Gretchen Spreitzer is the Keith E. and Valerie J. Alessi Professor of Business Administration at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan (RSB). She is also the co-director of the Ross Leadership Initiative. She joined the Michigan faculty in 2001 after spending nine years on the faculty at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. She was also a Visiting Professor at the Australian School of Business in Sydney in 2008.

Her research focuses on employee empowerment and leadership development, particularly within a context of organizational change and decline. Her most recent research is examining how organizations can enable thriving. This is part of a new movement in the field of organizational behavior, known as Positive Organizational Scholarship (www.bus.umich.edu/positive).

Based on extensive field research, she has authored many articles on contemporary issues in organizational behavior in leading journals such at the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the Journal of Applied Psychology. She is the co-author of five books:

• The Oxford Handbooks of Positive Organizational Scholarship (2011) with Kim Cameron.

• The Leader’s Change Handbook: An Essential Guide to Setting Direction and Taking Action (1999) with Jay Conger and Edward Lawler,

• The Future of Leadership: Speaking to the Next Generation (2001) with Warren Bennis and Thomas Cummings,

• A Company of Leaders: Five Disciplines for Unleashing the Power in Your Workforce (2001) with Robert Quinn,

• Leadership with Kimberly Perttula.

Gretchen co-directs the Center for positive organizations and teaches electives on Leading Organizational Change for MBAs and BBAs, and the Multidisciplinary Action Project (MAP) Program. She also is a core faculty member in the Leading the Positive Organization, Management of Managers, and Emerging Leaders Executive Education Programs at Michigan.

She serves on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Organizational Dynamics. She has been elected to leadership positions in several professional organizations including the Academy of Management (where she was on their Board of Governors and was division chair of the Organization Development and Change Division) and the Western Academy of Management (where she served as President). Gretchen has been awarded the Western Academy of Management’s Ascendant Scholar award for early career contributions, the JMI Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Martin Trailblazer award in conjunction with the Positive Organizational Scholarship Faculty at Michigan.

Prior to her doctoral education, Gretchen worked with the management consulting group at Price Waterhouse's Government Services Office and with Partners for Livable Places, a not-for-profit urban planning firm in Washington, D.C. She has a Bachelor of Science in Systems Analysis from Miami University (in Ohio) and completed her doctoral work at the Michigan Business School. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, who is a public policy economist, and two daughters.

Kim Cameron is recognized as the foremost expert on positive relational energy, which is generated by virtuous actions and can have a profound impact on an organization’s success and an individual’s professional and personal life. Over the years, his research on organizational virtuousness and the development of “cultures of abundance” has been published in more than 140 academic articles and 15 scholarly books, and he was recently recognized as being among the top 10 scholars in the organizational sciences whose work has been most frequently downloaded from Google.

His latest book, Positively Energizing Leadership: Virtuous Actions and Relationships that Create High Performance, is a culmination of his research and discoveries over the past couple of decades. He is the first author to examine scientific research around individual attraction and response to the presence of positive energy. He provides in-depth insights based on validated research around the effect of positively energizing leadership on an organization and its employees.

Cameron serves as the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business and Professor of Higher Education in the School of Education at the University of

Michigan and consults with a variety of leading business, government, and educational organizations around the world. He is a co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan.

Cameron received BS and MS degrees from Brigham Young University and MA and PhD degrees from Yale University. He served on the National Research Council, was president of Bay Asset Funding Corporation, and was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar. He is a Fellow in the Academy of Management and a recipient of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society’s Outstanding Educator Award.