2022 Speakers

Bill Kennelly

Arun Bedi

Mr Bedi joined Visa in 2014 in Asia Pacific leading its regional client engagement strategy. He now leads all sales learning and leadership development for Visa in North America.

Prior to Visa, Arun was with PayPal in Sales Enablement. Previously, he was with Dell Computers where he helped to develop an integrated go-to-market strategy for emerging markets. Before Dell, he was with Cisco Systems, in the client facing strategic consulting practice.

In his early career, Mr. Bedi ran a successful fintech startup to provide credit scoring for under-represented minorities. Mr. Bedi has also held assignments globally with Chase Manhattan Bank and Citibank. He started his career as a management consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton, in the Financial Services practice. Mr. Bedi graduated from Cornell University with a BA, BSc, and an MBA.

Margie De Craene

Living for design and learning challenges, Margie DeCraene has over 30 years of experience in education and learning. She has held roles such as the Program Coordinator for Professional Development and Technology Implementation Specialist where she supported educational leaders and professionals for over 22 school districts.

Currently the Senior Instructional Designer for 1st Source Bank, she focuses on designing and developing engaging eLearning, virtual and instructor-led courses, and facilitates mid-to upper-level management classes for the bank. She is a Kirkpatrick Certified Professional, facilitator for Development Dimensions International and Franklin Covey; holds certifications in gamification and Human Performance Improvement. Wanting to improve in her field, she is currently working on a certification for Project Management. Margie holds an undergrad degree in education from the University of Evansville, and a Masters in Learning Design and Technology from Purdue University. 1st Source has been recognized as the Best Place to Work for Professional Development for the last two years.

Lee Deaner

Lee Deaner is the President of Leading Edge Training Solutions, LLC (LETS) which is a virtual event production and consulting company comprised of experts in virtual learning and virtual event production based in Nazareth, PA. Before starting LETS, Lee spent over 15 years in the Pharmaceutical industry in numerous roles including Pharmaceutical Sales Professional, Sales Training Specialist where he was introduced to Virtual Training as a result of the Swine Flu in 2009, and Sales Training Manager at multiple companies. He is also the Co-Author of The Virtual Events Playbook.

He has a Master of Science in Physical Therapy and a Bachelor of Science in Health Studies from Boston University. After college, he completed 4 years in the United States Army as an Armor officer prior to entering the Pharmaceutical Industry. Lee and his wife, Christine, live in Nazareth, PA, and have 2 daughters, 2 dogs (Boomer and Georgie), a pony (Spice), and a horse (Niko).

Jaime DiGirolamo

Jamie DiGirolamo is a talent-focused human capital strategist, known for building, repairing, and nurturing relationships, fostering business partner trust, and co-creating value for her clients. She brings almost 10 years of experience in management consulting, recently moving into the Career Development function after spending 6+ years in Learning & Development.

Her passion for people and talent development drives her ability to remain customer-centric and focused on the latest capabilities and trends to unlock individual performance potential, particularly for client-facing senior leadership. She earned a Global [email protected] award for her work rolling out a pilot business development program credited with $20M in incremental revenue. She is also a certified Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) Practitioner, an assessment tool defining individual thinking preferences.

Outside of work, you’ll find Jamie in the kitchen baking (cookies & cakes mostly!), kickboxing, snowboarding, and running around with her husband and two young sons.

Benjamin Duffy

Pete Enestrom

Pete has founded several ed-tech companies and is the CEO & Founder of Learnexus, a talent marketplace for corporate training. Pete began his career at Microsoft in online services and holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from Columbia.

Bernie GOLDSTEIN

Bernie Goldstein founded Goldstein Professional Development in 2016, based on the belief that high impact coaching should be available to everyone. In addition to his focus on GPD, Bernie is also an Executive Director at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., in the asset management business. Immediately prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Bernie was Director and Head of Global Sales Training at Legg Mason.

He is also a regular speaker at industry conferences, presenting on topics such as Coaching & Sales Leadership, Storytelling, Emotional Intelligence, and The Art of Influence. His background in sales and coaching shapes his approach to leadership and business strategy. Bernie earned his Professional Certified Coach designation from the Columbia University Executive Coaching Certification Program. He received his BA in History from Columbia University, BA in Philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and MBA from the University of Florida.

When he's not coaching, you can find him hanging out with his wife and 2 children, volunteering for Food Bank for NYC, cooking and cycling across NYC and beyond.
https://www.gpdcoach.com/

Neha Gupta

Neha is responsible for True Office Learning’s product and technology vision, strategy and growth. Prior to her role as CEO, Neha served as Senior Director of Learning Solutions & Strategic Initiatives at NYSE Governance Services, leading all product strategy and development initiatives for the business. Neha has also served as Citigroup’s Chief of Staff for the Institutional Clients Group Technology organization, reporting directly to the CIO. In her time with Citigroup, Neha led a number of strategic change management efforts involving critical, multi-million dollar initiatives across industries.

David Guralnick, PhD

Over the past 30 years, David Guralnick has led the design of innovative e-learning scenarios, courses, and simulations, including the first online learn-by-doing simulation training course for corporate use, as well as performance-support systems and authoring tools. His approach to his work synthesizes concepts from the fields of computer science, instructional design, and cognitive psychology. David is the current President and CEO of Kaleidoscope Learning, and serves an e-learning consultant to a variety of organizations, ranging from multinational and Fortune 500 companies to non-profits and universities. He is also the current president of the International E-Learning Association; a regular keynote speaker at international conferences; founder and chair of The Learning Ideas Conference; Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on Advanced Corporate Learning; Chair of the International E-Learning Awards; and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. His work has been featured in Wired magazine, Training magazine (as an Editor’s Choice), and the Wall Street Journal, and he is the recipient of numerous e-learning design awards.

Kirsten Jackson

Kirsten is the Director of MetLife’s leadership development program focused on successfully preparing today’s leaders for tomorrow. Prior to this role, she has led MetLife’s professional development and compliance training programs for all 50,000 employees, contractors, and agents in 40+ countries, in up to 21 languages. Kirsten’s team was recently awarded several Brandon Hall awards, including Silver in the “Best Advance in Learning Measurement” category in 2021. She is passionate about bringing innovation and agility practices to learning – one program at a time. Kirsten is based out of MetLife’s technology hub in Cary, North Carolina.

Cheryl Jackson, PhD

For over 15 years, Dr. Cheryl Jackson has been supporting transformational efforts in Fortune 500 organizations across a variety of industries including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and food and beverage. With a doctorate in Industrial-organizational psychology, she combines her experience with scientific methodology and research techniques to create practical solutions that drive meaningful change in the workplace.​

Cheryl is driven to create effective solutions that help the organization as well as its employees thrive. Her focus is organizational effectiveness strategies supported by organization design, change management, assessment and development, employee engagement, leader development, and performance management. ​

Cheryl is driving the development of the OD and Change Management practice within and across GP Strategies through the development of offerings and solutions, internal and external education, and supporting client initiatives. She remains actively engaged in the practice by contributing to whitepapers, blogs, articles, conferences, and podcasts on organizational design and change management and serving as a lecturer in the Master of I/O program at Texas A&M University.

JOY JOSEPH

Joy has extensive experience within the Financial Services Business which spans across several disciplines. During her career, she has held several roles in the industry including as a Financial Advisor, Sales Management, Compliance & Risk Management, and Professional Development. She has several years of experience as the Chief Learning officer and Chief Diversity Officer at a global level, and has led large scale, cross divisional, and global programs supporting the financial services business. In her last role as the President and Head of HR she focused on the recruitment and career counseling of experienced talent. Currently, she is the Director of Training at Liberty Mutual Investments. She is a sought after speaker, member of SHRM, Chair of Womens’ outreach at work (WOW) network, and a board member of Fin Training Innovations. Outside of work, she enjoys hot yoga, reading and spending time with her son.

Suzi Kalsow

Dr. Suzi Kalsow is currently Vice-President of Learning and Development at Bank Midwest and Chief Potential Officer of Suzi Kalsow Leadership Development and Training. She began her career as a middle school teacher and coach which led to jobs as a curriculum director and regional education consultant. Her next move was to higher education as a Graduate Professor in Leadership, Field Experiences Director, Dean of Education, Associate Vice-President of Academic Affairs, and Vice-President of Academic Affairs. Travel during the years in higher education to Turkey, Poland, and Europe left a profound impact on her world perspective and beliefs about learning and leadership.

In 2014 she made the move to the banking industry, where she was allowed to influence workplace culture and leadership through Fierce Conversations and People Skills training. She also enjoys teaching Fundamentals of Leadership in Boulder, Colorado at the Graduate School of Banking. Beginning January 2020 Suzi continued her work at Bank Midwest 2/3 time and began her speaking and training business during the pandemic of 2020. Teacher, speaker, facilitator, agitator, and persuader are all descriptors that make life interesting She lives in Arnolds Park, Iowa, and enjoys anything that happens on the lake. Her current goal is to be a better at golf.

Dawn Lewis

Dawn Lewis joined Russell Investments in 2019 as a Manager of Training and Development for Russell Investments. Dawn specializes in developing sales process and product training for a global GTM sales team. Dawn creates resources, repeatable processes, and technology best practices to more efficiently and effectively close and win business. Dawn’s success is driven by partnering with the evolving needs of the business to create actionable deliverables that is relevant to Russell Investments’ business goals and market conditions. Prior to joining Russell Investments, Dawn worked at a large broker dealer for over 17 years a Vice President of Talent Development developing training for firm-wide initiatives to support the sales process. In Dawn’s spare time, she enjoys traveling with her family, reading, running, and gardening.

Colette McGonagle

Colette is currently a learning consultant at Learnexus and is enjoying helping her teammates and clients discover and hire independent L&D talent. Colette has worked in the talent and development field for over two decades, working in health insurance, retail, and financial services. In her most recent role, she was a compliance training director for a large financial services firm and was responsible for designing and implementing learning and awareness programs for 45K associates. Colette partnered with her stakeholders to create a culture that valued both learning and compliance, with a sharp focus on balancing policy and regulatory content with all learning styles and needs.

Sean McMann

Sean is a Senior Director of Sales and Enterprise Team Lead at Kaltura. For more than twenty years, he has been helping large enterprises amplify the success of their video-driven training, communication, marketing, and HR initiatives. Today, he focuses mainly on the needs of customers in the Financial Services sector, helping them harness the power of video to deliver more engaging and impactful experience for the employees, partners, and customers.

MATT PETRILLA

Matt Petrilla is a Leadership Performance Consultant in Vanguard’s Talent Management department, where he coaches leaders across the enterprise on a broad range of managerial and performance-related topics.

Matt’s prior role was as Divisional Manager in Vanguard University, where he led a team of Instructional Designers and Multimedia Developers responsible for creating innovative learning solutions for Vanguard’s global workforce.

Prior to moving into a formal leadership role in 2012, Matt served as a Senior Corporate Trainer in HR, facilitating professional development, feedback & coaching, business- related, and leadership development courses to managers and individual contributors alike.

Matt is a member of Vanguard’s select Adjunct Faculty pool, a Vanguard Certified Master Coach, and holds his Series 6, 7, and 63 financial licenses.

Tom Pizer

Tom has over 20 years of experience in the technical digital media field. He has an extensive background in a variety of creative and technical media, including digital media specification, production, testing, and implementation. During his career, Tom has created, specified, directed, and/or managed hundreds of hours of educational, instructional, and entertainment-based media and has served clients in a wide variety of markets including the federal government, trade associations, commercial organizations, and educational institutions. A key aspect of Tom’s responsibilities includes staying abreast of emerging technologies and in-tune with the latest development methodologies, standards, and practices. To this end, he takes part in monthly advisory meetings for several of GP Strategies’ clients to ensure that their courseware is of the highest caliber and meets rigorous development requirements. Tom is also the technical lead for several proprietary GP Strategies technologies that are designed to reduce overall development time while increasing the creativity and diversity of GP Strategies’ body of work.

Kamaria Scott

Kamaria is Employee Experience Senior Manager at Accenture. Previously, she was the Head of Curriculum Strategy and Instructional Design for FIS Global, the world's largest provider of financial technology solutions where she developed, implemented, and communicated the learning strategy for global leadership programs and in support of talent management strategic priorities. Her team developed customized competency-based curriculum and leveraged technology to create impactful learning experiences. Prior to FIS, Kamaria owned a consulting services firm aimed at improving leaders' capabilities to achieve outcomes impacted by employee engagement.

Kamaria holds a M.S. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of Central Florida and an Ed.S in Adult Education/Human Resource Development from Florida State University. She has spent the last 15 years marrying strategy, theory and practice into meaningful and impactful ways to help organizations develop highly skilled employees and cultures that enable them to do their best work.

Andrew Shields

Andrew Shields has over twenty years of experience in systems and soft skills learning and development, performed within a variety of public and private industries including telecommunications, consulting services, audit and advisory, finance, insurance, wellness, government, non-profit, and e-commerce. Andrew’s first job was as a marketing specialist with a commodities trader in his home town. While working in the marketing department at Provident Mutual, he transitioned into corporate training. Andrew has been with KPMG’s technology-based learning solutions group for almost twelve years, providing guidance on and managing web-based delivery learning solutions projects.

Andrew’s training skill set includes instructional design, project management, facilitation, instruction, and specialization in the creation of distance learning training courses and objects for web-based training, simulations, online help, and synchronous online delivery. Andrew was one of the pioneers utilizing virtual classroom tools to deliver virtual training sessions. He has also held several key roles as an eLearning expect outside the workplace, including being the Leader for the D.C. Metro ASTD Learning Technologies special interest group and as a member CompTIA’s SME Technical Advisory Committee (CSTAC) (2008-2010). He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a BS in Advertising and a minor in Business Administration. He completed the Master Trainer Program in Ferney-Voltaire in France, and holds several eLearning-related certificates.

Curtis Twombly

Curtis is a proven performance consultant and a senior learning leader with over 15 years of experience in the financial services industry. Since 1996, Curtis has enabled Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., Wachovia Securities and Wells Fargo to achieve results through educating their workforce, implementing change initiatives and driving performance improvement initiatives.

While working for Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., he directly supported the transformation of Schwab's workforce from a transactional service provider to an advice driven consultative selling organization. While at Wells Fargo, he led the skill development and change management efforts necessary to establish an integrated wealth model and to install a team-based contact management system. While at Wachovia Securities, which is now Wells Fargo Advisors, Curtis has been involved with the skill development, change management and performance improvements for initiatives that include two large scale mergers, transition of transactional based advice to an advisory-based model and the implementation of a corporate university. After growing up and starting his career in Phoenix, Arizona, Curtis currently lives in St. Louis, MO. Along with his partner Susan and children, Lauren and Christopher, he spends his non- working hours enjoying the outdoors, cooking, movies and hanging out with friends. Curtis is also involved in consulting a local public school district, leading a Boy Scout troop and advising 6th graders at his church.

Michael Winters

Michael Winters is Experience Management lead for The Academy at Bank of America. He is responsible for the management and execution of The Academy’s award winning voice of the employee (VOE) program, Teammate Voices. The program informs the continuous improvement and strategy across 88 programs, supporting 120 roles in Consumer & Small Business, Wealth Management, and the Private Bank and is expanding across the enterprise. Michael’s key responsibilities include:

• Teammate Voices – program owner for the three key feedback platforms enabling Academy program change through the voice of the teammate
• Identification socialization of key VOE trends across The Academy to inform strategic program change for programs
• Shapes program expansion and updates to gather “smarter data” from the field

Michael Wynn

Mike Wynn is a Senior Vice President and Innovations Design Manager for The Academy at Bank of America. In this role, he is responsible for delivering innovations to increase synergies and reduce inconsistencies between individual learning programs offered by The Academy. He is also responsible for solving common learning challenges and creating a holistic, high-tech and high-touch employee learning experience to foster career growth and development.
Mike joined Bank of America in 2005. During his 16 year career he held several roles within the Consumer organization which include Financial Center Manager, Market Training Leader, Consumer Market Manager and Associate Readiness Manager. As a Readiness Manager, he had responsibility for driving employee readiness, client satisfaction, and sales performance for all Financial Centers in South Carolina.
As a part of his current responsibilities, he manages a team behind the scenes to bring innovative solutions to Bank of America. One of those solutions includes the use of Virtual Reality, which is designed to increase employee engagement and learning retention using state of the art technology. Additionally, his team develops Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bot Conversation simulations and systems simulators. His team specializes in interactive learning solution design to help improve the overall learning experience by combining dynamic graphics and audio to deliver memorable content. He resides in Waxhaw, North Carolina.

Debbie Wooldridge

Debbie Wooldridge is the founding president and CEO of DW Training and Development, Inc. dba ttcInnovations. Under her skillful and experienced leadership, ttcInnovations has provided businesses with engaging learning solutions for over 20 years. In 2018, Debbie graduated from the Graduate of Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business program, adding to her expertise. Through instructor-led and web-based training programs utilizing system simulations, virtual environments, and other innovative approaches, Debbie's company has ultimately helped some of the world's largest and most recognized businesses enhance on-the-job performance, improve their customers' satisfaction, deliver significant business results, and achieve their goals. In addition, she has published two books on intrapreneurship, Unleashing the Intrapreneur: Changing the Face of Corporate America One Millennial at a Time and A Manager's Guide to Unleashing the Intrapreneur. She currently lives in Carlsbad, California with her husband, is a mother to twin Millennials, and a grandma to her two grandkids.

Amy York

Using her background in Change Management and Learning, Amy’s passion for human centered enablement programs has been a driver of the success she and her team have seen in a world of ever-changing technology and product experiences at Silicon Valley Bank. Through building just-in-time learning solutions and designing when-you-need-it content experiences, Amy believes that these approaches are what makes it easier for our learners to obtain the knowledge they need to be successful in their work.

A self-proclaimed people-nerd, Amy’s career progressed from early-childhood education, to serving / bartending, door-to-door sales, and landing in the financial services space where she found her love for teaching, serving, and selling through training, change and enablement work. With a Bachelors in Psychology and Early Childhood Education to a Masters in Organizational Development from the University of San Francisco, her unique perspective is what drives the success of all that she designs and delivers. More than anything, Mom and Wife are the two best gigs she’s ever had. You can find Amy on the weekends with her 6 and 3 year old kids, 7 year old Wheaten Terrier and super supportive husband either getting in a hike, going to the beach, or looking for any activity to tire the kids out!