Director of Corporate Education and Consulting Services The Chicago School
Dr. Barr’s involvement with The Chicago School began with the inception of the master's program in I/O Psychology in 2001. He is responsible for the school’s external consulting services and supervises students and other faculty engaged in consulting across several disciplines. Dr. Barr is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Society of Consulting Psychology—Division 13 of the American Psychology Association. He also serves on the Presidential Task Force for the Standards for Education for Consulting Psychologists. His interests/expertise cover a wide variety of workplace issues including job satisfaction, employee motivation and loyalty, leadership development, stress, trends, team building, 360 feedback, and work/life balance.
Results-oriented MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL with a proven record of achievement in both line and staff positions across functional business divisions. Proficient in leading new initiatives and promoting behavioral changes. Demonstrated ability to influence and motivate others. Successful in development of new products, new markets, new teams, and attainment of market leadership in highly competitive business environments. Proven record of significant contributions to bottom line.
Dave Batt is CEO and founder of StreetSmarts, Inc., a vendor with a unique approach to sales training enablement and sales effectiveness. Mr. Batt has been a thought leader in the Sales profession for two decades. He started his career running sales, service and distribution organizations; implementing strategies to improve sales productivity across distributed channels. Later in his career Dave took on executive roles with CRM vendors like Siebel, Oracle, Microsoft and Sage Software, where he lead product and sales strategies to address the growing need of sales effectiveness solutions.
Under Don's leadership, Grant Thornton launched its Partner Candidate Development Program for senior managers who were being groomed for partnership.
You can view a seven-minute video-clip to learn about the critical success factors and continuous innovation that were keys to the successful transition to the new Senior Manager Development Program on YouTube from ASTD 2008 Learn from the BEST (Oct 2008):
For more info, please visit http://www.astd.org/ASTD/aboutus/AwardsandBestPractices/bestAwards/learnfromtheBESTvirtual.htm (Presenters: Don Beeman, Richard Rykhus, & Michelle Johnson).
Vice President, Products and Strategy KnowledgeAdvisors
Jeff led the Benchmarking Group at Andersen prior to joining KnowledgeAdvisors and he brings a deep level of expertise in measurement. He is responsible for designing and implementing the suite of products and services for the company.
Jeff holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and is an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University and Northwestern's Kellogg School.
Talethea M. Best leads global learning strategies and development for the Consulting practice of Hewitt Associates. A member of the firmwide Hewitt University Core Team, Best's responsibilities include creating knowledge management, apprenticeship, and core curriculum content initiatives for the Consulting Academy to accelerate Hewitt's growth. With 17 years of diversified business experience, Talethea’s special areas of expertise include talent management, improving organizational effectiveness, creating career paths and development planning, building management and leadership development programs, executing succession management processes, and assessing and coaching senior leaders.
Prior to joining Hewitt, Talethea was head of Global Talent Development at Aon Corporation. In this role she project led Aon's global engagement survey, instituted multi level formal and informal learning programs, and launched Aon's 1st ever web based mentoring effort. Talethea has been a speaker for a number of academic and professional groups including Princeton, Rutgers University, National Black Caucus , American Society for Training and Development, Finance and Insurance Workforce Summit, and the Human Resources Management Association of Chicago. Additionally, Best has been recently recognized in the "Who's Who in Black Chicago" publication that honors a collection of Chicago's most interesting personalities and distinguished achievers.
As a graduate from Drexel University with honors and a BS degree in Marketing and Communications, Talethea holds a Masters degree in Learning & Organizational Change from Northwestern University.
Bob is a vice president in the learning group at ACS, acting as the firm’s chief learning strategist. Prior to that he was a partner at Ernst & Young for ten years. He has provided strategic learning services to Ernst & Young’s global affiliates as well as to a variety of Fortune 500 clients in the retail, financial services, government, pharmaceutical, energy, manufacturing, and high tech sectors. Bob has significant experience working at the executive level to align business goals with learning strategies. His experience totals 35 years.
Debbie Bloom is the Director of Learning and Development at NorthShore University HealthSystem (formerly known as Evanston Northwestern Healthcare), an integrated, academic healthcare system comprised of three hospitals and 65 group practices, based in Evanston, Illinois. She has twenty plus years of experience in the field of learning and development and organizational effectiveness. She has been an internal consultant for major Fortune 500 corporations, specializing in areas such as talent management, change leadership and team development. She is currently leading the overall leadership development and co-consulting on a major culture change effort for NorthShore.
Vice-President, Talent Development Hewitt Associates
Mark Bocianski is the Global Head of Talent Development at Hewitt Associates, a leading provider of human resources consulting and outsourcing services. Mark is responsible for all learning, performance and succession management, leadership and management development, talent review and employee engagement. During his 13 year tenure at Hewitt Mark has held a variety of internal and client roles. Some of these include leading HR technology for Hewitt, implementing HR outsourcing solutions, managing outsourcing operations and P&L responsibility for a book of HR outsourcing clients.
Vice President of HR and Consulting Quantum Human Resources
Mellissa Boggs, SPHR, has over 17 years of management and Human Resources experience and received her B.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.Since joining Quantum Mellissa has worked closely with clients to help them enhance their work environments and address their diverse human resources issues. She has provided extensive training in the areas of management leadership, sexual harassment, and what it means to be an Employer of Choice.
Mellissa has served on various client retention committees and diversity groups. She has continued her excellence in the human resource profession by attaining her Senior Professional Human Resources (SPHR) designation. For the last ten years she has been actively involved with the Human Resource Association of Central Indiana (HRACI), as well as an active member of the Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM).
