Dr. MaryJo Burchard

Traditional change models — ADKAR, Kotter, Bridges — are built for orderly transitions. They tell you what steps to follow, what stage people are in, and how the change should unfold. They’re indispensable for planned change.

But some changes don’t look like roadmaps. They look like hurricanes. Mergers. Restructures. Sudden losses. Crises that arrive without warning and refuse to follow a stage. In those moments, leaders don’t need better messaging. They need clarity in the storm.

That gap is what MaryJo’s research and practice are built around. Her body of work doesn’t replace classic change frameworks. It picks up where they end — when conditions get unstable and what people actually need is a real-time read on how the change is landing on them.

MaryJo is a regular keynote and lab leader for organizations facing high-stakes transitions — from the Virginia Association of Governmental Procurement to academic medical centers, faith-rooted leadership networks, public libraries, and frontline-service teams. She also teaches change leadership and organizational trust at Regent University’s School of Business and Leadership.

Her teaching and writing keep returning to one thesis: healthy change requires readiness, not just compliance. The leaders who quietly hold things together in chaos are the ones whose work she most wants to make easier.

MaryJo lives with her husband Kenny in Virginia Beach. She works hardest on behalf of leaders quietly carrying more than the org chart shows — the procurement officers, library directors, hospital administrators, principals, executive directors, and deans whose names rarely appear in the case study, but whose steady, careful leadership keeps everything else on the rails.