Institute Board

Kevin Dooley

Dr. Kevin Dooley is a Professor of Supply Chain Management, and a Dean’s Council of 100 Distinguished Scholar, in the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.  He is currently serving as Director of the Chief Sustainability Officer Leadership Alliance.  Dr. Dooley is a world-known expert in the application of complexity science to help organizations improve.  He has published over 100 research articles and co-authored an award winning book, “Organizational Change and Innovation Processes”.  He is on several journal editorial boards, including Decision Sciences and Journal of Operations Management. He has been awarded two patents concerning Centering Resonance Analysis, a novel form of network text analysis, and is co-founder and CEO of Crawdad Technologies, LLC.  Crawdad provides text mining software and services for applications in market research. 

Paul Kirst

Paul Kirst provides financial and business leadership to Search Institute. In this role, he is responsible for directing the organization's financial strategy, planning, and forecasts as well as financial planning, record keeping, and reporting. He also oversees the organization's financial, human resource, and technology staff.

When he came to Search Institute in 2001, he brought 28 years of financial and business experience in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. For 18 years, he worked in the business sector, which included serving as Chief Financial Officer of Strout Plastics, a $20 million manufacturing company; as controller of a $14 million printing company; as the sales and marketing director of a printing company; and in public accounting.

In the nonprofit world, he served as business manager of Parent Child Center, an early childhood development program located in Omaha, Nebraska; a rural hospital and nursing home administrator in Henderson, Nebraska; the administrator of a community development program in Bolivia; and as regional director of a refugee relief program in Honduras during the Nicaraguan Civil War.

Kirst has a bachelor of science degree in business and economics from Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska. He has a Certified Public Accountant certificate.

Myron Lowe (Associate)

Myron is the Director of External Technology Initiatives in the Office of Information Technology, at the University of Minnesota. He is responsible for state and national level technology projects that support strategic University research and education goals.  He also directs planning and management of collaborative projects with other universities, state agencies, and corporations.

Christi Olson (Associate)

Christi Olson leads the Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH) Southern California / Arizona Leadership Development practice. She is responsible for leadership consulting strategy, design, delivery and client satisfaction of LHH’s Leadership Consulting programs. Christi has over 20 years experience accelerating growth on strategic initiatives and leadership alignment for organizations in industry, education and non-profit. She brings a unique blend of senior leadership and business experience with strong leadership and organization development expertise. Her work focuses on leading organizations through strategic shifts, adopting innovation for market and customer advantage and developing leaders to lead strategic change. Christi partners with HROD and business leaders to fully engage individuals and work groups for high performance through collaboration, customer focus and alignment with the business strategy.   

Kristine Quade (Associate) 

Kristine Quade is an independent consultant and combines her background as an attorney with a Master's degree in Organizational Development from Pepperdine University, together with her years of experience as both an internal and external OD consultant.

Pat Seppanen (Associate)

Pat Seppanen holds an Ed.D. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University.  She has been involved with social programs for 35 years as an applied researcher-evaluator, program administrator, and practitioner.  Currently, Dr. Seppanen is a Senior Research Associate at Rainbow Research. She attended the Human Systems Dynamics Summer Institute in 2006 as part of Cohort  5.  While at Search Institute, she and her colleagues at Search Institute began actively using HSD methods and techniques with individuals, programs, and communities as they work to transform the settings that touch the lives of children and adolescents.  Pat brings to the HSD board a background in grant writing, program development, and evaluation.

Peter Vaill

Peter B. Vaill, Ph.D. is currently Professor Emeritus from Antioch University's Ph.D. program in Leadership and Change. He has an MBA and doctorate from the Harvard Business School. In his career he has served universities as well as private and public sector organizations in many different capacities. He has written many articles about OD, leadership, change, and spirituality in organizations. He is the author of three books, all published by Jossey-Bass: Managing as a Performing Art, Learning as a Way of Being, and Spirited Leading and Learning. A charter member of the OD Network, he was given its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.