PhD in Organizational Development
Advanced study of organizations, leadership, communication, development, and the processes through which individuals and systems change.
About Marcy
Ideas grounded in practice.Leadership grounded in people.
The Story
A career at the intersection of people, learning, and organizational life.
My work has always centered on helping people and organizations grow with greater clarity, intention, and humanity.
I have spent my career moving between scholarship and practice—studying organizations while also helping lead and develop them.
As Managing Director of BYU Talent Development, I lead work supporting employee learning, leadership development, employee engagement, performance and growth, and the new employee experience.
Earlier in my career, I served on the faculty of the BYU Marriott School of Business. That experience strengthened my commitment to making complex ideas understandable, relevant, and useful to the people who lead and work inside organizations.
Professional Foundation
Scholarship, strategic HR, coaching, and leadership.
Four parts of Marcy’s background most directly shape the work presented on this site.
SHRM Senior Certified Professional
Senior-level expertise in strategic human resources, organizational effectiveness, people leadership, and talent systems.
ICF-Certified Coach
Professional coaching practice centered on reflection, development, accountability, and meaningful change.
Leadership and Education
Experience as a senior organizational leader, leadership-development practitioner, university faculty member, educator, and facilitator.
Where the Work Converges
Three connected fields of attention.
Marcy’s work brings together organizational systems, communication processes, and individual development.
Leadership and Organizational Development
Developing leaders, strengthening organizational capability, and designing systems that support learning, performance, and sustainable change.
Employee Voice and Organizational Learning
Examining how knowledge moves, how participation becomes consequential, and how organizations learn from the people within them.
Communication, Conflict, and Coaching
Helping people notice the patterns shaping difficult conversations, relational trust, communicative agency, and repair.
Working Philosophy
Rigorous enough to explain. Practical enough to use. Human enough to matter.
Clarity. The best ideas help people name what they are experiencing and see patterns that were previously difficult to notice.
Application. Scholarship becomes most valuable when it improves decisions, conversations, leadership, and everyday organizational practice.
Possibility. The work should expand what people and organizations believe they can learn, change, and become together.
Intellectual Lineage
Mentorship matters in the life of a scholar.
Ideas have lineages. Leadership Communication Ecology was shaped not only by research and organizational experience, but also by the professors who changed what Marcy learned to notice and how carefully she learned to pursue an idea.
Leonard C. Hawes holds a singular place in that lineage as mentor, professor, friend, and foundational intellectual influence. His work on communication, social justice, and conflict helped create the ground from which the framework emerged.
James R. Holbrook holds an important place in that lineage as mentor, professor, friend, and coauthor. His questions, close reading, and ongoing consultation influenced the development of much of the writing collected here and deepened Marcy’s thinking about communication and conflict.
Both men served as honored members of both of Marcy’s graduate committees, creating continuity across her graduate study and a scholarly environment marked by rigor, humanity, and care. Their contributions were distinct, but each helped shape the seriousness with which she approaches communication, conflict, and human possibility.
Collaboration
A wider intellectual conversation, carefully held.
Selected collaborations extend the work through distinct voices, close reading, and sustained inquiry into communication, conflict, leadership, and organizational life.
Coauthor & Inaugural Guest Contributor
James R. Holbrook
Mentor · Professor · Friend · Coauthor
James R. Holbrook has had a lasting intellectual influence on Marcy Fetzer’s writing. His questions, close reading, and insight have sharpened arguments and deepened the treatment of communication and conflict across this body of work.
Jim and Marcy are currently coauthoring the long-form ebook Conflict Resolution Is Communication in Motion. He will also be the first invited contributor to the site, extending the conversation into the communicative life of conflict, resistance, emerging possibility, and transformative recognition.
First guest essay forthcomingConnect
Bring the work into a conversation that matters.
Connect about leadership, organizational development, research, speaking, coaching, or collaboration.