Keynote Speakers

Please meet a first list of outstanding speakers of the World Appreciative Inquiry Conference 2019. More will join, keep in touch!

Tony Silbert

Tony Silbert, MSOD, co-founder of Spartina Consulting, has over 25 years of experience in business consulting and was an early adopter, student, and practitioner of Appreciative Inquiry since 1998. He brings strengths-based and participatory approaches to strategic planning, culture building, innovation, and leadership development. Tony also co-authored the book Healing Conversations Now: Enhancing Relationships with Elders & Dying Loved Ones (with Joan Chadbourne, ©2011 Taos Institute). He is passionate about helping individuals/families have more meaningful connections toward end of life. He is even more excited about the possibilities that exist to fundamentally shift the aging experience – to radically transform healthcare systems and structures that exist today, to change the way care and support is provided to elders, and to incorporate narrative and relational practices in healthcare and long-term care.

Belinda Dewar

Belinda is the Professor of Practice Improvement at the Institute of Health Care Policy and Practice at the University of the West of Scotland in Lanarkshire and the Director of LIFE (Learning and Innovating form everyday excellence) research and development programmes. She has had extensive experience as a nurse, researcher and educator. She has been working with nurses, allied health care professionals, patients, residents and families in a range of care settings over the last 25 years to support improving the experience of giving and receiving care. She is committed to approaches to research and development that work with and for people to enable them to become researchers of their own practice. Recent work includes the development of a model of compassionate relationship centred care and innovative methodologies, such as appreciative action research and emotional touchpoints to enhance implementation of this model across education and practice. She has published papers and presented to national and international audiences on caring and methodologies for improvement, including user and carer involvement. She is recognised for her work on developing and delivering innovative transformational leadership programmes and positive culture change through appreciative inquiry. Her approaches help to uncover practices that are known but rarely said; make real differences to people; develop meaningful practice based theory; and support practitioners to have the confidence to be curious and provocative in practice which may mean refuting dominant ideology and political rhetoric. A strand that threads through all of her work is the belief that in every system something works well and our job through research, education and practice is to notice these happenings, amplify these and support people to enable them to happen more of the time.

Suzanne Quinney

Suzanne loves being an appreciative practitioner, specialising in a strength based approach to change, engagement, quality improvement, and safety. She particularly enjoys helping people learn more about their thinking. She is an experienced facilitator and event organiser, practiced in the use of World Cafe and Open Space Technology. She designs/delivers seminars and master classes, and was part of an award winning training combination for the Health Services Journal www.appreciatingpeople.co.uk/learning-excellence-works-wins-patient-safety-award/ She is an author – 7 AI related training materials and articles and book chapters. The most recent is Reflections - Realising the Power of AI: An Appreciative Journal and Practical Resource Book www.appreciatingpeople.co.uk/ap-launches-new-ai-guide-practitioners/ Although her working life began in Africa, she has worked in the UK public sector for 25+ years www.appreciatingpeople.co.uk/appreciating-peoples-work-academic-health-science-networks-hospitals/ She is interested in the connections between AI and spirituality, and enjoys sci-fi, yoga and dogs!!

Emma Plunkett

Emma is a consultant anaesthetist at University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) and Birmingham Women’s Hospital. Her main clinical interests are obstetric anaesthesia and pre-operative assessment. Emma’s non-clinical work focuses on ways we can support each other at work. She is a trained mentor and is part of the Association of Anaesthetists mentoring scheme. In 2015 Emma introduced the concept of Learning from Excellence (LfE) at UHB. Learning from Excellence is a system for capturing episodes of good practice with the dual aim of improving quality and morale of staff. It was first introduced in at Birmingham Children’s Hospital in 2014 and has since spread to over 100 organisations within the NHS. Emma has been working with the West Midlands Patient Safety Collaborative to enable this spread and develop a community of practice. Emma discovered Appreciative Inquiry (AI) in 2015 as it was a natural fit for investigating and LfE reports. She completed training in AI with Appreciating People in 2016 and 2017 and is a developing AI practitioner, using AI to investigate excellence reports and and in other projects and settings. LfE and AI sit perfectly together with AI providing a vehicle to amplify the good practice that has been reported. Since 2016 the LfE team and the WMPSC have been working with Appreciating People to deliver training in LFE and AI and this programme of work won the Education and Training Prize in the HSJ Patient Safety awards 2017. @emmaplunkett www.learningfromexcellence.com

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