My career path has been a combination of corporate and entrepreneurial experiences that has allowed me to build businesses and contribute to the development of talented people in many organizations. Some of my most satisfying personal experiences were building and selling three different companies from start-up operations. In each endeavor, talent, strategy, sales, and operations were the critical components. Being an entrepreneur helped me learn accountability because, at the end of the day, you and your employees will have a paycheck only if you’re delivering value to your customers.

It’s the same in my corporate career, consulting and coaching larger organizations to achieve top performance. If you aren’t focusing on the four elements of talent, strategy, sales, and operations, your company will not achieve its full potential. Ultimately, this starts and ends with people. That’s why I decided that developing talent was the biggest contribution I could make to an organization.

In my current role as Chief learning Officer (ClO) at Lee Hecht Harrison and as a member of the company’s executive team, I’ve created talent management services for our employees and external customers who want to hire, engage, retain, and develop the best talent for their companies. In my position as ClO, my past line management experience has enabled me to approach learning and talent management as tools to produce results for the business.

Since our organization provides talent solutions, we believe that to have credibility with our customers, we must “walk the talk” by offering our own employees a full scope of development services similar to those we offer our customers. One of my most rewarding career experiences was founding our leadership Consulting line of business at LHH. This was an entrepreneurial venture that required creating a new business model and scalable services that could be delivered consistently in global locations.

As head of our Diversity Council at LHH, I also believe in the importance of inclusion and diversity in all our company’s activities. We work with our parent company, Adecco, on a joint Diversity Council with representatives from all North American business units to ensure that diversity and inclusion are driving forces in decision-making at our companies.

We’re all hoping to make an impact in what we do, and the combination of leadership, learning, and diversity can make that possible.