Dr. Sheila Ronis
Director of the MBA/MSM Program/Associate Professor, Walsh College
Dr. Sheila R. Ronis is President of The University Group, Inc., a management consulting firm, and think tank specializing in strategic management, visioning, national security and public policy. She is also Director of the MBA/MSM Program at Walsh College. She previously taught in the MBA programs at the University of Detroit Mercy and Oakland University. She often participates at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. including their annual National Security Strategy Exercise. Her B.S. is in Physics and Mathematics. Her M.A. and Ph.D. are in Organizational Behavior and General Social Systems Theory from The Ohio State University. Dr. Ronis founded and directed the Institute for Business and Community Services at The University of Detroit to assist the U.S. automobile industry in becoming globally competitive by bringing systems and strategic management principles to the industry.
Joining the University of Detroit from Ameritech Publishing, Inc., where she was a Strategic Planner, she worked at AT&T and Michigan Bell before that, helping the corporation during its divestiture years. Prior to her Bell System tenure, Dr. Ronis directed a national energy program for the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA - now the Department of Energy), in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. Dr. Ronis began her career working at North American Rockwell in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Ronis has worked with many organizations; public, private, large, small, profit and nonprofit. These include: the U.S. House of Representatives, General Motors Corporation, Ford Motor Company, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, the Federal Laboratory Consortium For Technology Transfer, U.S. Institute of Peace, USAID, AT&T, USCAR, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, the National Academies of Science, the National Science Foundation, and The State Council of The People’s Republic of China. For more than a decade, Dr. Ronis has been working directly with the U.S. Department of Defense and the national security community.
Known as a systems security strategist, Dr. Ronis has authored 163 papers. Dr. Ronis also has published the scenario “Crisis on Asimov” in Automotive Industries Magazine, and the Financial Times Automotive World, in London that is a strategic futurist’s look at transportation in the world of 2085 that uses a Department of Defense visioning process. In addition, Dr. Ronis worked with the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Dr. Ronis is Vice President of the Board of the National Defense University Foundation. She is the former Vice Chairman of The Ohio State University Alumni Association. She is a former board member and life member of The Economic Club of Detroit. She is a life member of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), and the Association of the U.S. Army. She is also a life member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Her book, Crisis on Asimov: Strategic Visioning Methods for Government, Industry and Other Organizations will be published by The University Press in 2006. She is currently engaged in a study of the national security implications of the erosion of the U.S. industrial base for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business.