PARTNERSHIPS

AMBASSADORS

GLOBAL ADVOCATES

CHAMPIONING THE OD ACADEMY

Our Ambassadors are passionate advocates who represent the OD Academy on a global stage, actively fostering connections and promoting our core values.

The OD Academy’s Ambassador team are instrumental in carrying our mission outward. They engage with the wider community, share their extensive industry experience, and ensure our professional home remains welcoming, inclusive, and internationally recognised. By lending their voice and network to the Academy, they help us expand our reach and deepen our impact across sectors.

Dean Royles, MODA, Director, President HPMA & OD Academy Ambassador

In these extraordinary times, the people our organisations should be turning to for professional help, guidance and support are OD leaders and practitioners. They too need to be supported in their practice.

I’m delighted that the OD Academy in the UK, as an online community of OD professionals, is now available to do just that.

I hope that if you are interested and passionate about OD as an art, science and practice and work in the field, that you’ll feel encouraged to join as a member of the OD Academy.

Ian Andrew, MODA, CEO, NTDA & OD Academy Ambassador

Organisational Development, when done in its true form, bringing together strategy, structure, processes, people and culture is the most powerful tool a business leader can have to shift organisational performance.

For too long the art and science of OD has been in the shadow of HR and L&D and not an integral discipline of the CEO’s office where it belongs.

The OD Academy is a much needed home and on-line community for all OD leaders and professionals and will help position OD where it truly belongs.

Babs Rounsevell, MD, Chaos Group & OD Academy Ambassador

I’ve recently experienced what OD is about and it truly has transformed my life at work and at home.

Therefore, as an OD convert, I am delighted to support the OD Academy as an Ambassador.

JAIMINI LAKHANI, MODA, organisation design and development Practitioner, LUMIERE CONSULTING

I am an Organisation Design consultant with a rich international background and a reputation for bringing clarity, humanity, and strategic insight to complex organisational challenges.

Having lived and worked across Uganda, the United States, and the United Kingdom, I brings a global perspective to OD practice and a deep appreciation for cultural nuance in organisational life.

I have worked with major organisations including Accenture, Burberry, the British Council, Heathrow, and BP, supporting leaders and teams through transformation, capability building, and organisational redesign.

I am also the founder of Lumiere, my own OD consultancy, and teach Organisation Design at the University of West London, where I am delighted to be able to help shape the next generation of OD practitioners.

My work is characterised by curiosity, compassion, and a commitment to helping organisations thrive through people‑centred design.

As such, being an ambassador for the OD Academy and pillar champion for Research sits firmly within my areas of interest and passion.

KATHERINE GUERIN, MODA, DIRECTOR, STONEYCROFT CONSULTING LTD

I’m delighted to accept the invitation to be an Ambassador for the OD Academy. The OD community is rich in knowledge and experience and I have benefitted in my OD practice from the generosity of others sharing this through the OD Academy.

It’s great to have a place where our community can come together, share, learn and invite in, those taking their first tentative steps into OD, curious to find out more.

I often describe OD as working in the glue of an organisation or system – working on the stuff we can’t always see in structures, projects or across functions that gets in the way. The work is so varied and draws on lots of different skills and that makes OD a profession people can come to from lots of different routes and backgrounds, which makes it incredibly enriching as a profession – I love learning!

My OD career has largely been in national NHS organisations, most recently within the health research sector. I also have my own consultancy practice which is mostly focussed on coaching.

I’m passionate about the real difference OD as a profession can make to helping our organisations achieve their purpose effectively. As someone who has dedicated my career the public sector, this feels all the more important given the needs that our public sector addresses and the many people it serves. I look forward to working as part of this community to see the difference we can make in the world.

Will Hairsine, MODA, Executive Manager, Cyber Security Consultant, Redbay ltd

I am delighted to be joining the OD Academy and to have been invited to take up an Ambassadorial role. OD is very much a team game and it’s through institutions like this academy that we will be able to improve all our working practices and to be able to bring more people on to the OD train.

I spent twenty years in the military, seventeen of those in leadership positions. Throughout my time in the Service we constantly sought ways to improve. To improve our ways of working, our people’s lived experience and our effectiveness in delivering operations. The nuances required in OD are never as stark as when you switch from the training environment to the operational, when you go from practicing in a benign environment to delivering in a hostile one. OD never stops though, lessons learned in both environments are equally as valid.

Having retired four years ago I have taken my military OD experience into the civilian market having worked as an Operations Manager for Amazon through the pandemic and a Senior Manager in the consulting arm of KPMG. In both those roles OD was key, either in ensuring the smooth running of a Delivery Station or delivering change to clients. The ability to bring OD to the party is never a bad thing!

I now work as a Senior Consultant with Pace where we enable human autonomy through the delivery of Organisational Development. There is never a slow day when delivering at Pace!

Finally, I truly believe in the importance of mentoring. There is no doubt in my mind that both mentor and mentee learn just as much from every interaction they have. I look forward to helping the academy and all it’s members through our OD journeys.

Debbie Haines, MODA, Head of People Solutions, Staffordshire County Council & OD Academy Ambassador

I work as Head of People Solutions at Staffordshire County Council.

I was really pleased to accept the invite to be an Ambassador for the OD Academy as it gives me the opportunity to not only encourage and learn from others in our daily practice, but also to promote OD as an approach that can greatly benefit organisations and people.

Having previously been in OD specific roles, I have now moved back into a more generalist HR/people focused role. Continuing to take an OD practitioner approach to my latest role will help me to see the bigger picture, make connections and will result in better and more sustainable outcomes.

The OD Academy will provide the community and environment an opportunity to continue to learn and grow in my practice and to support others to grow too.

I look forward to continuing to deepen my understanding of OD, its application and practice.

Tracy Dawson, MODA, Freelance Consultant, Assistant Director Organisational Development, Anglia Ruskin University & OD Academy Ambassador

I’m really excited to have joined the OD Academy and equally thrilled to have been invited to be an Ambassador. Having spent most of my working life in the NHS, Civil Service, Local Authority, a spell at Cancer Research UK, and now in Higher Education, I have developed a deep, passionate, and lifelong love of public sector ethos; I absolutely understand how important our public sector is to the people that work in it, the people that use it, and the people that need it throughout all stages of their lives. It’s hugely complex and hugely big! And in order for it to continue to provide us all with the services that we need to live brilliant lives, where everybody has the opportunity to thrive regardless of their background and ability, it must continue to move with the times – something it generally does very well and is often not widely recognised (think cutting edge advances in medicines and treatments, and hats off to numerous public sector managers and leaders who deal with a constantly changing political environment as well as restructures, renaming, financial changes, bad press while AT THE SAME TIME managing to deliver services.)

A teacher by background, I fell into a range of different roles around leadership and management development across different public and third sector organisations, and it wasn’t until OD became an actual acknowledged thing that I realised almost everything I’d been doing all this time was, in fact, OD. Traditionally all things ‘people’ were managed via HR (when did human beings become a human resource? I mean I ask you?!) and sadly many really excellent OD professionals took a different path (myself included for a while) having experienced the pain of reporting into a profession that’s largely been about protecting the organisation rather than really understanding that to do that really well requires empowered people with enabling technologies and behaviours, and an inclusive culture that has the wellbeing of people at its heart.

So here I am with so much still to learn (isn’t there always in OD?!) I have been truly blessed to have worked with some utterly inspirational and brilliant people in my life, and so kind of made it my mission to dig out the bits that aren’t working so well and do my very best to make sure everybody gets to work with truly brilliant people in truly brilliant organisations – not sure how successful I’ve been, but I’m nothing if not determined. I’m very much looking forward to being part of an organisation that supports just that!

Sonam Taneja, MODA, Founder, MirrorSpeak Consulting & OD Academy Ambassador

You don’t need to go too far to see the levels of employee disengagement in organisations. The gap between employees’ expectations and the organisations’ people practices is glaring, to say the least. Deep down I believe most organisations and leaders have the answers to the massive people challenges they face. Perhaps they aren’t asking the right questions or connecting the dots to see the bigger picture.

For me, having the space to ask those difficult but courageous questions and listening without judgement is important. It resonates with who I am and how I work with my clients.

In my view, the OD Academy consciously creates that space. It represents a place where professionals who are passionate about making organisations more effective come together and learn from each other. It represents an opportunity to proactively address organisational challenges in a holistic and authentic way.

As OD professionals, we are often the instruments of change. As an ambassador of the Academy, I hope to be a compassionate disruptor in the world of work. I am looking forward to connecting with professionals from the fields of HR, OD, Talent, and Learning & Development to create a positive change in organisations; for the change has been long due.

Kerry Eldridge, Director of People and Organisational Culture, Norwich City Council, FCIPD MODA & OD Academy Ambassador

I believe developing OD skills enables people practitioners to work holistically focussing on the diagnostic and developmental plans to improve the culture and leadership capability within organisations.

I am dedicated to ensuring our people practices and our transformational plans always value colleagues contributions and continuously improve the health and care experience of our communities which is why I was thrilled to become an Ambassador for the OD Academy.

Perry Timms, MODA, Chief Energy Officer, People & Transformational HR Ltd & OD Academy Ambassador

I’ve been into OD (like many of us a while before I knew what it was) since the early 1990s – when I was a Project Manager on a centralised work initiative in the Civil Service department I worked in. When I knew what it was – as I moved into an HR/L&D role, that was it. Since then I’ve been obsessed with OD. The answer to many of the woes of work (and when poorly executed the reason for many of the woes of work), I’ve studied. applied and pushed myself to know more about OD and do more of the “right” kind of OD. Many heroes I could mention but one in particular for me – Systems Thinker Russell Ackoff – stands out as being ahead of his time and thoughtful and inspiring of words and frames.

I stand very much in the space of the “next stage evolution” of organisations and work, and I am a practitioner – and most importantly believer – in non-hierarchical, agile and responsive systems: Particularly those that operate with self-management at the core.

So I’ve very willingly become an Ambassador of the OD Academy because that next stage won’t come without a hive mind, without the agitation and wisdom needed plus the evidence behind our move from industrial models, to fully into a more humanist, knowledge-based era. A new frontier of discovery is upon us and the OD Academy is a place we can enlighten, enthuse and enable that shift.

Another of my heroes is design legend Bucky Fuller, and this is one of my “quotes to live/practice by”: You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Let’s make a new reality with the collective power of the OD Academy.