Carl Spetzler

Carl Spetzler serves as a Director on Delpor’s Board of Directors. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Strategic Decisions Group (SDG) and is also the leader of the firm’s North American Strategy Practice.

Over the past three decades, Dr. Spetzler has been a leader in strategy and innovation processes, helping corporate leaders cope with the lack of explicit strategic alternatives, deal with the complexities of uncertainty and risk over long time horizons, and achieve lasting change. He works with top management and boards of directors to improve the quality of decisions and decision-making processes. His methods stress that boards be collaboratively engaged in a few truly strategic decisions rather than simply serve in an approval role on a myriad of items.

Before co-founding SDG, Dr. Spetzler directed the Financial Industries and Strategic Methodologies Center at SRI International. One of his many achievements while at SRI was a consulting engagement that changed the landscape of American financial services. Dr. Spetzler and the SRI team persuaded Merrill Lynch that the time was right to offer a one-stop financial service, called the Cash Management Account (CMA). Merrill Lynch finally pursued this opportunity and by the mid-1980s more than 1 million customers used CMAs.

Dr. Spetzler serves on the boards of the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Decision Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the decision-making skills of youth. In 2004, he received The Ramsey Medal, the highest honor awarded by the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS for lifetime contributions to the field. In 2006, he was elected to the SRI Hall of Fame for his leadership in the growth of decision analysis at SRI and for his key role in instigating a fundamental change in the US financial service industry. In 2008, Dr. Spetzler was named by Treasury & Risk magazine one of the 100 most influential people in finance for his work in Enterprise Risk Management.

Dr. Spetzler holds a BS in chemical engineering as well as an MBA and a PhD in economics and business administration and from the Illinois Institute of Technology.