February 26, 2008

Drexel University College of Medicine's Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women has announced that Karen Stephenson, PhD, will serve as the 2008 ELAM Senior Scholar. Stephenson will analyze and diagnose the ELAM alumnae network (now numbering more than 500 women) with the goal of designing interventions for building a more robust professional community and assessing the growth and impact of these interventions over time. Additionally, in her role as ELAM Senior Scholar, Stephenson will translate her findings into articles for publication.

Stephenson, hailed in Business 2.0 as "The Organization Woman," is a corporate anthropologist. She has been recognized internationally for her pioneering work in detecting, diagnosing and designing human networks to solve a variety of complex problems. In 2007, she was one of only three women included in a distinguished list of 55 in Random House's Guide to the Management Gurus. Among the dozens of national and global corporations and organizations with which Stephenson has worked are: pharmaceuticals Amgen, Genentech and Pfizer; the medical schools of Harvard and UCLA; and the National Institutes of Health. Her web-based firm Netform was recognized as one of the top 100 leading innovation companies by CIO in 2001.

Stephenson earned her bachelor's degree from Austin College (TX), her master's in anthropology from the University of Utah, and her PhD, also in anthropology, from Harvard. She has held academic positions at UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management; Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; and the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. She has held fellowships at the Sloan School of MIT; the National Institute for Mental Health, NIH; Imperial College Management School, University of London; and Bryn Mawr College (as the inaugural Katharine Houghton Hepburn Fellow). She serves on the advisory boards of several educational associations.

Established in 1995, ELAM is the nation's only in-depth program focused on preparing senior women faculty at schools of medicine, dentistry, and public health to move into positions of institutional leadership where they can effect positive change. ELAM's year-long program develops the professional and personal skills required to lead and manage successfully in today's complex health care environment, with special attention to the unique challenges facing women in leadership positions. ELAM graduates come from more than 100 academic health centers and include 21 current or former deans, 90 department chairs, 30 center or institute directors, and 70 senior dean's staff throughout the U.S., as well as in Canada and Puerto Rico.