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FULL FACULTY DESCRIPTIONS
Betty Avary, AIA, Faculty
Project Management
"I am passionate about helping people be
successful. I enjoy listening to what is unique for each person,
and helping them distill the processes in their life. I love
it when I see the light come on in someone's face, and know
that they will go on from there to increase their skill and
experience greater success. I love change...change is about
making things better. My goal is to 'have an adventure every
day,' and I am most interested in investigating the process...seeing
what makes it tick. In grade school my father tutored me that
any math problem was 'just like a jigsaw puzzle...just break
it down into pieces.' I still use this analogy today every
time I begin the work. My adeptness at looking at all the
pieces, studying their unique qualities and putting them back
into a big picture is what has driven my success as a project
manager. But the adventure is only complete for me when I
can distill what I learn and share it with someone else, so
that they benefit, too."
F. Leigh Branham, SPHR
Faculty
Leigh Branham, SPHR, Faculty, works with organizations to
analyze root causes of turnover and employee disengagement,
then helps them develop and implement employer-of-choice
strategies. Leigh has 25 years of experience in human resource
consulting, and speaks frequently on the topics of employee
engagement/retention, career development in organizations,
employment practices, workforce trends, leadership, and management
development. He has been interviewed on National Public
Radio, and quoted in Business Week, The Los Angeles Times,
The Chicago Tribune, and many others via The Associated Press,
as an expert on employee retention.
Branham graduated from Vanderbilt University, and has two Master’s
degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Steven C. Buhler, AIA, Faculty
Project
Management Training
"I have always been compassionate about solving
difficult large complex design and construction projects,
but the longer I practice in the profession the more important
I find it is that we professionals have strong people and
conflict resolution skills. Leadership based upon integrity,
trust, and collaboration is more important to the design and
construction professions than it has ever been. And even though
we have vast reservoirs of databases filled with substantial
amounts of knowledge, we still have a tremendous amount to
learn about being collaborative, building trust and being
there for our customers and our colleagues."
Laurie Dreyer-Hadley, Faculty
Human Resources
Laurie teaches several Human Resources programs at AMI.
She is currently serving at PSOMAS in their Sacramento office. Laurie has over 20 years
of personnel management experience. She has previously served as the
VP of Human Resources for Gensler, managed the Human
Resources Operations at Ratcliff Architects and was VP of
Operations at Baker Street, Inc. Graduated from University
of California at Berkeley, she holds a BA in American History.
Michelle Fitzpatrick, CPSM, Faculty
A/E/C Firm Planning, Client
Service, Marketing
Michelle Fitzpatrick, CPSM, is a nationally recognized consultant, speaker and
author, who has worked exclusively within the design and construction community
for 25 years. Michelle assists firms from six to 20,000 people-including many
firms in the ENR 'Top 25' -in creating dynamic strategic plans, capturing and
retaining clients and acquiring critical market intelligence and client feedback.
Michelle brings the wisdom gained from many years 'in the trenches,' including
as Corporate VP for Development and Marketing for an industry-leading 23-office
E/A firm. Besides speaking frequently for industry organizations such as AIA,
SMPS and ACEC, Michelle's articles on myriad aspects of A/E/C firm planning,
client service and marketing have appeared in many industry publications including
the SMPS Marketer, PSMJ and ACEC's Dialog.
Stephen Hom, PE
Faculty | Consultant
Steve Hom works with A/E/C firms to help them develop
and leverage key factors that contribute to improved firm
and individual performance. His areas of expertise include
Strategic Planning, Marketing and Business Development, Performance
Management, and Coaching. He brings his knowledge and experience
as a seasoned firm leader and his client management skills
to his current work. His experience as a managing director
and division president of a 600+ person international engineering
and risk management firm, and as the chief operating officer
of a mid-sized engineering firm, add practicality and reality
to his work.Steve has over 30 years of experience in engineering,
marketing and business development, project and client
management, operations and performance
management,
and consulting. As Steve puts it, "I have felt both the
pain and pleasure of growing a firm and dealing with the
day-to-day challenges in implementing our strategic plans."
Gary F. Hunt
Faculty
I am pleased to find that many of the techniques I developed over my 37-year career for developing and growing a design practice work now for the firms I consult with. Growth for growth's sake is not the answer. Long-term stability and creating organizational value creates opportunities for everyone. Developing a culture of long range planning that leads to tactical business, marketing, training and human resource plans can create the stability that all firm principals desire. I have found that a basic management audit followed by a planning retreat can define an attainable plan of action that results in making an excellent practice into a better business environment that creates long term stability. My approach is not made up of off-the-shelf standards, but techniques that I have personally implemented with success, which I tailor to your unique size, disciplines, and client markets. I believe that a practical business approach supports a commitment to design and quality of client service. Clients expect us to be efficient, and they appreciate a good business approach in their service providers. My process can make your organization more proactive and less reactive.
Steven J. Isaacs
Firm Organization and Management,
Project Management, Strategic Long Term Planning, Negotiations,
Financial Controls
Steve Isaacs has thirty years of experience leading design and construction firms and major engineering, architecture and planning projects throughout the United States and overseas. He assists firms to improve their practice in the areas of overall organization and management, strategic long term planning, financial controls, project performance and profitability, negotiation, mergers and acquisition, staff mentoring and development, ownership transition, joint ventures and partnering. He designed and teaches courses in project management and the leadership of architectural, engineering and planning firms and in effective negotiation. Steve has been teaching and consulting in the design industry since 2001. His career in practice includes serving as President of SmithGroup California. Prior to the merger with SmithGroup, he was CEO and President of Stone Marraccini & Patterson (SMP) an international multi-office architectural and planning practice with over 150 employees.
Tom Jindra
Faculty
Tom
Jindra works with management teams in the areas of benchmarking
strategic competitiveness, high performance teams, lean thinking,
and leadership development. He is an award-winning Lecturer
at the University of Kansas School of Business where he teaches
Strategic Management, General Management, and Professional
Leadership Development. In the past few years he has provided
consulting in strategic issues, operations, and leadership
development in Germany,
Slovenia, Poland, Luxembourg, Turkey, Morocco, and South
Africa, advising senior management in those locations about
strategic issues in their markets. More recently he has been
involved in U.S. and European facilities assisting in operations
improvement through lean manufacturing techniques, application
of the theory of constraints, leadership and team development.
He has played an active role as change manager aligning organizations
to new and optimized business processes.
Roy W. Johnson, AIA, Senior Fellow
Firm Management,
Project Management, Corporate Universities, AIA/CEC Peer Reviewer,
Leadership Development
"My personal mission is to blend my
30+ years of practice experience with the latest ideas about
learning organizations, corporate universities, and emotional
intelligence into my teaching and consulting work with individuals
and firms across the country. The opportunity to address their
challenges and work towards transformation of the design profession,
in order to best serve our clients and communities, is a worthy
one for this phase of my career. Sharing my perspective with
professionals from their 20’s to their 60’s, and
facilitating their dialogue with each other, has proven to
be both stimulating and valuable to all involved."
Louis L. Marines, President
Visioning, Coaching, Mentoring
"I am passionate about living my life compassionately
for myself and for others. I want to touch people with grace
and integrity and to thereby encourage their same stance in
the world. My life is about more than work, though much of
it is leadership development for A/E's, because it’s
important to me that they’re empowered to create our
better world. My life is also about more than knowledge, because
I equally value imagination and fierce compassion. Expression
of those values is my mission, and I am accountable for the
generous use of the gifts I've been given. Our lives and times
require extraordinary toughness and courage: to defend our
boundaries, to make and implement unpopular decisions we believe
in, to live guided by our moral compasses, and to express
integrity in the totality of our lives, so that our deeds
are in accordance with our words, and aligned with our hopes
for, and our expectations of, others. Vaçlav Havel
speaks of Optimism as sophomoric and naïve, and I embrace
his alternative call to Hopefulness, to do something because
it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
That pursuit affords my life meaning, and I live to encourage
others in the pursuit of their own meaning, their reason for
being alive and gifted and on our planet at this moment. So
we can, each and every one, affirm Thoreau's encouragement
that when we die we feel we've left no lives unlived."
Susan O'Connell, Faculty
Project Management
Susan O’Connell is a highly experienced architect and educator, who teaches Project Management programs at AMI. She has served as a guest lecturer in the UCLA Extension’s Project Management program. Susan has over nineteen years of experience leading architectural teams in the design and management of complex laboratories and academic projects throughout Southern California and the U.S. Susan has repeatedly demonstrated her ability to build consensus among large, complex user groups. Her approach to building consensus starts with her ability to listen and discern real concerns, distill a wide range of input, and identify a common ground so that through a process of negotiation a substantive design solution is found and embraced. Susan’s strength lies in her ability to collaborate with clients and take great architectural concepts through to a completed project that fulfills the client’s vision.She has been a presenter at Society of College and University Planners Pacific Region Conference, and the Tradelines Conference. Susan is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS).
Denis O'Malley, Faculty
Project Management
Denis Senior Project Manager with Brown and Caldwell Consultants,
a national environmental consulting firm. He has over 30 years'
experience in engineering and construction project management.
He directs teams of design professionals working on projects
from concept development through construction and follow-up.
He is Diplomate for the American Academy of Environmental
Engineers.
Ronald L. Peckham, PE, Faculty
Leadership, Teambuilding, Facilitation,
Partnering
"Leadership and change . . . dance partners in
the ballroom of organizational development. For those who
are committed to the dance, it’s important to stay agile,
teachable and engaged. My belief is that leadership is essential,
not optional, at every level of this journey we call life.
At the personal, team and organization level, my experience
is that effective leadership is built on a foundation of values,
empowered by constructive and emotionally intelligent behaviors,
and guided by a vision of the future which resonates with
the stakeholders. My context is thirty years of experience
in the consulting industry. Trained as an engineer and military
officer, started as a designer, served in leadership assignments
that spanned planning, design, construction, marketing and
senior management. My personal mission is to leverage that
experience for organizational development. My passion is working
with people and facilitating change."
James E. Porter, Faculty,
Construction Contract
Administration, Loss Prevention and Claims Avoidance, Contract
Documents, Project Management
"My chosen field of practice, Construction Contract Administration,
is vital to the total architectural and engineering process
of project delivery. I always say that at the completion of
the construction document stage, the drawings and specifications
are about 90% complete - enough to have the project bid or
set a negotiated price. That last vital 10% is performed during
the construction phase by the construction administrator,
working in concert with the client, the contractors, and the
government agencies. The CA must be a strong 'generalist'
for architecture and/or engineering to make certain this essential
remaining 10% is consistent with the quality of the rest of
the project. The CA is also the last professional to see and
work on the project, thus is it up to him and him alone to
make certain the project meets all codes, that it meets the
needs of the client, and above all is safe. Our duty to our
clients and all those who enter the building or engineering
space cannot ever be forgotten. Construction administration
is not difficult, but it is terrible unforgiving of any incapacity,
lack of attention or neglect."
Joseph D. Rei, Ph.D., Director of Executive
Education
Leadership, Corporate Learning
“I get my greatest rewards and satisfaction from watching
firms grow and build their learning capacity as an organization,
and by helping firms build systems that help the people in
their firm achieve their highest potential. My vision for
our AMI clients is to help them build sustainable competitive
success through the full engagement and development of the
people that make up the organization.”
Sandra Ford Walston, Faculty
Courage Behaviors, Leadership Styles, Team
Building
“I am fascinated with the dynamics of the human spirit;
therefore, my desire is to contribute my passion in a way
that enhances each individual’s personal and professional
gifts. One way I seek to accomplish this is to awaken people
to the original definition of the word courage, meaning ‘heart
and spirit.’ As a contemplative, I hold myself 100% accountable
for each precious day. I feel blessed to be able to have a
career that expresses my heart.”
Trudi Zelikson, Faculty
Effective Presentations, Personal Communications,
Professional & Executive Coaching, Team Coaching for Contract
Selection, Communications Strategy and Implementation
"Creating a safe, nurturing and dynamic environment that
enables people to change their behavior and become more effective
communicators is one of my greatest joys. To see people build
their confidence and develop tools that can be used in everyday
communications, in a relatively short period of time, is extremely
gratifying to me. I am privileged to be able to facilitate
people’s experience as they change long-held perceptions
about themselves. Through experiencing visual feedback, hearing
group feedback, and receiving individual coaching, my students
learn how to use their own natural speaking style most effectively,
and de-emphasize or manage problem areas. Meaning in my life
comes from helping others realize and experience their own
unlimited potential."
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