Jean Gaddy Wilson

Biography

Jean Gaddy Wilson helps clients change upstream… where huge possibilities for expansion and impact exist. She works with clients to position themselves, and their clients, to profit from change – where they invent new possibilities for themselves and their businesses. Downstream change focuses
on fixing current problems – a limited lifetime. Upstream change provides clients with a system to purposefully move forward with unlimited possibilities as the future unfolds with all its slides, slippery surprises and shocks.
Her HINTSTM system positions leaders to re-frame, envision what’s coming, explore possibilities in change, create new products and thrive. Her company, Position the Future, is a proven catalyst for change in established and entrepreneurial companies. In 2013, one of her clients in national defense said it best: “Jean, we could not reshape us on our own. You saved us months, money and morale!”
Her insights on Where Your Tomorrow Is have taken her around the globe – Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, Middle East, North America — as a keynote speaker and facilitator in more than 300 venues.
Her live events – How to Make Sure You and Your Clients End Up on the Right Side of Tomorrow – are three-day turn-around events. Clients come in believing the problems keeping them up at night are the right ones. They go home reinvigorated with the REAL issues to address and ways to meet them head on. The result: clients are constantly ready with products and processes as the future unfolds.
Jean’s clients “get it.” You see THE GAP — the space between where you and your business are today and where you need to be to ride through the rapids of change. She challenges you to make YOUR UNIQUE MAP – between today (where your machines, clothing and systems don’t talk to each other) and your future (where one of your business partners is in China, your work is play and your “tribe” provides expertise for entrepreneurs in new businesses not yet invented).
Jean’s international reputation for entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity and insightfulness rests on successful facilitation of bold new business development and rapid culture change in organizations. Clients prepare for their future and success no matter what the future holds for them. You have a front seat in the hard-charging reorganization of the world.

Founder of New Directions for News, a news media think tank at the University of Missouri where she was a Journalism faculty member, Jean created new systems for executives and owners to meet their futures, take action and create products ahead of the curve. The first electronic news site was created in Jean’s national roundtables anticipating the technology that could deliver it.
Jean judged the Pulitzer Prizes, received the University of Missouri’s 2008 Faculty- Alumni lifetime achievement award, was named the 2013 Hot Momma’s History Maker Award for her case study of “It’s Not About the I – It’s about the US,” awarded in the George Washington Business School. She co-authors Working With Words, eighth edition, 2013, published by Bedford St. Martins.
She played a lead role in founding these major institutions: Journalism & Women’s Symposium; National Women & Media Collection, and the International Women & Media Foundation.
Connect with Jean Gaddy Wilson: www.positionthefuture.com [email protected] www.linkedin.com/pub/jean-gaddy-wilson/6/493/706