Lisa Sutter & Tim Mosunich
Balancing Growth and Excellence: A Case Study in Organizational Transformation
Periods of rapid organizational growth present both opportunities and risks—particularly to internal systems, culture, and operational excellence. This case study explores how the Lastinger Center for Learning at the University of Florida sustained organizational excellence during a time of strategic expansion and change. Attendees will gain insights into how intentional structures, cross-functional collaboration, and change management principles were used to support over 200 associates, strengthen internal capacity, and safeguard mission integrity. The presentation will highlight key strategies in leadership alignment, workflow design, associate engagement, and enterprise health that allowed the organization to grow without compromising quality or culture.
4:00pm-4:50pm – Breakouts
John Sim
Prospective Sensemaking at the Heart of Change: How Talking About the Future Builds Connection and Innovation
In times of relentless turbulence, OD is positioned to help organizations navigate uncertainty by making sense of the future to create positive change in the present. In this session, I will discuss the significance of a prospective approach to sensemaking that turns future-focused dialogue into connection and innovation. Drawing from both research and my experience conducting Appreciative Inquiry summits in the U.S. Army, I will illustrate how collective discourse about the future creates relational spaces where people move from skepticism to shared stewardship and generative change. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding for how prospective dialogue relates to our concepts of organization and organizing, and walk away with new approaches for cultivating generative change as OD practitioners or organizational leaders.
Kim Harr
From Ordinary to Extraordinary: A Case Study Using the Extraordinary Teams Inventory
High-performing teams are not always extraordinary. This is where the Extraordinary Teams Inventory (ETI) assessment tool comes into play. This session presents a case study demonstrating the utilization of the ETI assessment tool within a large nonprofit organization undergoing significant change. The presentation explores how the ETI served as a diagnostic tool and a developmental catalyst for the growth and development of the leader, individual team members, and the team overall through facilitated conversations and reflection. The ETI was developed to measure ten practices that sustain high performance and personal transformation, based on the field research of Geoffrey Bellman and Kathleen Ryan. The practices are defined by observable behaviors that extraordinary teams exhibit, which other teams can learn and move toward becoming extraordinary. The ETI has been validated with hundreds of teams. We will present an overview of the ten practices in the ETI assessment and demonstrate how the facilitated debrief creates space for key conversations that co-design a future, allowing for personal transformation and tangible growth in team effectiveness and business results. Finally, we will highlight how the ETI is unique in its affordability, broad application, and focus on the team rather than the individuals that make up the team. We will also demonstrate how the ETI exposes challenges that individual coaching and 360-degree feedback often miss.
Kathleen O’Neill, EdD
Collective Sense-Making and Leadership Team Alignment in Times of Chaos and Uncertainty
In today’s dynamic and uncertain environments leadership teams are challenged with complex problems for which they may not have relevant experience and therefore the solutions may be unknown. Effectively working as an integrated, collective leadership team requires reflective dialogue: sense-making of the situation, unpacking its complexities, working through polarizing dilemmas, and aligning actions. During the session, participants will be introduced to sense-making approaches with leadership teams to create collective understanding and generate active responses to disruption and unanticipated change. Three specific frameworks will be covered, along with practical tools that can be leveraged into one’s own practice: 1) Framing – a modified SWOT designed to generate collective understanding of the current environment/reality. 2) Assessing – applying CCL’s foundational “DAC” model to explore the extent to which the leadership team is producing Direction, Alignment and Commitment in the current environment. 3) Generating – utilizing Appreciative Inquiry to Discover, Dream, Design, and Deliver responses and solutions to the current environment. The presenter will share examples of application and encourage participants to consider how they can use one, two or all three in their own practice. Discussions will also include how the frameworks can be used as standalone or integrated to design and facilitate strategic conversations with leadership teams to collectively engage in developing a deeper understanding of current challenges and opportunities in their current environment.
5:00pm-6:00pm – Keynote: Amy Kates & Ewa Kacewicz
AI Transformation as Customer Zero: A Holistic, People-Centered Approach
As Microsoft’s “Customer Zero,” we’re transforming how we work with AI—starting from within. This session reveals how we’re using organization design and a people-first approach to embed AI into workflows across HR, Gaming, and Data Centers. Learn how we’re retooling OD levers like governance and job design to shift work from transactional to strategic, enabling employees to focus on what’s uniquely human. We’ll share our AI-powered operating model, real-world tools, and lessons in scaling AI with trust, autonomy, and purpose.
6:30 – 8:30 – EVENING RECEPTION
Wednesday, October 1
9:00am-10:00am – KEYNOTE: Peter Block
Liberating the Workplace: The Challenge for OD
Peter Block invites OD professionals to reclaim their radical role as culture-makers, not caretakers of performance. Too often, OD is asked to drive change, ensure control of systems, boost performance, and reinforce the control of culture in the name of change management, too often without questioning the deeper story those metrics embody. The surge and romance with AI as a way of cutting labor cost may be a sign that those in control are not that happy with the workplace, even though they are said to be in charge. But what if OD’s true power lies not in fixing the current model, but in departing from it? In shaping workplaces not around compliance and control, but around connection, citizenship, and chosen accountability? This constitutes a form of liberation. Peter will explore how OD can initiate a shift from the narrative of performance management to relational trust; from patriarchal oversight to peer-driven accountability. This isn’t a stance against anything, it’s stewardship. It’s time for workplaces to stop demanding when and where and how people should work and start asking what kind of workplace experience people would choose to stay and invest in.
10:30am-11:20am – BREAKOUTS
Andrea Seitz
Accelerating Culture from Within: Activating Champions and Networks with Data-Driven Employee Enablement
In today’s dynamic landscape, organizational change demands more than top-down directives; it requires deeply embedded cultural transformation. This session will explore a proven framework for driving significant organizational change by intentionally activating internal culture champions and empowering employee networks. We will demonstrate how data-driven enablement solutions, deployed through activated employee networks, fostered shared learning, strengthened connections, increased cultural awareness, and revealed our common humanity, ultimately leading to increased inclusion sentiment and job satisfaction. Attendees will be introduced to a strategic model and tools that benchmark current state, identify gaps, activate employees, scale impact, and measure results. Learn how cultivating a common commitment to core principles, coupled with scalable learning platforms and community-driven programs, can inspire collective action, enhance employee engagement, and ultimately, accelerate a dynamic and evolving organizational culture.
Dr. Robert T. Sicora
Beyond Success: Axiology and the Helm of Human-Centered Organizational Transformation
This session explores a transformative journey into organization development through the lens of balanced, holistic models. Anchored in the principles of Axiology, this approach provides a powerful methodology for aligning individual purpose with organizational performance. Through a series of compelling case studies, participants will examine how this journey has been applied across key dimensions of organizational effectiveness: Leadership, Culture, Trust, Team, Engagement, Change, Process, Customer, and Impact. By leveraging the triangulation of Axiology—integrating intrinsic (feeling), extrinsic (doing), and systemic (thinking) perspectives—organizations can develop dynamic, actionable metrics that measure what truly matters. These integrated frameworks support meaningful transformation at the individual, team, and enterprise levels—delivering greater insight, alignment, and measurable performance. Ultimately, this session offers a path for organizations to become not just successful, but truly significant.
Samantha Baltadonis
The Heart of Change: Translating Energy into Impact with Quantum Strategy™
Introducing Quantum Strategy™, a future-facing Organizational Development framework designed to help leaders and organizations navigate misalignment and complexity with greater clarity, coherence and regenerative impact. Developed through over a decade of hands-on transformation work across seven teams and business units at Amazon, the framework integrates systems thinking, neuroscience and energetic intelligence to create actionable insights and sustainable change. At its core is ALIGNED™, a six-phase process that guides transformation from the inside out through self-inquiry, embodiment and strategic tuning. Participants will use a collaborative board to apply the model to a real-time or recent challenge in their organizational context, decoding energetic signals, leadership dynamics and strategic levers for transformation. Field-tested across high-stakes roles, this methodology has revealed patterns of misalignment 9–18 months ahead of major organizational pivots. While early detection was not always met with immediate action, these insights became critical indicators of deeper system-level resistance, proving the method’s diagnostic power and long-term utility. Rooted in humanity and designed for real-world application, this workshop will help OD professionals connect personal mastery with collective impact, reclaiming energy as a strategic advantage. Together, we’ll explore how to embody change, elevate practice and co-create the future of leadership.
11:30am-12:20pm – BREAKOUTS
Jack J. Phillips, Ph.D.
Proving the Value of Organization Development
The approach for Organizational Development professionals to prove the value of their projects has changed. This session will review our past efforts and explain why they evolved. It will highlight present-day approaches and discuss the need for change. Finally, the session will present what’s needed in the future. In an uncertain economy, OD professionals need to have credible data showing the value of OD projects and solutions. This is not only the best way to protect the budget for OD, but also to gain additional support for the function, improve projects, and recognize the good work of the OD team. OD is important to an organization, as it tackles important projects and brings needed change. At the same time, the accountability of expenditures has come under scrutiny in almost every type of organization. This leaves the OD function with a choice—showing the value of what they do in a very credible way, essentially proving the value of OD, or risk the OD function being considered for potential cuts. As someone once said, “It’s better to be at the table with credible results than on the table facing the chopping block.” This session will present a proven method for the future to design, deliver, and evaluate the results from OD projects, using the most widely used evaluation system in the world. This brings credible results that will keep CEOs and CFOs happy with the outcomes. At the center of this methodology is always a method to isolate the effects of the OD program from other influences.
Amber Peterson & Rosalind Spigel, MSOD
Future Search: Using the Wisdom of the Whole System
Future Search uses the wisdom of the whole system to create a shared vision, validate a common mission, plan action, and commit to implementation. It brings representatives and stakeholders from all parts of an organization and its ecosystem together in one place. In same and mixed groups and as a whole group individuals explore and align on what they want for the future and plan to achieve it. Finding common ground has become an increasing challenge. Future Search uses the wisdom of the whole system to contribute jointly to a vision of the future, discover common ground, and work together towards committed action and implementation. The entire process is led by people who are part of the system in small, self-managed groups—not facilitators. Participants will learn about the Future Search process and how it brings representatives from all parts of an ecosystem together in one place for a shared purpose. From there, facilitators will lead a mini-immersive experience from a portion of a typical Future Search conference. Participants will gain insights into the steps of a Future Search, and brainstorm applications for their own communities.
Gonzaga Student Session
From Insight to Impact: Reflections on Organization Development and the Nexus of Leadership
Based on the 2025 ODN conference experience, graduate students from the Gonzaga School of Leadership Studies will delve into the intersection of leadership and organization development. The students will reflect on key concepts, frameworks, and discussions that have challenged their thinking and synthesize the conference experience related to the future of OD to lead and transform organizations.
12:30-1:30pm LUNCH
1:45 – 3:15 – KEYNOTE: Margaret Wheatley
Can We Be The Ones to Restore Sanity?
Sanity is everything that affirms Life, that creates healthy relationships and clear seeing in the midst of what is destroying Life’s capacities for creativity, cooperation, and generatively. This is work we’ve been engaged in but now, in the intensification of destructive policies and increased fear, can we be the ones who commit to restoring sanity? Are we willing to do the essential and hard work of creating relationships and communities that are Islands of Sanity?
3:30pm-4:30pm – CLOSING CEREMONY
TABS Section below edited – Aug 1st
Formatting does stick – Can not add toggles to this format
SEPT 28 - SUN
Sunday, September 28
1:30pm-6:00pm Pre-Conference Workshop with Cara Wilson,
A Taste of Flawless Consulting with Designed Learning (additional ticket required)
1:30pm-6:00pm Omar Morales, Head of Organization Development at Microsoft
Pre-Conference Session: OD Fundamentals for Today’s Changemakers (additional ticket required)
6:30-8:00 pm Welcome Reception (no ticket required – all are welcome!)
SEPT 29 - MON
SEPT 30 - TUES
OCT 1 - WED
1265 Hurffville Road
PO Box 5401
Deptford, NJ 08096
Phone: 651-379-7292
Fax: 651-290-2266
odnetwork@odnetwork.org
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