Kathy Pearson, Ph.D., is a senior consultant and Director, Executive Education for Decision Strategies International (DSI), a management consulting firm focused on scenario-based strategic planning and decision-making. In addition Dr. Pearson serves as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at The Wharton School. She has taught operations management courses in the MBA program and Executive Master’s of Technology Management programs as well as Probability and Statistics, Simulation Modeling, and other courses for the department and the University of Pennsylvania. In 2006, Dr. Pearson was honored with the “Goes above and beyond the call of duty” award by the 2007 Wharton MBA class.
Dr. Pearson is heavily involved in Executive Education at The Wharton School and DSI, teaching on a variety of topics such as Critical Thinking, Scenario Planning, Strategic Decision Making, Project Management, and Stakeholder Analysis. As Academic Director for many programs, she is responsible for the design of the academic curriculum, the integration of the material, and the overall educational quality of the program. Specifically, Dr. Pearson has served as the Academic Director for the Wharton Executive Management Program for Academic Surgery Leaders, the Patient Safety Leadership Academy Executive Program, the Wharton Nursing Leaders Program, and the GlaxoSmithKline Executive Management Program for Pharmacy Leaders. Many of her participants are clinician executives, but she has also worked with executives from a wide variety of industries and has taught at Cedep at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.
Dr. Pearson’s industrial experience includes analytical support for the pharmaceutical industry, various hospital groups, the Department of Defense, and several manufacturing companies. Most recently, she has served on a number of quality management and Best Practice teams for a major health care company, has been heavily involved in developing computer simulation models for the health care industry, and has worked with several professional organizations in developing long-term strategic business plans. In addition, she has worked with hospital clinicians in the area of patient safety.
Dr. Pearson received her B.S. degree in theoretical mathematics
from Auburn University, her M.S. degree in Decision Sciences from Georgia State University, and her Ph.D. in industrial engineering
(concentration in statistics) from Northwestern University.