Strategic Doing - A Conversation with Liz Nilsen and Ed Morrison

Liz Nilsen’s passion is for creating programs that nurture the next generation of thinkers and doers, through the development and growth of innovation and STEM education ecosystems.  As the Associate Director at the University of North Alabama Agile Strategy Lab, Liz shepherds the expansion of the Lab’s programming and manages the Strategic Doing Institute on behalf of that organization, including partnerships with other universities interested in deploying Strategic Doing.

Liz was senior program director at the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab; she is also a former senior program officer at VentureWell, where she provided leadership to the Pathways program for the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), an effort to engage with 50 colleges and universities to redesign undergraduate engineering education.

Prior to joining VentureWell, she led STEM initiatives at the Penn State Center – Pittsburgh, was the southwest regional coordinator for the Pennsylvania STEM Network, and served as Director of Outreach and New Economy Program Development at the Institute of Advanced Learning & Research, a Virginia Tech initiative. She earned her BA from Stanford and an MBA from Northeastern University.

Ed Morrison is Director of the Agile Strategy Lab at the University of North Alabama, and was the founder of the Purdue Agile Strategy Lab. Ed’s work emphasizes the strategic value of focused regional collaborations and open innovation, network-based models in today’s global economy.

Ed is the developer of Strategic Doing to accelerate collaborations, now widely used across the U.S. and is now gaining attention internationally. His work won the first Arthur D. Little Award for excellence in economic development presented by the American Economic Development Council.

Prior to starting his economic development work, Ed worked for Telesis, a corporate strategy consulting firm. In this position, he served on consulting teams for clients such as Ford Motor Company, Volvo, and General Electric. He conducted manufacturing cost studies in the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Canada, Italy, Sweden, and France.

Ed started his professional career in Washington, D.C., where he has served as a legislative assistant to an Ohio Congressman, staff attorney in the Federal Trade Commission, and staff counsel in the US Senate. He holds a BA degree cum laude with honors from Yale University and MBA and JD degrees from the University of Virginia.

Social Links

LinkedIn: @liznilsen; @efmorrison

Twitter: @STEMetc; @edmorrison