Donald J. Ford is a training and performance improvement consultant specializing in instructional design and process improvement. He has worked in the field of human resource development for twenty years, including training management positions at Southern California Gas Company, Magnavox, Allied-Signal, and Texas Instruments. His consulting clients include Toyota, Nissan, Rockwell International, Samsung Electronics, Orange County Transportation Authority, Glendale Memorial Hospital, and others. For these and other clients, he has developed custom classroom, self-study and web-based training, conducted performance and needs analyses, facilitated groups, managed improvement projects, taught courses, and evaluated results.
He teaches graduate courses in human resource development for Antioch University, Los Angeles, and Cal State University Northridge. He has published 35 articles and three books on topics in training, education, and management, including Bottom-Line Training: How to Design and Implement Training Programs that Boost Profits (Gulf Publishing, 1999), In Action: Designing Training Programs (Editor, ASTD, 1996), and The Twain Shall Meet: The Current Study of English in China (McFarland, 1988).
Don holds a bachelor's degree and master's degree in history and a doctorate in education, all from UCLA.
Jack J. Phillips, PhD, is chairman of the ROI Institute and a world-renowned expert on measurement and evaluation. Phillips provides consulting services for Fortune 500 companies and workshops for major conference providers worldwide. Phillips is also the author or editor of more than 75 books and more than 100 articles. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, and on CNN.
Dr. Kirk Smith is an experienced practitioner-scholar in the field of human resource development. He has over 15 years experience in organizational learning and management consulting including leadership positions in learning and development. He has led close to 200 training programs and facilitated dozens of management teams through complex, strategic decision-making, problem-solving sessions, and project planning sessions.
Dr. Smith is currently an Assistant Professor of Human Resources and Leadership at Western Carolina University in their MS of Human Resources Program and Principal of W. Kirk Smith & Associates, a management consulting firm. Dr. Smith also serves as a Senior Associate of the ROI Institute where he conducts training, consulting, and is the Administrator of ROI Certification Projects. His consulting experience consists of measurement and evaluation of human resource programs, business and financial literacy, implementing rational thinking processes in organizations, and project management. He is currently developing a 2-day workshop, a certification program, and co-authoring 2 books on predictive analytics for the ROI Institute and Dr. Jac Fitz-enz. Dr. Smith has already published several book chapters and articles on measurement and evaluation, process consulting, and organizational culture. He has also completed ROI impact studies on problem-solving and decision-making, leadership, quality programs, and technical skills.
In addition to his teaching and research responsibilities at Western Carolina University, Kirk serves as an internal leadership consultant for faculty and staff and facilitates book club discussions on topics related to leadership, ethics, and organizational culture. He started in January of 2011 in his current tenure-track position after serving as an adjunct faculty member in the program for the 6 previous years.
Dr. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Economic Systems from Georgia Tech, a M.S. in Industrial Technology from East Carolina University, and a Ph.D. in Technology Management with a specialization in Human Resource Development from Indiana State University. Kirk is also a Certified ROI Professional (CRP) with the ROI Institute and Project Management Professional (PMP) with the Project Management Institute.
Lisa Ann Edwards is the founder of Bloom Coaching Institute, an organization that advances coaching effectiveness through research, tools, training and consultation utilizing the ROI Methodology™. Edwards’s coaching work has demonstrated as much as a 251 percent return on investment and has been shown to lift employee engagement nearly 20 percent.
As head of Talent Management for Corbis, a Bill Gates' privately owned global media company, Lisa was responsible for designing and implementing effective talent development solutions such as leadership development, management development and coaching programs to ensure talent engagement, improve talent retention and serve to feed the talent pipeline.
Lisa is a frequent contributing author to trade publications and has authored or contributed to the following books: Measuring the Success of Coaching: A Step-by-Step Guide to Measuring Impact and Calculating ROI (ASTD Press, 2012); Keep Looking Up (2010); Managing Talent Retention: An ROI Approach (2009) and has contributed case studies or chapters to five additional books. Lisa earned a Master of Science in Experimental Psychology from Southern Methodist University and is a certified coach from The Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara.
Dr. Lizette Zuniga presently serves as Vice President, ROI Implementation with the ROI Institute. With more than 15 years of professional experience, Dr. Zuniga has expertise in leadership and organizational development, learning and development, survey design and ROI. She facilitates certification courses for ASTD in Measuring & Evaluating Learning and ROI Skill Building. She also serves as faculty on the United Nations System Staff College. Dr. Zuniga holds an M.S. degree in psychology from Georgia State University, and a Ph.D. in Leadership and HRD from Barry University. She is certified in the ROI Methodology and co-authored the book Costs and ROI: Evaluating at the Ultimate Level, with Jack Phillips. She also published several articles and case studies on needs assessment, ROI and organizational culture. She can be reached at Lizette@roiinstitute.net
Dr. Patti Phillips has focused on the implementation of ROI evaluation for the past seven years. She assisted in building an international evaluation consulting business, helped launch the ROI Network, and developed and managed international partnerships with organizations interested in implementing the ROI methodology. Prior to her involvement with ROI, she worked 13 years in the electric utility industry. As the manager of market research and planning and marketing administration, Phillips helped launched a number of initiatives, including Marketing University, a unique learning environment for new sales representatives.
Phillips works with organizations to implement accountability processes including ROI. She has been involved in ROI impact studies in a variety of industries around the world, including private and public sector organizations. Along with implementing ROI evaluation, Phillips is the president of the ROI Institute, a research and education organization dedicated to advancing the understanding and practice of ROI evaluation. Her work has allowed her to author and edit a number of publications, including:
- The Bottomline on ROI (2002) published by the Center for Effective Performance, which won the 2003 ISPI Award of Excellence
- The Human Resources Scorecard: Measuring the Return on Investment (2001), published by Butterworth-Heinemann
- Measuring the Return on Investment, Volume 3 (2001)
- Measuring ROI in the Public Sector (2002)
- Managing Evaluation Shortcuts (2001)
- Mastering ROI (1998) published by ASTD
She has served as contributing author in a number of publications, including Donald Kirkpatrick's Evaluating Training Programs (Berrett-Koehler, 1998), Lorraine L. Ukens's What Smart Trainers Know (Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2001), and Allison Rossett's The ASTD E-Learning Handbook (McGraw-Hill, 2002). She served as editor of the "Symposium on the Evaluation of Training" in the International Journal of Training and Development 5(4) December 2001.
Toni DeTuncq is principal of THD & Company. For the past 20 years, she has concentrated on measuring human performance. Toni has conducted and managed operational systems and group evaluations for corporate, defense-contracting, and government organizations. Her work has included the development of individual assessment tools and large organizational tracking tools—all aimed at measuring the performance and monetary value of human resource and systems intervention programs. Toni currently provides consulting services and skill enhancement workshops to help organizations establish accountable and effective evaluation programs. Formerly, she managed measurement and evaluation for Verizon's Workforce Development group. At Bell Atlantic, she created and managed a measurement and evaluation program that, in 1999, was chosen as a best practice among more than 200 companies. Her current and most recent clients include Bank of America, BAE Systems, BMW Manufacturing, the U.S. Army, and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
Toni was selected as one of nine "Training's New Guard—2001" by ASTD, which was featured in the May 2001 issue of the T+D magazine. In 2000, the ROI Network named her "Practitioner of the Year." She has published numerous articles, was the editor of the best-selling ASTD In Action series Measuring Learning and Performance, author of the recently published Linking Learning and Performance: a Practical Guide to Measuring Learning and On-the-Job Application, and co-author of Make Training Evaluation Work.