Laura Bierema
Hall of Fame Class of 2022
Dr. Laura Bierema is a trailblazer whose scholarship melds critical approaches to adult learning, leadership, and change at the individual, group, and system levels. Her most frequently cited publications focus on topics of adult learning, virtual mentoring, corporate social responsibility, feminist research, and women’s learning, leadership, and development in organizations. One of the first scholars to introduce a critical perspective to human resource development (HRD), she wrote the first book applying this perspective to facilitating organizational change with Implementing a Critical Approach to Organization Development (2010). She wrote the first organization development e-textbook, An Action Research Approach to Organization Development, now in its second edition (2014, 2020). More recently, she co-edited the first book linking adult learning and knowledge management, Connecting Adult Learning and Knowledge Management: Strategies for Learning and Change in Higher Education and Organizations (2019), and co-authored the first Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education (2020) chapter on gender identity. She is a master executive coach, who developed a cutting-edge certificate in organizational coaching at the University of Georgia, drawing students from across the United States.
Bierema’s leadership in founding the research stream of critical HRD was recognized in 2014 with the creation of the Laura Bierema Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) Excellence in Critical Human Resource Development Award. Her scholarship was acknowledged with AHRD’s awards for Outstanding HRD Scholar and Research Excellence.
In 2020, during the extraordinary time of a pandemic, she became president of the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD). Evidence of her contributions includes establishing an Antiracism Committee and leading the AHRD board to design and deliver its first virtual conference in 2020, an event lauded by participants. She improved the AHRD budget by working with the board on innovative programming, diversifying content, and fundraising. In addition, she collaborated with UGA colleagues to create signature adult education pedagogy, notably an accelerated executive Doctor of Education and an innovative Graduate Certificate in Organization Coaching.
Over the past 20 years, she contributed three chapters to the Handbook of Adult and Continuing Education (on human resource development, professional identity of adult and continuing education, and gender identity). Her co-authored Adult Learning: Linking Theory and Practice has been adopted worldwide and was awarded the Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature in 2015 by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association. The book also won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Human Resource Development in 2015. She served as co-editor of Adult Education Quarterly (1997-2000) and on multiple editorial boards of adult education and HRD journals.
Her international stature as a scholar is evident in her regular invitations to keynote across the United States and in South Korea, Hungary, the U.K., Malaysia, and China. In 2018, she served as a Fulbright Research Scholar with the University of Padova.
She is co-founder of the Lukas’ Fund, a nonprofit supporting infants and families, and has served multiple board terms and as president for the Jeannette Rankin Women’s Scholarship Fund, an organization dedicated to helping impoverished adult women attain educational grants for undergraduate study. At UGA she was associate dean of academic programs (2013-2017) and led an action research project resulting in the university’s first associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
A popular speaker, panelist, and workshop leader, she regularly presents adult and continuing education programs and coaches leaders in higher education, corporate, military, healthcare, and nonprofit settings. Her 20-plus year collaboration with the Michigan Judicial Institute (MJI) has resulted in a new judge mentoring program and train-the-trainer institutes for MJI faculty who deliver continuing education in the court system.