Dave Ulrich

David Olson Ulrich is a professor of business and a management coach and consultant. He was positioned as number 27 on the 2015 Thinkers50 list. Ten percent of those named to the list are Brigham Young University graduates, including Clayton Christensen, Liz Wiseman, Hal Gregersen, and Whitney Johnson. Ulrich was previously named to the list in 2007, 2009, and 2011.

In 2012, HR Magazine named Ulrich the father of modern human resources and the most influential international thought leader for five consecutive years. Speaking.com ranked him the number 1 speaker in management and business for 2015. BusinessWeek ranked him the number 1 management educator and guru.

Ulrich is a prolific author, having published more than 150 articles and book chapters as well as 25 books, such as The Why of Work (coauthored with his wife, Wendy Ulrich), HR Transformation, Why the Bottom Line Isn’t, The Boundaryless Organization, and Organizational Capability: Competing from the Inside. He edited Human Resource Management from 1990 to 1999. His 2015 book, The Leadership Capital Index: Realizing the Market Value of Leadership, put him on the 2015 Breakthrough Idea Award Shortlist.[1]

He is the Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor of Business Administration at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group consulting firm. He is on the board of directors at Herman Miller and the board of trustees at Southern Virginia University.

Ulrich was born in 1953 in Ely, Nevada, and grew up in Oregon and Kansas City, Missouri. He earned his bachelor’s degree in university studies and master’s degree in organizational behavior from BYU. He earned his PhD in business from UCLA.

Ulrich is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He presided over the Canada Montreal Mission from 2002 to 2005.