Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Paul E. Levy was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, the youngest of his family's five children. He received his BA in psychology and economics from Washington and Lee University and earned his MA and PhD in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology from Virginia Tech.

A faculty member at the University of Akron since 1989 and chair of the Department of Psychology for 18 years, Paul has been very involved in the development and training of hundreds of graduate students there. During his tenure, he has also provided many undergraduates with their first exposure to the field of I/O psychology through his Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology course.

Paul's consulting and research interests include performance management, feedback, coaching and development, and leadership. He has published his scholarly work in many of the top psychology and management journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, and Academy of Management Journal.

In 2022 Dr. Levy was invited to join the Office of the President at The University of Akron as the VP and Chief of Staff (COS) to President Gary Miller. He brings much of his I/O background to inform his work as the COS and is loving his recent career change. Paul is married to Sylvia Chinn-Levy and has three sons — Christopher, Sean, and Jared — who have always managed to keep things interesting and never cease making him proud. Paul is an avid reader of fiction and nonfiction, a huge sports baseball and basketball fan, a runner, and a lifelong fan of the Baltimore Orioles.

Brodie G. Riordan's first introduction to I/O psychology was during her junior year at Washington and Lee University when a 1983 graduate came back to campus to meet with students and talk about “I/O, I/O, it's off to work I go.” During that talk, the light bulb came on for Brodie, and she knew what she wanted to do not only with her psychology major but with her career. And can you guess who that speaker was? It was Paul Levy! The university didn't offer an I/O psychology course at the time, so Brodie worked with her adviser, Dr. David Elmes, to do an independent study, anchored on reading Paul's I/O psychology textbook together and meeting weekly to discuss what they had read. Not long after, Brodie attended the University of Akron to work with Paul as her PhD adviser. And fortunately, she was assigned the best office mate anyone could ask for, Alison O'Malley.

In the years since completing her PhD in I/O, Brodie's career has traversed academia and practice. She has held global leadership roles at Procter & Gamble, Corporate Executive Board (CEB, now Gartner), and McKinsey & Company. She served as a visiting professor at her (and Paul's!) alma mater, Washington and Lee University, and has been a part-time professor in the MBA program at the University of Maryland Smith School of Business. Presently, she is a part-time professor at the School of Continuing Studies at Georgetown University and the founder and principal of Ocular, Inc., an I/O consulting and executive coaching firm. Brodie also works with several partner organizations and is an adviser with multiple HR tech start-ups. Brodie has authored or coauthored three other books, including Using Feedback in Organizational Consulting, Feedback Fundamentals & Evidence-Based Best Practices, and The Coaching Shift. She has also coauthored nearly three dozen peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

Brodie and her partner, Tim, live in the Washington, DC, area with their dog, Bowery. Brodie is an avid runner and yogi. She volunteers with several nonprofit organizations and tries to spend as much time in nature as she can.