Tom, originally trained as an architect, brings a different perspective to the process of analyzing organizational problems and drafting solutions. Tom is an expert at seeing the links between the whole and the elements of an organization, ranging from the business fundamentals evidenced in the hard data, to the psychodynamics between individuals on the executive team faced with tough, long-range decisions.

His particular specialty, and the subject of his book, is leadership transition. Tom has aided corporations and nonprofit associations to seize leadership transitions as a major strategic opportunity to strengthen the organization.

Tom is a prolific writer. It is his natural impulse to extract lessons from the particulars of a client situation and express them in a form that can be shared with other CFAR consultants, clients and the greater world of business thinkers. He frequently coauthors articles and working papers with clients.

Skills/Knowledge/Abilities

• Organizational Development - Builds capabilities that support strategic directions
• Initiative Design - Knows how to pull together people and resources to support change efforts
• Systems Thinking - Understands the complex ripple effects set off by actions taken in one part of an organization or industry

Recent Projects

• For a professional society, supported a major strategic review and helped align the governance to the strategic plan.
• For a foundation, worked with the incoming president on an effective transition and supported a major shift in the approach to grant making.
• For a major manufacturing company, developed and delivered an intervention aimed at building business skills and effective cross-functional product teams to increase shareholder value.

Professional Facts

A.B. Harvard; Masters in Architecture, University of Pennsylvania

Co-leader of CFAR’s Leadership Transitions focus area

Member of CFAR’s Hospital Systems and Academic Medicine expertise groups, and the Campaign Approach to Change focus area

Teaches annually at the Executive Development Seminar for Deans and the Executive Development Seminar for Associate Deans and Department Chairs run by the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Faculty member of the Executive Leadership for Academic Medicine Program (ELAM)

Adjunct Associate Professor, the Wharton School

Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics

Population Health Associate, Jefferson School of Population Health 

Has written extensively on issues of organization, management and leadership

Selected Writing

"Side Effects of Corporate Cultural Transformation."
(with G. Shea and M. Useem) The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, June 1997.

"New Boundaries of the 'Boundaryless' Company."
(with L. Hirschhorn) Harvard Business Review, May - June 1992, pp. 104 - 115.

"Making a Leadership Change."
San Fran.: Jossey-Bass, 1989.