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Theo Dawson
President & CEO
Developmental Testing Service, LLC

Theo Linda Dawson is the president & CEO of the Developmental Testing Service, LLC, which provides on-line developmental assessments, curriculum design, and program evaluations to governments, consultants, educational institutions, clinicians, and academics. She practiced midwifery in the Toronto area in the 70s and 80s, then co-founded and operated an advertising agency in Los Angeles until the early 90s, when she left the business to attend graduate school at UC Berkeley. There, in 1998, she received her Ph.D. in Human Development (with a minor in psychometrics).

In 1999, she received the American Psychological Association's Division 7 Outstanding Dissertation Award for "A good education is: A lifespan investigation of evaluative reasoning about good education". In 2002, she completed a 4-year project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, in which she developed a computerized method for determining the developmental level of texts, currently in the patent process. She has taught at UC Berkeley, Harvard, and Hampshire College.

One of Theo's primary professional objectives has been to devise a high quality and universally applicable measure of cognitive development. Her scoring system, the LecticalTM Assessment System (LAS), which builds on the work of Kurt Fischer and Michael Commons, is the product of 14 years of research and rigorous testing. This work is widely published and available through her web site.

Since 2002, Theo has been working with a federal agency to map the development of leadership skills in federal managers and employ this knowledge to design developmentally informed leadership standards and curricula. She became interested in Jaques' work in 2005, when she was designing a course on leadership for her students, and has since learned enough to see strong parallels between her work and RO.

Degrees and certifications

  • BA - Human Development - Antioch University, Marina Del Rey, California, United States
  • Ph.D - Human Development, Psychometrics - University of California at Berkeley, California, United States

Contact Info

Major organizations and consulting firms that provide Requisite Organization-based services

A global association of academics, managers, and consultants that focuses on spreading RO implementation practices and encouraging their use
Dr. Gerry Kraines, the firms principal, combines Harry Levinson's leadership frameworks with Elliott Jaques's Requisite Organization. He worked closely with Jaques over many years, has trained more managers in these methods than anyone else in the field, and has developed a comprehensive RO-based software for client firms.
Ron Capelle is unique in his multiple professional certifications, his implementation of RO concepts through well designed organization development methods, and his research documenting the effectiveness of his firm's interventions
Former RO-experienced CEO, Ron Harding, provides coaching to CEOs of start-ups and small and medium-size companies that are exploring their own use of RO concepts.  His role is limited, temporary and coordinated with the RO-based consultant working with the organization
Founded by Gillian Stamp, one of Jaques's colleagues at Brunel, the firm modified Jaques;s work-levels, developed the Career Path Appreciation method, and has grown to several hundred certified assessors in aligned consulting firms world-wide recently expanding to include organization design
Requisite Organization International Institute distributes Elliott Jaques's books, papers, and videos and provides RO-based training to client organizations