Keynotes
These hard-hitting interviews with technology's leading CEOs reveal corporate strategy, product direction and other questions our audience wants answered.
- Dr. Geary Rummler
- Founding Partner of the Performance Design Lab
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Prior to founding the Performance Design Lab, Geary was co-founder of the Rummler-Brache Group, whose process design and improvement methodology was the standard for such organizations as Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, CitiBank, Dow Chemical, and many others.
He co-authored with Alan Brache, the ground breaking book Improving Performance; How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. His most recent book is Serious Performance Consulting According to Rummler.
Geary received his MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Some of his professional accomplishments include:
- The Distinguished Contribution Award for Workplace Learning and Performance from ASTD in 1999
- The Life Time Achievement Award from the Organization Behavior Management Network in 1999
- Presidential Citation for Intellectual Leadership from the International Society for Performance Improvement in 2000.
- Rayona Sharpnack
- Founder of the Institute for Women's Leadership
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Rayona founded the Institute for Women's Leadership in 1991 - an organization renown for its' groundbreaking work throughout the United States, Australia, and Canada. Drawing from her successful careers in education, professional sports and business, Rayona has become an inspirational teacher, coach and mentor for executives in Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, emerging businesses and non-profit organizations.
Rayona has presented her outstanding achievements in advancing women leaders and building high performance organizations to prestigious institutions and associations such as Harvard University, Stanford Business School, UC Berkeley Business School, Mills College, State of the World Forum, the Canadian Federal Government, the Australian Federal Government, Leadership America, and the Professional and Business Women of California. National publications such as Fast Company , Working Mother and the New York Times have showcased Rayona's leadership model and she has delivered hundreds of keynote speeches, and designed large conferences focused on the topic of developing extraordinary women leaders. Rayona's new book "Trade Up: 5 Skills for Redesigning Your Leadership & Life from the Inside Out" is due for release in October, 2007. She is also one of several featured authors of the ground-breaking book, "Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership."
Rayona's masterful approach as a coach and educator helps her take very complex theoretical concepts and distill them down to poignant, relevant and easily accessible learning distinctions -- resulting in dramatically more effective leadership skills for her clients. More than 20,000 professionals from Fortune 500 companies have relied on Rayona and the Institute for Women's Leadership to produce breakthrough results both at work and in their personal lives.
In addition to numerous awards, Rayona was inducted into her high school Alumni Hall of Fame and a finalist in the 2006 Silicon Valley Woman of Distinctions Awards. Her groundbreaking work has earned her an appointment as Chairwoman of the Mentoring and Leadership Development committee on the Kennedy School, Women's Leadership Board at Harvard University.
Rayona spends much of her free time playing sports. As shortstop for the California Express women's senior softball team, Rayona helped the team claim the runner-up position in the 2 softball world championships. The crown jewel of Rayona's life is her daughter, Chelsea, age 20, who inspires, challenges, coaches and generally keeps her Mom in a continuous learning mode regarding the power of negotiating win-win solutions.
- Sara Roberts
- CEO and president of Roberts Golden Consulting
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Sara M. Roberts is the President and CEO of Roberts Golden Consulting headquartered in San Francisco, California.
A seasoned leader, she and her team have led change management and performance improvement efforts for Fortune 500 companies as varied as FedEx, Cisco Systems, Safeway, McKesson, Hilton Hotels Corporation and Alcatel-Lucent.
Prior to founding Roberts Golden, she held senior consulting positions within companies including Sprint, Andersen and Ketchum.
Roberts Golden’s work focuses on providing high-value change management and organizational effectiveness solutions for companies undergoing situations such as mergers, corporate reorganizations, technology implementations and process improvement efforts.
Sara is also a widely recognized thought leader in inside/out marketing and branding solutions which help bridge the frequent gap between what customers expect in their experience with a brand versus what the brand’s employees actually deliver.
Two of their firm’s recent efforts include the change management and internal marketing efforts for a leading hospitality corporation’s brand refresh and working with a communications networking leader to transform their technology organization’s operations through establishing an infrastructure for effective communication, processes and governance.
Sara is the co-author of the best-selling book, Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers (Kaplan 2005) and has been quoted in numerous publications including Inc. Magazine and Forbes.
She received her M.S. in Instructional Technology from the University of Nebraska.
