Keynote Speakers
Sunday, November 11
Terry Holliday, Ph. D.
Commissioner of Education
Commonwealth of Kentucky
From Powerball to Moneyball: How Education Can Meet the Challenge of Preparing More Students for College and Career
The movie Moneyball starring Brad Pitt described how the Oakland A’s changed baseball forever using a data driven and systemic process for change. The change was not easy. The power structures in place blocked attempts to change at every turn. Sound familiar? This keynote will describe a "moneyball" approach to education change from the classroom to the state education agency level.
About Terry Holliday: Holliday served as superintendent of the more than 20,000-student Iredell-Statesville school district from 2002 until 2009. Under his leadership, the Iredell-Statesville school district received the 2008 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which was created by an act of Congress in 1987 to recognize companies, organizations, businesses and other entities that have shown long-term improvement in quality and productivity.
Holliday’s previous experience includes serving as superintendent, associate superintendent, director of accountability, principal, assistant principal, director of instrumental music and band director in North Carolina and South Carolina.
In December 2010, Holliday was named to the board of directors for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) for 2010-11. CCSSO is a nonpartisan, nationwide, nonprofit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity and five U.S. extra-state jurisdictions.
In September 2011, Holliday was appointed to serve a four-year term on the National Assessment Governing Board. The board sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the Nation’s Report Card.
Holliday is the co-author of Running All the Red Lights: A Journey of System-Wide Educational Reform.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Furman University; a master’s degree and education specialist degree from Winthrop University; and a doctorate from the University of South Carolina.
A native of Belton, South Carolina, Holliday and his wife, Denise, are the parents of two children.
C. Jackson Grayson
Founder and Chairman, APQC
Using Process and Performance Management to Transform Education
Jack Grayson, founder and CEO of The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), will share how using the methodology of process and performance management (PPM) in instruction and operations can help you to transform your K-12 school, district, or state. Gains of an average of $1 million dollars each have already been achieved in 57 school districts, ranging in size from 2,500 to 330,000 students. Those who put this methodology into use, including higher-education institutions, can achieve similar gains.
For the past 27 years, APQC has been working with business, healthcare, and government sectors to help in their efforts to restructure and improve themselves. With 80 employees on staff, APAC works with leading organizations in the United States and around the world with research and training, providing information services and technical assistance, and creating publications in areas such as productivity, quality, benchmarking, measurement, employee involvement, knowledge management, and others.
About C. Jackson Grayson: In 1990, Business Week said of Jack Grayson, “Few, if any, individual Americans have done more during the last 20 years to shape the country’s economic future for the better.” His efforts towards improvement are evident, as he led the team that founded the Malcolm Baldrige Award during the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan. Jack is a CPA and has been a member of the board of directors of eight major U.S. corporations.
Jack has a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University, a master’s in business administration from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a doctorate in business from the Harvard Business School. His academic career has included professorships at Harvard, Stanford, Tulane, and SMU, and he has taught in business schools in France and Switzerland. He has also been a dean of two business schools (at Tulane University and at SMU), where he became known for instituting innovations in business education.
Jack is an author of approximately 50 magazine and newspaper articles and four books. His latest book, If Only We Knew What We Know (co-authored with Carla O’Dell), focuses on knowledge management. He is also a frequent reader of Self Renewal, a book by John Gardner whose beliefs he adopts in his day-to-day life.
Jack’s career, however, is not confined to just business. He believes in variety, constant learning, experimentation, and fun. His career has included being a newspaper reporter in New Orleans, a special agent for the FBI, a manager of a cotton farm in North Louisiana, a member of an export-import firm, and an owner of racehorses.