About the Instructor
Chris Soderquist is the president of Pontifex Consulting and a long-time partner of isee systems. Chris has over sixteen years experience helping organizations apply
the principles of System Thinking to achieve their strategic goals. During that time he has provided consulting and training to organizations in the public and private sector,
including teaching systems thinking (for health policy) to legislators in Georgia, New Hampshire and Kansas. Clients include: Boeing, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, Dow Chemical, Hewlett-Packard, New Visions for Public Schools, Nissan, Northwestern Mutual, UNDP, World Bank, and the World Economic Forum.
Guest Instructors
Susan Fairchild
Director, Research and Organizational Learning, New Visions for Public Schools
Susan Fairchild, Ph.D., M.P.H., joined New Visions for Public Schools in 2009. She
uses systems thinking to support continuous improvement efforts in New Visions’
network of 80 public high school and charter schools in New York City. She also
applies systems thinking in the design of data tools that help to identify root cause.
Prior to joining New Visions, Susan served as a program director at The Epsilon Group,
an international healthcare consulting organization. She holds a master's degree from
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a Ph.D. from New York
University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development with a
focus on teacher workforce issues and survey methods.
Rachel Ferencik
Senior Research Associate, Georgia Health Policy Center
Rachel Ferencik is a Senior Research Associate at the Georgia Health Policy Center in
the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Rachel is the
Center's lead expert on systems thinking, having led mapping and modeling projects
on childhood obesity, low birth weight, chronic disease, violence and motor vehicle
injury prevention. She coordinates the Legislative Health Policy Certificate Program, a
training and continuing education program for state policymakers in Georgia that uses
systems thinking principles and skills to help legislators identify high leverage solutions
to improve the health of Georgians. She has a Master’s in Public Administration from Georgia
State University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bob Landel
University of Virginia
Robert D. Landel, Henry E. McWane Professor of Business Administration, teaches
courses in innovation and operations management, systems thinking and operational
effectiveness in the Darden School’s MBA degree program. He also serves
on the faculty of several Darden Executive Education programs. Landel has
been a consultant to manufacturing and service companies in the areas of
operations strategy development, high-performance work systems design,
improvement management and executive-level operations leadership teaching, and
midlevel management coaching.
Mark White
University of Virginia
Mark White is Associate Professor of Commerce at the University of Virginia’s McIntire
School of Commerce, where he teaches corporate finance and numerous courses
on sustainable business practices. He is currently engaged in several collaborative
research projects related to the latter field, including efforts to model the environmental
and financial implications of manufacturing biodiesel from microalgae and The Bay
Game, an interactive simulation of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.