"We must not only give what we have; we must also give what we are."
Meet our Faculty and Administration
Judith Wright, Ed.D., Founder and Chair of the Board, has achieved national and international prominence in fields as diverse as early childhood development, university student services, personal growth, and spiritual development. Prior to founding the Wright Leadership Institute, Ms. Wright had a distinguished career in higher education and human services, developing one of the first model programs in the country designed to integrate students with disabilities into college. She later received major grants from the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Education to develop model programs, research, and demonstration programs for children with developmental disabilities and their families. Ms. Wright holds a B.A. summa cum laude in Psychology and an M.A. in Education, Counseling and Rehabilitation from Michigan State University. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received her Ed.D. from Fielding Graduate University. She is the bestselling author of There Must Be More Than This: Finding More Life, Love, and Meaning by Overcoming Your Soft Addictions (Broadway, 2003 reprinted by Tarcher/Penguin in 2006 as The Soft Addiction Solution) and The One Decision (Tarcher/Penguin, 2005) as well as a highly sought-after speaker and trusted media advisor, having logged over 400 television and radio appearances.
Bob Wright, Ed.D., Founder and CEO, is known internationally for his visionary work with business leaders and his personal growth practice. Trained extensively in psychotherapy, Mr. Wright served as a faculty member and trainer in personal growth modalities ranging from Gestalt to bioenergetics to psychodrama at the Forest Institute of Des Plaines, Governors State University, and Northeastern Illinois University. He also advised student practicums as field faculty for the University of Illinois and Loyola prior to co-founding his own human development organization, Human Effectiveness, Inc. (HEI). HEI provided high performance training, employee assistance, industrial coaching and training, individual skill development and psychotherapy. Mr. Wright has consulted business leaders from small entrepreneurial start-ups to Fortune 100's on topics such as business success, personal development, corporate growth, change, and effectiveness. He also received an 18-month appointment to develop and teach a high-performance team module for the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He holds a B.A. in sociology and an M.S.W. from the University of Illinois and an M.A. in Communication Science from Governor's State University. In addition, he received his Ed.D. from Fielding Graduate University. He is the bestselling author of People Skills (Pivot Point, 1988) and Beyond Time Management: Business with Purpose (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996).
Michael Zwell, Ph.D., is Chancellor of the Wright Graduate Institute and a globally recognized Human Capital expert. He is the founder of Zwell International, an executive search firm, and Exxceed, Inc., which was dedicated to measuring and developing employee competency. Dr. Zwell received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University, both in anthropology. He has taught at Rutgers University, has spoken extensively on getting the most from employees, and published the highly acclaimed Creating a Culture of Competence (John Wiley & Sons, 2000) on how to create high-performing organizations and Six-Figure Salary Negotiation (Platinum Press, 2008). He has studied human performance technologies and led seminars and laboratory groups with the Wright Leadership Institute for over 15 years.
Toni A. Gregory, Ed.D., is a core faculty member at the Fielding Graduate University School of Educational Leadership and Change, as well as a consultant specializing in the study of organizational learning and the impact of culture and complexity on organizational transformation. She has an extensive background in leadership, management, organization theory and research. She was formerly a professor of management at the Morehouse School of Business at Morehouse College. Additionally, she has been a corporate manager as well as a senior administrator in higher education. She was Director of Research at the American Institute for Managing Diversity where she established and managed a global research division and supervised a variety of research initiatives. She has experience in a broad range of research methodologies including a variety of quantitative and qualitative models of research. She is also experienced in the learning-history methodology designed specifically for use in studying learning organizations. The method was developed by George Roth and Art Kleiner at the MIT Center for Organizational Learning with whom she has worked extensively on learning histories for corporate as well as academic organizations. She co-developed the Grounded Action method with Dr. Odis Simmons. They are collaborating on a book about the method. Dr. Gregory received a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in Psychology in 1970, a Master's degree from the University of Cincinnati in Corporate Education, 1988, and a Doctorate from the University of Cincinnati in Organizational Psychology/Organizational Learning, 1996.
Gordon Medlock, Ph.D., M.S.W., is a performance management consultant at Workstream, Inc. and an instructor in nonprofit management with the Graham School at the University of Chicago. He was previously an outplacement consultant with the John Joseph Group, Director of Training and Psychotherapy with Human Effectiveness, Inc. and The Family & Group Educational Institute, associate professor of philosophy and education at the College of Wooster, and a teacher of high school math. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University, an M.A. in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Northwestern University. Dr. Medlock has authored numerous articles on integrative and eclectic psychotherapy for the Association of Humanistic Psychology, the Society for Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI), and The International Academy of Eclectic Psychotherapists, and is the author of the forthcoming book The Power of Critical Thinking: Reclaiming the Moral and Spiritual Center of American Liberalism.
Jim Morningstar, Ph.D., is Director of the School of Integrative Psychology, Milwaukee, WI. His previous faculty experience includes: Director of Applied Psychology and Human Services for Akami University, Hawaii, an assistant professorship in the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences at the Medical College of Wisconsin; adjunct posts in the University of Wisconsin's Department of Psychology and the graduate program for Education and Human Development at St. Mary's College, Winona, MN. He earned an APA-approved Ph.D. and M.A. from Fordham University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences while simultaneously completing internships, traineeships and fellowships at the National Institutes of Mental Health. He also has extensive post-graduate training in bioenergetics, therapeutic breathwork, and Gestalt.
William (Bill) Seidman, Ph.D., is a recognized thought leader and expert on management decision-making and organizational transformation. In particular, Dr. Seidman is renowned for understanding the processes required to discover and utilize expert knowledge. As part of his doctoral dissertation, he developed a ground-breaking technique for analyzing management decision-making behaviors. This technique examines decision-making and expert functions down at the single word or single behavior level and is the core of Cerebyte's organizational transformation technology, which examines complex management processes and reduce them to a few, easily automated "best practices." Dr. Seidman also has more than 20 years experience as a manager of profit and loss centers in high technology companies including Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, Mentor Graphics, and Integrated Project Systems, a Silicon Valley consulting company. He is an experienced consultant to and manager of fast growth, high technology environments, as well as a frequent speaker on performance improvement and knowledge management.
The Wright Graduate Institute has changed me for the better. It has made me a more conscious, alive and open person—and scholar. The experience of learning experientially, as well as theoretically, has allowed me to live my studies and study my living. I feel more alive and creative. I have seemingly boundless energy to pursue my new curiosity. It is liberating to learn in such a personally relevant manner and share my experience with others.