Friday, May 24, 2013

The Long Journey to be a Doctor

I wanted to say thanks to everyone that has continued to come here and read this blog based on my interest in expanding knowledge of human capital and talent management by giving people different perspectives to look at regarding these topics. It is the proverbial labor of love as they say.

Over the last nearly three years, I started a journey to expand my own knowledge by pursuing an Ed.D in the Penn Chief Learning Officer (PennCLO) program. For me the journey in this program has been life changing. Of course the instruction by Wharton, Graduate School of Education, and Penn faculty cannot be understated in the slightest...but where the program separated itself from any other doctorate programs I looked at was the quality of fellow colleagues in the program including CEOs, talent professionals, CHROs, learning & development professionals was the most valuable part to me.

The journey is almost complete. I successfully defended my dissertation on May 2 (The topic is on the Role of Organizational Leadership Capability in Mergers & Acquisitions...plenty to share from that at a later point!) and was hooded at graduation ceremonies at Penn on May 11. I still have some revisions to make, but will have my diploma conferred by August as planned (So technically...I am not a Doctor of Education...yet! So I am not jinxing myself by using that terminology yet)

Why I tell you this, is that I have missed the opportunity to contribute to our collective knowledge while I attempted to finish the program and that this is my commitment to everyone that I will be back in the next month or two to start sharing what I have been honored to gain in my doctorate journey with all of you!

All the best...

Cheers,
Keith