Center for Leadership
Studies

Sandra Thompson has always worked within organizations to integrate business strategy and the human system. Though she has held numerous roles in human resources, communications, marketing and strategy and technology, her passion lies with driving transformation in organizations. As she worked toward her MAOL degree, Thompson helped turn the two businesses in which she held board-level positions into the two fastest growing companies in Johnson and Johnson’s medical device sector.

For her breakthrough initiative Thompson built a leadership team that would ease an acquisition while improving product quality and business turnaround. Thompson and her team were responsible for everything from rebuilding the executive team and company culture, to putting business systems in place that would drive well beyond what Johnson and Johnson had seen in prior acquisitions. Thompson’s business is now growing over 40% annually and she attributes this success to the tools and frameworks she learned in the MAOL.

Thompson explains that though she had attained a Master’s in Organizational Development and Adult Education, she sensed something lacking until she got involved with MAOL.

“MAOL was the first program I found that truly brought multidisciplinary concepts to a business setting and filled in some knowledge gaps that I believe leaders have in the social sciences,” Thompson explains. “The power of the multidisciplinary approach is that it includes both management sciences and human sciences, plus more. It is very powerful and very unique.”

“Those who are willing to play the leadership role to drive a different future must bring a different intention,” Thompson explains. “They have to see it, they have to live it, they have to believe it to help the organization move through the obstacles.”

Thompson notes that this kind of intention comes from experiencing a significant shift in the commitment to self and to the organization in which one works. She noted this sort of transformation in herself as she earned her MAOL degree and has since watched the process unfold in subsequent cohorts.

“People in this program have a new type and level of commitment. It’s not just about results, though the results are a byproduct,” she says. “It’s about realizing the full level of power that you have over what you create. There’s no going back to abdicating responsibility or accountability and no going back to a position of living where it’s easy to let obstacles get in the way.”

In one of her roles at Johnson and Johnson Thompson brought new models for treating chronic diseases to healthcare. Her focus in this role was on shifting to a total service and solution mindset from the acute-care based practices most often implemented today.

Since graduating Thompson has returned to the MAOL to lead sessions on the practicalities of shifting the behavior of human systems in organizations, stressing in particular leadership and intention. She has noticed that leaders underestimate the amount of power and accountability that they have in terms of establishing a human system capable of contributing to its fullest extent, to view the challenges in a different light and to transform organizations.