Jay Hays is the Organizational Transformation, Learning, and Knowledge Management Advisor to the USAID Mission for Ethiopia and Djibouti. He joined Kaizen and the Learning Analytics Activity in May 2024, following an illustrious career straddling both academia and industry.
An accomplished academic, Jay holds a doctorate in education from Boston University (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) in Human Resources Education: Administration, Training, and Policy Studies, and has held the title of Professor of Leadership and Organizational Development since 2016. His most-recent employment prior to joining Kaizen was with Melbourne Institute of Technology (Melbourne and Sydney, Australia), where he served as Head of the School of Business. Affiliations with previous academic institutions, in addition to roles at his alma mater, include The Australian National University, Charles Sturt University, Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne and Malaysia), Unitec Institute of Technology (Auckland, New Zealand), and IMT Dubai Business School, UAE. Jay is author of two books, two research monographs, and 60+ research articles in scholarly texts. With his most-recent research projects concerning organizational sustainability and professional capability-building and problem-solving, the crossover from academic focus to industry application is natural.
In addition to a laudable academic career, Jay has held senior positions in the federal government and private industry, and has consulted to executive teams around the globe, having had the privilege of living and working in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific region. Jay is a noted authority in organizational performance improvement, leadership and leadership development, teamwork and collaboration, and team learning. His project leadership experience spans Mergers and Acquisitions Integration, culture change, corporate restructuring and business process re-engineering, capacity-building initiatives, design of corporate training and professional development programs, and leadership team facilitation, coaching, and development.
Primarily focused in the area of Organizational Development and Change, and bringing his proven CM+ Roadmap to many team-based OD projects, Jay has worked in the health care sector, service and hospitality industry, defense, engineering, transportation, and others. Across sectors, clients have found Jay’s keen insights, astute guidance, and extraordinary facilitation skills invaluable, appreciating especially his adept application of Appreciative Inquiry, Dialogue, Design Thinking, Synectics Creative Problem Solving, Positive Conflict, and ecosystems analysis.
Clients and colleagues alike describe Jay as inclusive, encouraging, supportive, and positive—just the kind of traits needed to help individuals and teams navigate turmoil, turn breakdowns into breakthroughs, and step confidently into daunting problems and challenges to learning and change.