Projects and Results

Situation: The L&D organization faced a high variance in the number of observations completed by managers and the scores earned by training professionals, lacking a unified feedback standard.

Task: My objective as the Associate Director market lead for the Trainer Development pillar was to orchestrate, curate, and oversee a calibration project that would align leadership on observational skills and ratings.

Action: I served as the creator and orchestration lead for the "Summer of TEACH" program, creating a structured 6-week calibration initiative with clear measurables. I facilitated collaborative sessions where leaders could observe trainers in action, learn best practices, and align on defining the sub-categories of our TEACH competencies. I also focused the curriculum on teaching leaders how to score objectively to eliminate subjective "double-dinging" or "double-plussing" for observed behaviors.

Result: By scaling this calibration process, I increased total observations by 25% per month and reduced scoring variance by an average of 4 points, successfully creating a unified standard of objective feedback to coach training excellence across the organization.

Situation: Following a major leadership rollout, the business identified a need for continuous skill reinforcement and sales support. Specifically, the Growth Pillar sought us out for help with topics like Digital Tool usage and Closing Sales with Confidence to better support our frontline leaders and sales representatives.

Task: My goal was to develop, execute, and measure a standardized, ongoing program that would reinforce previously learned skills, provide an environment for continuous feedback, and encourage best-practice sharing across the Great Lakes market.

Action: I directed the end-to-end lifecycle of the Great Lakes Learning Labs program. I partnered with business leaders to identify crucial topics such as Overcoming Objections and Communication Skills, curated the content, prepared the trainers, and delivered the weekly virtual sessions. To extend the learning beyond the live sessions, I built a companion microsite to house replays and resources. To ensure the instruction was working, I integrated Slido polls to actively measure knowledge retention during the calls.

Result: Over a 6-week period, the optional program attracted 1,066 total attendees, averaging 176 participants per week. We achieved perfect 5.0 Level 1 feedback scores from learners. Our live polling demonstrated a 12% positive swing in knowledge retention by the end of the calls, and our "Closing with Confidence" module was so successful that it was adapted for national use. Furthermore, on metric-focused trainings we had 7-12% lifts in sales post-training. 

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Situation: The organization needed to roll out the "Apex" leadership training program to a massive audience of 745 Great Lakes leaders within strict time and resource constraints. 

Task: My goal was to develop a certification and delivery plan that ensured high-quality facilitation without burning out our training team with back-to-back travel. 

Action: I designed a strategic three-location certification plan, bringing in experienced trainers nationally to partner with our local Great Lakes team. I ensured materials were provided three weeks in advance, hosted weekly sync calls to align the team, and strategically scheduled trainers so they wouldn't have consecutive stints on the road. 

Result: We successfully achieved a 99% completion rate among the 745 leaders. More importantly, the program had a massive impact on learner readiness: leader confidence in their overall skills jumped from 70% to 95%, and their confidence in creating coaching strategies rose by 33%.

Situation: Our training organization had an opportunity to streamline heavy administrative tasks like observation documentation, scheduling, and draft reviews to create more time for meaningful coaching conversations, stakeholdering, etc.

Task: My objective was to leverage artificial intelligence to improve our workflow efficiencies and the quality of our instructional feedback.

Action: I developed custom AI workspaces using Gemini and NotebookLM. Specifically, I designed a Gemini Gem that could instantly summarize observation notes and provide clear action items for both the trainer and the director. Then, I created a tool to analyze current and future workloads then optimize scheduling to create balance. I created another tool to proofread draft documents for grammar and mechanics so human reviewers could focus entirely on content and context. I then trained the L&D team on how to utilize these functions.

Result: This innovation led to the widespread adoption of these AI feedback and editor tools across the learning organization, significantly streamlining the observation documentation process and increasing overall efficiency for the trainer team saving 100s of hours on administrative and editorial work.

Situation: There was an urgent business need to improve customer retention and metrics, particularly among the bottom 20% of retail locations that were struggling to meet their sales targets. 

Task: I needed to create and orchestrate a targeted turnaround program to improve floor management and customer experience behaviors in these underperforming stores. 

Action: I oversaw the implementation of the customer retention initiative, which utilized small-group coaching sessions tailored specifically for these leaders. I delegated the delivery and administrative components to my team, ensuring the trainers executed the interventions with high effectiveness. 

Result: The turnaround was rapid and significant. Within the first month, 95% of these previously struggling stores met or exceeded their goals. Additionally, 100% of the participating stores saw an uptick in key metrics, generating an average volume increase of 10%.

Situation: The organization's legacy onboarding program needed to be updated to better prepare incoming employees for their roles and reduce the time it took for them to reach full performance. Specifically, there was a need to evaluate instructional gaps and ensure new hires were equipped for success from their very first day.

Task: My objective was to refine the organization's onboarding program end-to-end, update specific content segments, and ensure our training teams nationwide were fully prepared to deliver the new experience.

Action: I partnered cross-functionally and worked heavily in design thinking sessions to restructure and refine the curriculum. As part of this overhaul, I took the initiative to specifically redesign the SMB (Small and Medium Business) portion of the new hire training to better serve our learners. Once the content was finalized, I led the national certification process to guarantee that trainers across the organization were aligned and ready to execute the updated onboarding program effectively.

Result: The comprehensive redesign was a massive success that directly impacted operational readiness. Because of this end-to-end overhaul, new hires achieved full competency 33 days faster than they did under the previous legacy onboarding program.