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Carl Spetzler

CEO and Chairman, Strategic Decisions Group

Department:     Industry Partner, Strategic Decisions Group

Carl Spetzler Headshot
Carl Spetzler Headshot

Dr. Carl Spetzler co-founded Strategic Decisions Group in 1981 and currently serves as chairman and CEO. He is a leader in strategy and innovation processes, helping corporate leaders cope with the lack of explicit strategic alternatives, deal with the complexities of uncertainty and risk over long time horizons, and achieve lasting change. Over the past three decades, Dr. Spetzler has worked with top management and boards of directors to improve the quality of decisions and decision-making processes in many diverse organizations, such as capital-intensive companies, financial institutions, high-technology manufacturers, and systems businesses. His guidance has led to innovative results such as developing revolutionary new products, redirecting and restructuring major corporations, and creating strategic alliances. In 2008, Dr. Spetzler was named one of the 100 most influential people in finance in by Treasury & Risk for his work in enterprise risk management. .

In collaboration with leading university partners in the field of applied decision science, Dr. Spetzler oversees the Strategic Decision and Risk Management certificate program, a high quality decision-making professional educational program for leaders around the world. He is a Life Trustee of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chairman of the Decision Education Foundation, and a past the recipient of the Ramsey Medal, the highest honor awarded by the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. .

Dr. Spetzler is the lead author of the 2016 book Decision Quality: Value Creation from Better Business Decisions with Hannah Winter and Jennifer Meyer (Wiley, 2016).

PhD, Economics and Business Administration, Illinois Institute of Technology, 1967

MBA, Economics and Business Administration, Illinois Institute of Technology, 1964

BS, Chemical Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, 1963