Suzanne J. Farmer, Ph..D

Assistant Vice President, OD and Training

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Division of Psychology

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Suzanne Farmer serves as the Learning and Development executive for UT Southwestern Medical Center, where she leads the organizational development, succession and learning strategy for the Medical School, and its University Hospitals and Clinics.  Her key responsibilities include identifying and building key physician and professional leadership talent, leading organization design, galvanizing change, and driving employee engagement.  Her accomplishments since joining the organization in 2012 include consolidating learning entities across the enterprise and launching the Academy for Career Enrichment (ACE) that expands access to personalized learning opportunities through technology and customized programs, the Leadership Foundations cohort program that graduates 600 people managers per year, and the expansion of Executive Coaching and OD services to faculty and their departments.

 Prior to her role at UT Southwestern, Farmer led Talent and Organization Development at Dean Foods, led Sales Communication at Frito-Lay North America, and gained global experience leading talent management and succession planning at Celanese.  She began her career at Dell Inc. in Austin as an Organization Development consultant.  Farmer earned her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Central Michigan University and her B.S. in Psychology from Texas A&M University. Her assessment and selection research is published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and she is also published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, and the Journal of Occupational and Health Psychology.  She is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Society for Human Resource Management and the International Association of Business Communicators.