Donald M. Norris, Ph.D., is President and Founder of Strategic Initiatives, Inc., a management consulting firm in Herndon, Virginia, that specializes in leading and navigating change, crafting and executing strategy, and enhancing enterprise performance. He is recognized as a thought leader and expert practitioner whose clients have included a blue-chip roster of corporations, colleges and universities, and associations and other non-profit organizations.

Dr. Norris has been consulting for over 30 years, the last 22 as a full-time consultant and thought leader. He founded Strategic Initiatives, Inc. 15 years ago. Driven by the emergence of the Knowledge Economy and its higher standards of performance, he has guided dozens of client organizations in realigning their visions, strategies, and plans to face fundamental changes in their industries. Strategies have included inventing groundbreaking approaches to strategic planning, the leveraging of technology to enhance performance and reduce costs, and focusing on value as a key performance indicator.

In particular, Dr. Norris has pioneered new methodologies for enhancing performance in higher education and demonstrating value to higher education’s stakeholders. He has led the way in leveraging technology to reinvent academic and administrative processes that improve productivity, reduce costs, and foster innovations that improve student success and competitive positioning. The most recent innovations have included new, software-enabled solutions that allow institutions to align strategies, actions, resources, measurement, and performance management at the institutional, college, and departmental levels.

Dr. Norris has blended consulting with thought leadership, as reflected in 16 books and monographs written over the past 12 years, plus dozens of articles and presentations. His publications are recognized as having shaped thinking and practice in a variety of fields: organizational transformation, distance education and e-learning, and practices and tools to enhance performance and build value. His most recent publications, “Value on Investment in Higher Education,” Transforming e-Knowledge, The Business Value Web, “Making Knowledge Services Work in Education,” and “The Changing Face of Planning and Leadership” reveal the transformative impacts of new technologies and knowledge sharing practices on individual, team, and organizational performance and their implications for leadership.

Prior to his consulting career, Dr. Norris served a succession of universities for 13 years as a researcher and administrator: University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech. These experiences culminated in his serving for six years in the position of Director of Planning and Policy Analysis at the University of Houston. In 1995, he became a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Educational Transformation at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In 1997, he became a Senior Fellow at the La Jolla Institute. In 1994, Dr. Norris was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the Society for College and University Planning.

Dr. Norris received a B.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics and an M.B.A. degree from Virginia Tech. He earned a Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the following honorary societies: Phi Eta Sigma, Tau Beta Pi (Engineering), Omicron Delta Kappa (Leadership), Phi Kappa Phi, Beta Gamma Sigma (Business), and Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities.