Walter McFarland
Walter McFarland serves as the 2013 Chair of the ASTD Board of Directors.
Walter is the President of Windmill Human Performance. The center piece of his career has been as a consultant focused on large-scale improvements in organizational performance by focusing on the human factor. His core belief is that people are the source of competitive advantage. The challenge lies in creating human performance systems that unleash it. As a consultant, Walter has led engagements focused on: transforming the Internal Revenue Service; creating the HR function of the Department of Homeland Security; and better integrating HR capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community—to name a few. His work has earned the Hammer Award, the IRS Commissioner's Award, the Director of National Intelligence Innovation Award, and recognition from the Smithsonian Institution, among others.
Martha Soehren
Martha Soehren serves as the 2013 ASTD Board Chair-Elect.
Martha Soehren was elected to the ASTD Board of Directors in 2010. She serves as the Chief Learning Officer and Senior Vice President for Comcast University and Comcast Cable. In her role she leads learning and development across all functional areas, leadership levels, and high potential programs from approximately 100,000 employees. Ms. Soehren's experience spans the telecommunications and defense industries. She also worked as an adjunct professor, research and academic advisor.
Tony Bingham
Tony Bingham is president and CEO of ASTD, the world's largest professional association dedicated to the training and development field. ASTD is focused on helping members lead talent management, build their business skills, understand the impact of social media on informal learning, close skills gaps, and connect their work to the strategic priorities of business.
Laurance Alvarado
Laurance Alvarado is President of Othon Group International. Prior to assuming this role he was the Senior Director with Alvarez & Marsal Public Sector Services. He joined the ASTD board in 2011.
Mr. Alvarado has more than 25 years of operational and consulting leadership experience driving organizational excellence, sustainability and thought leadership with governments and multinational corporations in more than 20 countries. His industry experience covers customs and border agencies, departments and ministries of defense, health care departments, public-private partnerships, trade agreements, and more.
Julie Clow
Julie Clow serves as the VP for learning and development at Two Sigma Investments in New York. By virtue of her educational influences, she considers herself broadly involved in organizational behavior management with learning and development as the primary vehicle. Ms. Clow started her career as an instructional designer and rose to become the chief learning officer of Carley Corporation, a custom training development company in Orlando, Florida. She joined Google in 2006 where she led non-technical training and organizational development for engineering, including team effectiveness, leadership and management, and organizational culture.
Ms. Clow serves as the Secretary for the ASTD Board of Directors.
Jenny Dearborn
Jenny Dearborn is currently the Vice President of SuccessFactors, Sales University. In this role she is accountable for the formal and informal learning and enablement for Global Sales to drive improvement in pipeline and quota attainment for the SAP Cloud Business. She leads corporate sales methodology and sales productivity tools along with learning content design, development, delivery, and analytics.
Jenny was at Sun Microsystems for six years where she led Learning & Development for World Wide Operations, was the global Chief Learning Architect across all corporate content, and was the Chief Learning Officer for the Americas – a position that led employee learning, partner learning and the external customer education business for the region – a 100M P&L in total.
Although Jenny has deep roots in Silicon Valley, with degrees from UC Berkeley, San Jose State, and Stanford University, she has a strong focus in international business and emerging markets and has traveled extensively in her career.
Lisa J. Downs, CPLP
Lisa Downs, CPLP, is a Learning and Development Consultant for People and Organizational Effectiveness at EMC.
Prior to EMC, she was a Strategic Business Partner in the Learning, Training, and Development group at The Boeing Company, supporting Engineering. Before that position she was a Training Consultant with PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company in Seattle, WA where she led the leadership development and new employee onboarding programs. Previously, she was a Leadership Development Manager with T-Mobile USA where she conducted and developed leadership and professional development training.
In addition to serving as the 2008 President and 2006-2007 VP of Membership for the ASTD Puget Sound Chapter, she served as the 2010 Chair of the ASTD Chapter Recognition Committee and is now a member of the ASTD National Advisors for Chapters committee and a member of the ASTD Board of Directors for 2013-2014. Lisa is the author of three books in the ASTD Trainer’s WorkShop series: Listening Skills Training, Time Management Training, and Negotiation Skills Training. She earned her Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) credential in 2010.
Charles Fred
Charles Fred is the founder and CEO of The Breakaway Group. He brings a proven track record of leading significant growth in both education and enterprise software companies and has led The Breakaway Group from its initial startup to a leading position in healthcare IT adoption services. Before founding The Breakaway Group, Charles led Omega Performance as their CEO, culminating in a successful sale to IIR Inc. in 1998. His best-selling book Breakaway, published in 2002, is used as a text in many leading universities to reinforce innovative methods for instructional technology and simulation. The eight-year research effort that ended in the publication of the book provides the foundation for The Breakaway Method™ used in service to healthcare organizations worldwide.
Rob Green
As Vice President of Oracle University's Global Sales & Delivery organization, Rob Green leads a 1500-strong team dedicated to training Oracle customers, partners, and employees. Delivering in more than 120 countries worldwide, Oracle University leverages traditional and innovative training technologies to meet the challenges of serving a wide spectrum of training constituencies, from the complexity of multi-national corporations transforming systems and processes to individual students seeking their first IT job.
With more than 20 years' experience in technology development, implementation, and training, Rob has played integral roles in leading training transformations and change management initiatives. Rob is a native of Canada but has lived all over the U.S. since moving to the Northeast to attend university more than 20 years ago.
Michael Korcuska
Michael Korcuska is Senior Director, International Product Management at LinkedIn. He previously served as the organization's Senior Director of Global Customer Operations where he was responsible for supporting LinkedIn's 150 million+ members and more than 10,000 corporate customers. Prior to LinkedIn, Michael spent 20 years in technology-enabled education and training. Most recently he was Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation, a non-profit consortium of universities working together to produce a teaching and learning software platform. He also served as COO for ELT, a leading compliance-training provider, and has held leadership positions at DigitalThink and Cognitive Arts.
Marci Meaux
With more than 25 years industry experience, Marci Meaux is an acknowledged authority on building innovative partner and sales enablement programs that increase customer service ratings, reduce customer-service response time, and improve organizational productivity. Meaux has earned recognition by her peers, partners, and customers as a leader and innovator.
In her current role at Cisco, Meaux partners with key constituents to understand the strategic sales objectives and align enablement activities for Services to improve the overall productivity of sales channels. She has architected and driven adherence to an end-to-end sales enablement process that includes sales force input at each stage, simplifying the experience for the sales force while driving cost reduction.
Anne M. Schwartz
Anne Schwartz serves as the UPS vice president of global leadership development. At UPS, the world's largest package delivery company and a global leader in supply chain solutions, Ms. Schwartz is responsible for global training and leadership development, training strategy and governance, analysis and development of learning technologies, and talent and succession planning for the enterprise. She and her group support over 400,000 employees in more than 220 countries.
During her 25-year career with UPS, she has held a variety of positions in the United States and Asia, which have provided her with the knowledge and insight to provide dynamic leadership development to a culturally diverse workforce.
Ms. Schwartz is serving as the Treasurer for the ASTD Board of Directors.
Mary F. Slaughter
Mary is chief learning officer and senior vice president of talent management and development for SunTrust Bank, a financial holding company serving consumer, commercial and investment clients. In her role, she has enterprise responsibility for overall talent management and succession planning, leadership development, technical training, learning technologies, and corporate university operations. Her organization supports 30,000 U.S. teammates and 3000 partners across Asia, North and South America. As part of the executive team, Mary enables the firm's business transformation in the midst of rapidly changing industry and regulatory environments. Prior to joining SunTrust, Mary was SVP of talent development at Wachovia supporting 70,000+ employees in their retail, commercial, mortgage, credit card and retail brokerage businesses across the Americas, Asia, and Europe.
Robert Todd
As ?What If! Technology Director, Robert is passionate about applying the latest innovations in information technology to enable the fundamentally human enterprise of innovation capability—whether in the business, nonprofit, or academic sectors. Robert comes to ?What If! with more than 15 years of experience in e-learning content and technology development—from building McKinsey & Company’s e-learning capabilities as Director of Technology Enabled Learning, to building and defining the go-to-market strategy of Convergys Corporation’s learning outsourcing business as Practice Lead, to developing e-learning solutions at DigitalThink as Director of Technology Product Management and Director of Course Development.