Deborah L. Kerr, Ph.D.

Deborah L. Kerr, Ph.D., is a partner at Affintus, a web-based selection services company. For the last 20 years she has also consulted with private, public and nonprofit organizations on performance management and measurement systems, strategic planning, strategy implementation and manager and executive performance. For the last ten years, she has served on the graduate faculty at Texas A&M University where she teaches management, policy theory and performance management.

Kerr has worked with government, nonprofit and private sector organizations to improve performance, helping them implement clear and realistic strategies that save time, save money and grow a better bottom line. Her work as a manager has been written about in Financial World magazine and featured in both Paul Niven's 2002 book Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step and Mohan Nair's 2004 book Essentials of Balanced Scorecard.

While on the executive team at the Texas State Auditor’s Office (SAO), Kerr led the development of one of the nation's first public sector balanced scorecards. She also helped implement innovative work processes that were adopted by audit organizations across the U.S., and in 2004, the SAO and its measurement system were recognized as one of the world's best, when it was elected to the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame.

Kerr served on the National Advisory Panel for Human Resource Performance Measurement at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs to develop public sector performance measures for the "Grading Government" studies published by Governing magazine.

Kerr's articles about organizational management have been published in Perform magazine and the Journal of Accountancy and have been published in Italy and India as well. She co-authored a chapter on consulting to public sector organizations for the textbook In Action: Building a Successful Consulting Practice (ASTD, 2002). Kerr is frequently asked to speak at national, regional and state conferences and meetings about managing strategy and work systems, measuring results and managing people.