My Experience

Here's an elevator speech version of my career. If interesting in details, see my LinkedIn profile (link on the right sidebar).

I spent about 10 years in various retail jobs after high school, and during that time went to college at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland and The Ohio State University, where I graduated with a B.A. in Social and Behavioral Sciences, with an Aviation Management major. 

My first professional job started just before I graduated, with an awesome company called NetJets. They operate a massive fleet of private jets made available through fractional ownership and prepaid charter cards. I started out as a Flight Coordinator, taking crew calls and arranging flight logistics. After a couple years I got my first training position, in which I wrote and delivered our training program for my department. 

Over the next 10 years I grew into corporate training roles, building and delivering Orientation and many other training programs for HR, Maintenance, Owner Services, and other groups. 

In 2007 I left to strike out into other industries, working at Mettler-Toledo for almost a year where I rolled out the company's first LMS. NetJets called me back with a need for a curriculum specialist in their pilot training group, and I couldn't resist the opportunity so I returned. A year and a half later, the Great Recession impacted us, and I was laid off with hundreds of colleagues. 

From there I was fortunate to get on with JPMorgan Chase as an instructional designer for Retail Training, serving over 5,000 branches. There, I helped redesign Teller training and other big programs. 

Looking to grow back into leadership, I did an internal and external search, and was picked up by a marketing/consumer services company as Training Manager for a good-sized call center. In my three years there I did a lot of improvements, creating an effective scheduling tool and redesigning one of their biggest new hire programs. I also learned a great deal about contact center operations. 

Most recently, I was found and recruited by my current employer, where I lead training and design for three contact centers. I've been there for two years. 

All-in, I've been in professional training roles for 18 straight years and love it. While aviation was my first love (and the reason I went to college), I'm grateful that I found the learning and development field as something I love to do. It's a transferable skill set and it has afforded me some great opportunities to learn multiple industries.