Brandeis Project Leaders

Wale Olaleye is a Pharmacist, a Human Capital Consultant for Deloitte, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.  He serves as Co-Principal Investigator on Relating Across Difference - An Improvement Process for Clinical Units, funded by the Josiah Macy Foundation, implementing the results of his research in three U.S. health systems over a three-year period.   He received his PhD in Social Policy at The Heller School, an MBA with a focus on Health Systems Management from the Charlton College of Business at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and his Pharmacy degree from the University of Ibadan Nigeria. Olaleye studied interprofessional teams at Beth Israel Lahey Medical Center in Boston where he identified workforce diversity as an impediment to effective communication and relationship building between and within teams. His dissertation focused on the use of Relational Coordination principles to uncover professional and social identity-related discrimination on health care teams.  Prior to joining the Heller School, he worked at Steward Health Care System of Massachusetts and Care New England Corporate of Rhode Island as a Hospital Manager. He has also worked as a Clinical Pharmacist at government-owned hospitals in Abuja, Nigeria. His research interests include team-based care, diversity equity and belonging, opioid policy, performance of healthcare organizations and issues related to the healthcare workforce.

Jody Hoffer Gittell is Professor of Management at Brandeis University's Heller School and Program Director of the Academy of Management’s Organization Development and Change Division. Gittell teaches Strategic Human Resource Management, Research Methods, and Organizational and Institutional Theory.  She serves as Faculty Director of the Relational Coordination Collaborative and Chief Executive Officer of Relational Coordination Analytics. She is an expert in relational strategies for achieving organizational performance, organizational change and human well-being.  She has published dozens of scientific articles and six books including The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance; High Performance Healthcare: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve Quality, Efficiency and Resilience; and Transforming Relationships for High Performance: The Power of Relational Coordination.  She currently has a seventh book in process called Healthcare Management and Human Well-Being in a Turbulent Era.   

Dr. Gittell founded relational coordination theory, which predicts that highly interdependent work is most effectively coordinated through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect, supported by frequent, timely, accurate, problem-solving communication. The theory shows how relational coordination drives a wide range of desired performance outcomes and how organizations shape it, for better or worse.  Dr. Gittell speaks frequently to audiences about the theory and practice of relational coordination. She serves as Vice Chair of the Board for Greater Seacoast Community Health, and on the Executive Committee for NAACP Seacoast. She earned her BA from Reed College, her MA from The New School, and her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tony Suchman is a primary care internist, a health services researcher, a medical educator, and an organizational change consultant with a special emphasis on system integration and transformation. He is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He earned BA and MD degrees at Cornell University and completed a residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in health services research and Behavioral and Psychosocial Medicine at the University of Rochester. For 16 years he worked on the medical school faculty in Rochester studying and teaching patient-clinician relationships and became a leading proponent of a clinical philosophy called Relationship Centered Care. Suchman then became interested in the effect of organizational culture on clinical care and medical education. 

Dr. Suchman worked for 5 years as a senior executive in integrated delivery systems and earned an MA in Organizational Change at the University of Hertfordshire (UK). In 2000, he founded a consulting group, Relationship Centered Health Care, that works with leaders, staff, customers, and board members of health care organizations worldwide to advance the practice of Relationship-Centered Administration. Suchman has pioneered interventional applications of Relational Coordination -- a theory by Jody Hoffer Gittell describing how teams manage their interdependence to carry out complex tasks. He has published more than 90 articles and book chapters and two books, most recently Leading Change in Healthcare: Transforming Organizations using Complexity, Positive Psychology and Relationship-Centered Care, co-authored with David Sluyter and Penny Williamson.