Obituary of Roland L. Sullivan

 

Roland L. Sullivan passed away on December 26th, 2021 at his home residence in Excelsior, MN with his wife by his side. He was 77. Roland was considered one of the pioneers in redefining and expanding the field known as Organization Development. He was one of the “original 100 Change Agents” in the world. He led transformation and change journeys in every major industry in 44 countries. Their size ranged from a one-person corporation of a twice-winning Emmy awarded artist to a 750,000 employee corporation. In these transformation efforts, he applied Whole System Transformation, a modality that he coined and perfected over 50 years of practice. He taught OD globally in over 20 universities including one of the most recognized Organization Development and Change programs - Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

 Roland was born on July 27th, 1944 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota to parents, Lewis Joseph Sullivan and Avon Genevieve Jones.

He had a B.A. in Philosophy with minors in Classical Language and Education from St. Mary’s College of Winona, MN. He was one of the first students to ever pursue an M.S. in Group Dynamics and Organization Development from Loyola University, Chicago, IL. He speaks fondly of his Ph.D. studies with Dr. Jack Gibb and Dr. Ron Lippitt. One of his greatest joys was being a graduate and a part of the Master of Science in Organization Development (M.S.O.D.) family of Pepperdine University. He inspired several people from different cultures and backgrounds to pursue their graduate studies in OD at Pepperdine, including his own daughter.

His significant publishing comprises hundreds of articles, chapters, and over 25 books, including his widely acclaimed book, Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change. As stated in the cover of the book, Practicing Organization Development builds on its reputation as the most practical, comprehensive, useful, and clearly written handbook on the topic of Organization Development. It had been dubbed as the “bible” of OD. Roland also was an active community member and founded the Minnesota OD Network and the Asian OD Network. He spent a large part of his later career working globally in Asia and Africa.

Roland Sullivan was known for "actually" transforming whole systems in large group, engaging events as he trained internal change agents to lead sustainable and agile organizations.

He received numerous international awards, especially for achieving transformative results, leading participative research on competencies for change agents and large group summits in the context of enterprise-wide change.

Examples:

• Change Consultant of the World – by the OD Institute for his leading the competency research for the OD profession.

• His work at the largest financial institution in Africa, Amalgamated Banks of South Africa, now part of Barclay received runner up to the Best Change Case in the world.

• The Best Practice Institute (BPI) recognized one of his cases as the best strategic transformation effort globally. Six million USD was invested only to return 96 million USD.

Roland prided himself as one of the early certified yoga teachers under his guru, Sivananda. With serious dedication, he practiced a daily 90-minute Raja Yoga discipline since the time he was introduced to yoga until his remaining days in this earthly life. He would often share that he had integrated his yoga discipline into his professional OD practice. In 1967, he entered the seminary and wanted to become a Catholic priest but after one-year of graduate work in Theology from St. Paul Seminary, St. Paul, MN, he left. He would later recall that he heard the song entitled, “Want Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane and it spoke clearly to him. He did find somebody to love and would later marry three times.

One of Roland’s biggest accomplishments in his life was becoming a father in 1988 to his only daughter Arielle. He is known to have been very proud of her and her accomplishments. Roland inspired his daughter to live a conscious life and make a meaningful impact in the world. Roland and Arielle traveled to Europe and Southeast Asia together facilitating and practicing Whole System Transformation. She is honored to carry forth his professional legacy together with his wife Maja.

During the last two years of his life, Roland continued to inspire his friends, family and colleagues after he was discharged from hospice to make a miraculous recovery. During this time, he continued to dedicate himself to his profession by helping and inspiring individuals and systems around the globe to take action on climate change.

Roland touched many lives through his heartfelt, inspirational presence and motivating life force energy. He always asked people about their purpose and offered endless hours of coaching, mentoring, and support. He led many people towards the direction of their dreams, never looking backward. Instead, he championed the phrase, “onwards and upwards.” He was a much-loved human being.

He is survived by his wife, Mary Jane “Maja” Balasi-Sullivan; daughter, Arielle Threlkeld-Sullivan; and siblings, Mary Scott and Thomas Sullivan.

When the time is right and traveling is a lot safer, Maja and Arielle will travel to Rishikesh, India to scatter Roland’s ashes.

A memorial service is planned for June.