Diana Whitney

Diana Whitney (born 1948) is an American author, award-winning consultant and educator whose writings – 15 books and dozens of chapters and articles – have advanced the positive principles and practices of appreciative inquiry and social constructionist theory worldwide.

Her work as a scholar practitioner has furthered both research and practice in the fields of appreciative leadership and positive organization development.

She was awarded Vallarta Institute’s Annual 2X2 (Two by Two) Recreate the World Award.

She is President of the Corporation for Positive Change (an international consulting group that she founded); a Fellow of the World Business Academy;, a Founder and Director Emeritus of the Taos Institute and a founding advisor to the United Religions Initiative.

Whitney earned her PhD from Temple University.

She currently teaches and advises students in the capacity of distinguished consulting faculty at Saybrook University and as faculty advisor for the Taos Tilburg PhD Program.

Whitney holds a B.A. in Speech Communication in 1970, an M.A., Classical Rhetorical Theory in 1972, and a PhD in 1980 in Organization Communication, all from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Her doctoral thesis was "The Dissemination of Educational Innovations: A Case Study of the NIE Linking Process."

According to worldCat,

In her 1980 dissertation, funded by the National Institute of Education, Whitney studied and mapped the processes used for the dissemination of educational innovations.

Her relational consultative model of the work of dissemination linking agents was implemented in educational R&D laboratories across the country.

Whitney's most recent research, conducted in partnership with Kae Rader and AmandaTrosten-Bloom, focuses on leadership and positive power.

Through a qualitative research process employing one-on-one interviews and focus groups, they discovered and subsequently confirmed five factors related to appreciative leadership: inquiry, inclusion, illumination, inspiration and integrity.

The results are published in their book, Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Drive Winning Performance and Build a Thriving Organization.

In partnership with Jeff Jackson and Maurice Monette of the Vallarta Institute and funded by a grant from the Reynolds Foundation, Whitney is currently engaged in research on the impact of appreciative inquiry in Cuba.

As a scholar practitioner Whitney's consulting has directly touched people in 20 countries, and has indirectly transformed people's quality of work life in organizations around the world.

In 1991 Whitney along with Kenneth Gergen, Mary Gergen, Sheila McNamme, Harlene Anderson, David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva founded the Taos Institute as a community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to furthering relational practices in the fields of organization development, family therapy and education.

There are now over 250 associates around the world.

From 1995 until 2009 Whitney served as an advisor and facilitator in the design and development of the United Religions Initiative, a global inter-faith organization dedicated to peace.

It was for this purpose that Whitney and David Cooperrider created the processes that Whitney entitled the Appreciative Inquiry Summit.

Whitney worked with Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management faculty David Cooperrider and Ron Fry to assess the need for and design the first Master's of positive organization development program.