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Thomas North Gilmore, born on 26 April 1944, died on 20 July 2024. He leaves behind his wife, Sally Walker, his two sons, Walker and Justin Gilmore, and four grandchildren. He was our beloved colleague and friend, founder of CFAR and ISPSO, author of Making a Leadership Change, and many articles on organisation dynamics. He had the uncanny ability to connect with clients, often caring about their dilemmas more than they did. His CFAR colleagues marvelled at his ability to locate an article appropriate for a consulting engagement or moment at hand. Tom's office was crowded with paper and seemingly disorganised, but he could locate a crucial document instantly. He had more ideas in a day than most people have in a decade.
Tom helped clients see themselves as scholar–practitioners and coauthored many articles with them. He had the distinctive ability to sustain clients’ engagements over many years. He had decades-long working relationships with Charles Barnett, a prominent hospital executive, and with Ellen Schall, the head of the Department of Juvenile Justice in New York City. He was a marvellous speaker, able to hold forth spontaneously, drawing on examples from his practice and reading while deploying a telling metaphor at the right moment. People were on the edge of their seats. Tom had an outsized impact on many civic institutions, including foundations, government agencies, and healthcare organisations.
Tom grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father taught history at Harvard. He had a brother, a lawyer, and a sister, a museum professional. Tom graduated from Andover boarding school and entered Harvard in 1962, where he majored in the classics. He met his wife while an undergraduate, and they married in 1966. He received his master's degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. There, he joined a team studying prison design under the auspices of the Management and Behavioral Science Center, an applied research centre at the Wharton School. The C