Anton S. Gardner - Principal, CCHPO

Tony Gardner is currently the President of the Charlottesville Center for High-Performance Organizations, one of the Commonwealth Centers for High-Performance (CCHPO). CCHPO is a management consulting network focused on improving organizational performance and managing large scale organizational change in the public and private sectors. Areas of consulting emphasis for the Centers are large-scale organizational change, development of high-performance executive leadership teams, project management, executive coaching, emotional competence, values and ethics, organizational diagnosis and work culture surveys, integration of the continuous learning and improvement philosophy into organizational work cultures, design and implementation of product quality and service quality programs, and design and delivery of executive development programs.

Mr. Gardner is a primary presenter and facilitator for the Building High-Performance Organizations for the Twenty-First Century Seminar and for the Organizational Diagnostic Change Model and change process. He also serves on the Leadership Development faculty at the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. He teaches and facilitates teams at the Center’s Senior Executive Institute and LEAD programs. He is an adjunct faculty member at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Executive Institute. Mr. Gardner is certified to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and has used this instrument with senior level executives to assess leadership style, improve teamwork, and enhance group problem-solving skills. He is also certified in Prosci© Change Management and the Lominger© Leadership Architecture.

Before joining the University of Virginia, Mr. Gardner worked in Warsaw, Poland, where he directed the initial phase of a partnership aimed at developing new and existing innovative local governmental practices. Prior to his service overseas, Mr. Gardner served the last ten years of his 26-year career in Arlington County, Virginia as County Manager. In this role, he led an organization-wide change effort to improve the county's performance and introduced a number of economic development and redevelopment initiatives in addition to managing the operations of this full-service jurisdiction. Twice during his tenure in Arlington County, the county received the John F. Kennedy School of Government “Innovations in American Government” award.

Mr. Gardner has been very active in professional organizations. He is a past president of the Virginia Local Government Management Association and has served as chairman of a number of organizations, including the Virginia Innovations Group, the Virginia Institute of Government, the Northern Virginia Criminal Justice Academy, and the Chief Administrative Officers’ Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. He also served on the Board of Directors for the Greater Washington Initiative and the Urban Partnership. In the International City/County Management Association, he has been designated as a Credentialed Manager.

agardner@highperformanceorg.com