Appreciative Inquiry is a philosophy as well as a generative, strength-based approach to change that engages people in meaningful dialogue to discover what is already working within their lives, relationships, and organizations and then helps them create more of what already works.

By focusing on the positive, Appreciative Inquiry inspires hope, reaffirms shared values, and invites us to action toward our desired visions of the future.

Lindsey Godwin, Ph.D.

Lindsey Godwin is an Assistant Professor of Management in the College of Business, Morehead State University and received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, where she studied with the founders of Appreciative Inquiry. She has worked on AI projects with the UN, World Vision, Houston Schools, Weatherhead School of Management, and other organizations. In collaboration with David Cooperrider, the leading thought leader on Appreciative Inquiry (AI), she has been a partner in the development and facilitation of OvationNet, which provides online experiential workshops that focus on teaching the foundations of AI. She is currently a knowledge manager for the AI Commons and served as content manager for the 2007 International AI Conference in Orlando, FL and is the Co-Chair for the 2009 World Appreciative Inquiry Conference in Nepal. Lindsey can be reached at l.godwin@moreheadstate.edu.

Matthew Moehle

Matthew Moehle is a Clinical Instructor of Education in the Department of Early Childhood, Elementary, and Special Education at Morehead State University. He uses a variety of strengths-based approaches in his work to help foster improvement and innovation in teaching and education. Matthew works most with individual teachers and teacher education students to use strengths-based approaches to develop and personalize instructional strategies, create positive learning environments, uncover and build upon inherent strengths of students, teachers, and schools to increase learning, incorporate multiple stakeholders into child development and education processes, and to address many other areas of teaching and learning. As a researcher, Matthew uses strengths-based strategies to explore formal and informal learning experiences that inspire and foster individuals' lifelong learning and leisure. The father of two young children, he uses strengths-based approaches not only in the schools, but also at home to create a strengths-based family. Matthew can be reached at m.moehle@moreheadstate.edu.

Environments that are rich in three protective factors: 1) caring relationships, 2) high expectation messages, and 3) meaningful opportunities to participate and contribute, nurture and support the healthy development of the whole child.

This leads to outcomes that promote successful, healthy, individuals who demonstrate positive growth and success in school and life. With an understanding of resilience, we can shift from viewing the world and individuals through a traditional problem-based, deficit, pathological model to a positive, protective, and preventive model.

Sara Truebridge, M.Ed.

Sara Truebridge, a doctoral candidate in the Educational Leadership program at Mills College, Oakland, CA, is a Research Associate in the Health and Human Development Program at WestEd, focusing on positive youth/human development, prevention, and Resilience theory, policy and practice. As a credentialed teacher, Sara has over 20 years of classroom experience ranging from pre-K to high school. Her professional experience and leadership in the field of education includes work in the development and formation of new schools, curriculum development, character education, arts in education, resilience, conflict resolution, special education, and parent education.

Sara is a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education program, Closing the Achievement Gap: Linking Families, School, and Communities through Complementary Learning; a graduate of UC Berkeley's program, Children and the Changing Family; the former New York State Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, and the former New York State Senate Legislative Analyst for education.

In 2006, Sara and Bonnie Benard co-authored a component on resilience published in Planned Responses to Unplanned Change, part of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's (ASCD) response to Hurricane Katrina. Most recently, Truebridge and Benard co-authored the chapter, A Shift In Thinking: Influencing Social Worker's Beliefs About Individual and Family Resilience in an Effort to Enhance Well-Being and Success for All that is included in the 5th edition of Dennis Saleebey's book, The Strengths Perspective in Social Work Practice (2008).

The Positive Deviance approach rests on two important assumptions. First, it proposes that solutions to community problems already exist within the community of interest, and second, that it is possible to find successful solutions to problems before all of the underlying causes are addressed.

The Positive Deviance approach thus differs from traditional needs-based or problem-solving approaches, in that it does not focus primarily on identification of needs and the external inputs necessary to meet those needs or solve problems. A unique process invites the community to identify and optimize existing, sustainable solutions from within the community, which speeds up innovation.

Mark Munger

Mark Munger is a senior associate of the Positive Deviance Initiative. He also consults with Valeocon Management Consulting, an international management consultancy focused on tailored, sustainable business improvement. His principal area of practice is executive leadership, innovation, and change. He has been a management consultant for more than twenty-five years. His experience ranges from consultation with venture capital groups and “start-ups” to Fortune 100 Companies. His work in the public sector includes schools, universities, multilateral organizations, health care providers, and advocacy groups.

For some time, Mark has been associated with the Positive Deviance Initiative based at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. He contributes to the theory and practice of Positive Deviance as an emerging tool for behavioral change in the context of intractable problems. He is currently active in many applications of Positive Deviance; using PD to eliminate MRSA infections in hospitals throughout the country and introducing PD to schools in New Jersey and California.. These schools are characterized by low-income, diverse populations in which student performance is challenged by a variety of environmental and social factors. This attempt to use PD to focus on areas of strength in the schools and in the school communities and represents a novel approach to school transformation.

After serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, Mark continued his career as an urban high school teacher and helped to develop an alternative high school for underperforming students. Previous to Valeocon, he held senior positions at two consulting firms in Boston, Massachusetts, and spent considerable time in private practice in collaboration with other practitioners. Mark has also taught organization and management at Harvard Medical School, and is affiliated with the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University. He initiated a biomedical research and development effort for which his team received a US patent.

Mark has participated in a variety of initiatives in the growing field of sustainable development. He has also served on board of director positions in nationally recognized organizations in the areas of health, advocacy, and human rights. He has lived and worked in South Asia, and maintains an interest in the dynamics of development and globalization. He was educated at Princeton University and did his graduate studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in administration, planning, and social policy.

Teachers are primarily trained in normal methods of classroom management, which can backfire with children with ADHD and other challenging children. This segment of children continues to grow, and continues to need more inner wealth than all other children in order to make their lives work.

The Nurtured Heart Approach quickly brings children to a deeper, more abiding sense of being powerful in positive ways, by providing them with wonderful first-hand experiences of being respectful, responsible, thoughtful, considerate and capable. Children who feel wealthy on the inside manifest this knowing in compassionate ways in every aspect of their lives.

Howard Glasser, M.A.

Howard Glasser, M.A. (New York University 1974), is the Executive Director of the Children's Success Foundation in Tucson, Arizona. He is designer of The Nurtured Heart Approach and the co-author of Transforming the Difficult Child, currently the top-selling book on the subject of ADHD, as well as The Inner Wealth Initiative, one of the leading books on school interventions, and YOU Are Oprah—Igniting the Fires of Greatness. He has been a featured guest on CNN and a consultant for 48 Hours.

Howard lectures internationally, teaching therapists, educators and parents about The Nurtured Heart Approach, which is now being used in hundreds of thousands of homes and classrooms around the world. His work is being successfully applied to a wide range of programs—from meth addicts to the military, from marital counseling to mentoring, from Head Starts to high schools, from treatment programs to elder care, and from foster care to fostering inner wealth in infants and toddlers. He is proudest of the fact that he is responsible for keeping more children off of psychiatric medications than perhaps any other living person. He and his wonderful daughter Alice live in Tucson, Arizona.

Susan McLeod, M.A.

Susan McLeod, M.A., Founding Publisher of ENERGYPARENTING.com and Certified Nurtured Heart Specialist, is the delighted mother of a formerly difficult child and his little brother. Susan earned a Master's degree in Strategic Communication & Leadership from Seton Hall University and is the president of Summa Consulting LLC, devoted to helping social entrepreneurs fund their missions. She has 15 years of business management, corporate and government communications and journalism experience, and serves as Chair for the Arizona Institute's Early Childhood Development Council. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband and two sons.