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.

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.

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