Center for Positive Organizations

About the Project

Students of the CPO Thriving Catalyst Endorsement Program are leaders, learners, and changemakers who want to know more about promoting thriving for themselves, others, and organizations. The Thriving Catalyst Endorsement offers this vibrant, diverse group a pathway to understand how to unlock greater fulfillment, energy, connection, and purpose in organizations through a personalized program trajectory and pacing that aligns with their unique career goals. Open to any U-M student, the Thriving Catalyst Endorsement is grounded in the science of designing and sustaining thriving organizations. The program equips students with both conceptual knowledge and practical know-how to take others along on their journey of thriving.

Your support will open doors for more Thriving Catalysts across U-M to elevate human potential in their communities, create greater levels of well-being and holistic health, and unlock their purpose as they work alongside others to lift us all up as a thriving university. Since its launch in the fall of 2022, the Thriving Catalyst Endorsement has enrolled more than 350 students across campus, with 14 of the 19 U- M academic areas represented.

Mission Statement

Igniting organizational excellence built on a foundation of human thriving.

Twenty-five years ago, scholars at Michigan Ross gathered to discuss research focused on how organizations accomplish the extraordinary. The conversation grew. Ultimately, the Center for Positive Organizations (CPO) fueled the expansive rise of Positive Organizational Scholarship, a subfield of organization studies focused on the scientific underpinnings of organizational excellence that rests on human thriving.

Today, we continue as the world's leading beacon of thought leadership related to organizations as thriving systems. CPO is distinctive in its ability to gather people, build collaborative communities, and ignite learning and leading in new ways across an expansive global community of scholars, students, practitioners, and changemakers.