Organization Development and Knowledge Management

It is no surprise that artificial intelligence (AI) continues to redefine the workplace, becoming a pervasive force reshaping how we, as a society, live, work, and interact with one another. Much of today’s discourse on AI centers on the productivity and efficiency component of automation. Yet, in the journey to understand just how much AI can do, there is minimal attention given to what AI reveals about the society that is using it. So what happens when a group of five ODKMers takes on the challenge to shift the narrative of AI away from a technology lens towards a relational one?

When ODKM graduates walk across the stage, they don't stop being students of organization development and knowledge management — they simply change classrooms. That's the idea behind our ODKM Continuing Education Program, designed to keep our alumni community learning, growing, and connected long after graduation.

This past academic year (August 2025 to May 2026), the faculty began a push to expand alumni participation throughout the ODKM program by recruiting graduates into our classrooms to support students, and alumni enthusiastically responded to our call.

On May 12, 2026, ODKM lost one of the program’s guiding minds: Dr. Ann Crooks Baker passed away peacefully at her home in Woodstock, Georgia, at age 81, closing out a life that spanned from the classrooms of South Carolina to the halls of George Mason University, touching so many in between.

Since ODKM’s inception, Learning Community events have been the root of the program, providing students with an opportunity to plan and execute a day-long event while also opening a space for dialogue with alumni and other organization development and knowledge management professionals.

On the second floor of George Mason University’s Van Metre Hall in Arlington, Virginia, a graduate student lounge quietly played a role in shaping what would become a defining part of the ODKM experience.

Meet Lori Wade, the 1999 ODKM graduate who is now in charge of learning and development strategy at the Central Intelligence Agency.

For years, I would find myself thinking about the voice in my head. It doesn’t feel like me because sometimes we, well, talk. I would ask, “Who’s in there?” Who are the we? I had never been taught about the voice in my head that talks to the other voice in my head. A second voice. I decided to uncover this mystery and learn the neuroscience of this phenomenon, which is what I am sharing with you here.

When the editors were discussing these first editions of the ODKM Learning Edge, we wanted to include community voices. We hoped to hear from alumni from a wide span of the 30-year program.

The current curriculum in the Master of Organization Development and Knowledge Management program at the Schar School of Policy and Government is a mix of classes that have been part of the curriculum since the very beginning as well as newer classes meant to address the current working and organizational landscape.