Carla S. O'Dell

 Carla S. O'Dell, Ph.D., is president of the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC). Dr. O'Dell, who led the design team that created, marketed, and delivered APQC products and services, joined APQC in 1978 as an adviser and researcher. Her fields of expertise include knowledge management, total quality systems and re-engineering, organization design, team-based reward systems, and assessment and improvement using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria.

The work of APQC and Dr. O'Dell in knowledge management (KM) dates to 1995 when APQC conducted the nation's largest symposium on KM with more than 500 attendees. Based on issues raised at the symposium, APQC launched, under Carla O'Dell's direction, its first consortium study, Emerging Best Practices in Knowledge Management, with 39 companies. She later led a second study, Using Information Technology to Support Knowledge Management, with 25 of the leading KM companies in the world. Most recently, she served as the subject matter expert for a study on using communities of practice to drive organizational performance and innovation. The Executive's Role in Knowledge Management by Carla O'Dell and Paige Leavitt, was published in April of 2004.