Kathy Kegley, Ph.D.

kathy@synchlora.com

  Dr. Kathy Kegley is founder and principal consultant in Synchlora LLC, a consulting business dedicated to developing human capacity at the individual, team and organizational levels.  She is adjunct faculty in the school of business at Clemson University where she teaches the MBA class Creativity and Innovation in Business and conducts research in creative thinking.  Kathy is also a faculty member in Furman University's Corporate and Professional Development Program. She is host of Creativity In Business, a segment that airs on the public radio program Your Day. 

Kathy holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering with an emphasis in artificial intelligence, an M. S. degree in computer science, a B. S. in chemistry, and recently earned an M. S. in plant and environmental science.   Her computer engineering background includes working with NASA Langley through a graduate fellowship and developing formal test specifications for the IEEE POSIX family of standards under contract with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of Defense.  As a co-principal investigator, she received over $350,000 of grant funding to pursue this work.  She received $50,000 as an independent consultant in this area from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).  

Professionally, Kathy has expertise in the area of creative leadership development which draws upon her experience in artificial intelligence and her diverse background spanning management, engineering, physical science, life science and computer science.   She has worked with organizations such as the Business Performance Council of the Conference Board, the Envelope Manufacturing Association, Cryovac Sealed Air, RBC Insurance and Michelin to address issues such as team building, the customer experience, new product development and basic creativity education for managers. 

Kathy’s work is based on her core beliefs that everyone has a unique capacity for creative leadership, and that each individual or group can use this capacity to develop imaginative and innovative solutions to problems.  She is certified in the use of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) to assess preferred thinking styles the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to assess personality types, FIRO-B for understanding interpersonal relations orientations, and the KEYS instrument that measures specific management practices related to innovation at the organizational level.  

Kathy has extensive experience developing innovative online instruction using technology to deliver media-rich, learner-centered content in diverse areas including management, computer applications, bioinformatics, plant science, and creative inquiry.  Her SCORM based program Project Metamorph – Transforming eLearning into eAssets was awarded the 2004 Innovision Innovation in Education award.   Kathy has been actively involved with the multi-disciplinary SC LIFE Project as both a technology consultant and faculty/course developer.  The Howard Hughes Medical Institute funds this multi-million dollar project with a mission to promote middle and high school life science education and outreach.   

As part of her commitment to community service, she has offered workshops for the YWCA, Business and Professional Women, the South Carolina Library Association, the Greenville Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Oconee County and the Innovision Technology Forum series.  She also has served as a volunteer for the S. C. Oconee County Humane Society.