Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

Sheila R. Ronis, Ph.D. is Director of the MBA/MSSL Programs at Walsh College. She is also President of The University Group, Inc., a management consulting firm and think tank specializing in strategic management, visioning, national security, and public policy. She previously taught “Strategic Management and Business Policy”, “Managing the Global Firm” and “Issues of Globalization” in the MBA programs at the University of Detroit Mercy and Oakland University.
 
She participates in many programs at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. including their National Security Strategy Exercise. In June 2005, she chaired at ICAF the Army’s Eisenhower National Security Series Conference, “The State of the U.S. Industrial Base: National Security Implications in a World of Globalization.” The Proceedings of that conference, which she co-edited with Dr. Lynne Thompson was published by the National Defense University Press in April 2006. Her B.S. is in Physics and Mathematics. Her M.A. and Ph.D. were earned from The Ohio State University in Large Social System Behavior.
 
Sheila 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, Sheila 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. While an administrative associate at The Ohio State University, she chaired the Legislative Affairs Committee, acting as the legislative liaison between the University Senate, the Ohio General Assembly, the Governor’s Office and the Ohio Board of Regents. She began her career working at North American Rockwell in Columbus, Ohio.
 
Sheila has worked with many organizations; public, private, large, small, profit, and nonprofit. These include: General Motors Corporation, Ford Motor Company, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Federal Laboratory Consortium For Technology Transfer, U.S. Institute of Peace, USAID, Ameritech, USCAR, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, the National Science Foundation, The National Academies of Science, and The State Council of The People’s Republic of China.
 
Sheila began working with the U.S. automotive industry in 1985. This included Ford Motor Company as well as several automotive suppliers. In 1988, she worked with the Cadillac organization at General Motors to fix the Allanté two years after start of production. She then became involved in the Cadillac 2000 project on behalf of the Chief Engineer of Cadillac, Mr. Robert L. Dorn. In 1993, she helped to revamp the General Motors corporate intelligence function. From 1994 to 1996, The University Group, Inc. became a captive supplier to General Motors working on a number of corporate functions. Since that time, she has continued to work with GM on a number of projects. In 2000, she was asked to assist the Ford Motor Company in improving its corporate intelligence function and strategic visioning processes.
 
Sheila began working in the national security community during the divestiture years of the Bell System that included her participation in the decisions related to the security of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure. For more than a decade, she has been working directly with the U.S. Department of Defense and the national security community. Her first assignment was teaching “grand” strategy as it is viewed in global business to the Management Faculty at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She was also involved in the development of the first Strategic Leadership Symposium at the Army War College under the command of Major General Paul G. Cerjan.
 
In 1993, she began her work with the National Defense University (NDU) in Washington, D.C. She has played a role in bringing industrial knowledge of the transportation industry to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) and NDU and currently serves on the NDU Foundation Board of Directors as Vice President.
 
In 1996, Sheila was asked to deliver a paper on National Security and the Theories of Dr. Deming by the W. Edwards Deming Institute. The paper was read by General John M. Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was widely distributed throughout the Pentagon as an example of applying strategic systems thinking to matters of national security. At DoD, she has worked with the Air Force Special Operations Forces at Robins Air Force Base and Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM). She was asked to write a “white paper” about the need to define and retain Department of Defense core competencies and what happens when outsourcing occurs.
 
At the Pentagon, she has worked in support of projects at the Office for the Secretary of Defense on visioning for the Department, and has supported the work of the Defense Reform Task Force. Her work for the Secretary of Defense included a written operational definition of the Revolution in Business Affairs that was used to support the Revolution in Military Affairs for the Quadrennial Defense Review in 1997. In addition, she was a team leader as a part of the “red team” that critiqued the Joint Vision 2010 work for the Joint Staff, J-7. She also supported the work of the Hart-Rudman Commission on U.S. National Security for the 21st Century.
 
Sheila has also worked on behalf of the economic and transportation elements of national security supporting the original work to create USCAR, the United States Consortium for Automotive Research, and its major initiative, the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. In addition, she helped the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) with a master plan and vision for the future. Her work with FLC included a paper on how national laboratories and scientific researchers can comply with the Government Performance Results Act (GPRA).
 
Known as a systems security strategist, Sheila has authored 172 papers. Her paper delivered at the Pentagon entitled Economic Security is National Security: A Discussion of Issues Surrounding the Global U.S. Corporation suggested a way to re-think industrial base policy. Her paper presented at the U.S. Army War College, Visioning for the 21st Century: A Process for National Security outlined the way in which an interagency activity might produce a more holistic national security strategy for the United States.
 
Her paper on “Shaping in the 21st Century” delivered at the Army’s conference at the Walker Institute of International Studies examined the new roles that the Department of Defense would need to play in the Post Cold War era. Recently, she supported the work of the Department of Commerce Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security with a study of the U.S. Army’s Theater Support Vessel released in December 2003 and a study on the Air Force C-17 completed in 2006.
 
She 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, she worked with the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming including coauthoring the paper “Preparing Cadillac for the 21st Century: Systems and Strategic Thinking.”
 
Sheila 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. She is a frequent guest on the NBC affiliate in Detroit and several other Detroit area TV and radio news programs. She has published in National Defense and publishes articles online from time to time at eMOTION! REPORTS: Automotive/Aerospace Industries Systemic Intelligence.
 
Her book, Timelines into the Future: Strategic Visioning Methods for Government, Industry and Other Organizations was published by Hamilton Books in June 2007. Some recent papers include Transformational Recapitalization: Rethinking USAF Aircraft Procurement Philosophies which was published in Defense AT&L in November 2004 and Erosion of the Industrial Base and its Issues of National Security: A Systems Approach to Congressional Action presented at the National Defense Industrial Association conference in November 2005.
 
In March 2006, Sheila completed 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 and is now chairing the Vision and Guiding Principles Working Group of the Project on National Security Reform in Washington, D.C., which will prepare the next National Security Act to replace the National Security Act of 1947 for Congress.
 
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