Our Team

Founder

A strategic and accomplished talent development leader with extensive experience in creating global workforce development strategies, Brandon Carson currently leads learning and leadership programs at Walmart. He is a popular speaker, delivering a wide variety of engaging presentations and workshops at industry events.

Brandon has been honored with several industry awards, including the ATD BEST Award, the Learning Guild People's Choice Award, and three Brandon Hall Awards for Best Custom Learning Design. Brandon is the author of Learning In The Age of Immediacy: Five Factors For How We Connect, Communicate, and Get Work Done and L&D's Playbook for the Digital Age, both from ATD Press. He has also served on the board of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA) and the ATD TK conference committee.

Learn more about Brandon at his website.

Founding Director, Marketing Lead

Dawn Baron founded Passion Profits Consulting in 2008 to focus on helping businesses and learning professionals alike find solutions to overcoming obstacles in the corporate learning space. She is a strategic and creative problem solver, marketer, facilitator and speaker with a special interest in working with companies and organizations to focus on Talent, Learning, Wellness, and D&I strategies. Before starting her own consultancy, Dawn served as the Vice President of Marketing for the Association for Talent Development (ATD). Today, she focuses on elevating the messaging for learning opportunities, strategies and technologies to support a future workforce that is appreciative of diversity, efficiently includes learning for continuous skill development, and balances the needs of people with the needs of the business.

Dawn has Master degrees in Business with a focus on Organizational Development and a Public Management with a focus on Social Policy from the University of Maryland.

Director

Debbie Richards, president of Creative Interactive Ideas, supports talent development clients with technology challenges. She updates her job knowledge by researching new technologies and software products; participating in educational opportunities (such as speaking at learning conferences and webinars); and participating in professional organizations.

Passionate about working with and mentoring other learning professionals, Debbie is the past president of the ATD Houston chapter and a past National Advisor for Chapters. She was the ATD Technology Conference Advisory Council chairperson for 2019. Debbie is the author of “Seeing the Possibilities With Augmented Reality,” an ATD TD at Work publication.

She was also awarded the title of "Guild Master" by the Learning Guild in 2022. The purpose of the Guild Master Award is to recognize those members who have consistently contributed to the community in terms of both quantity and quality of content—and thus helped make the community a vibrant center for learning.

Founding Director, Coaching Lead

Jennifer Rogers believes in renewing the culture of work by developing leaders who are driven and successful, but more importantly, authentic, trustworthy and human. This is why she founded her consulting firm, Development Ocean, which specializes in developing the leadership capability of emerging leaders through coaching.

With over 15 years in the talent development industry, Jennifer has worked in several industries, transforming learning opportunities by developing homegrown learning management systems and online training programs, as well as designing onboarding programs for a global, multi-site corporation.

Jennifer is an active member and volunteer leader with the Association for Talent Development, both locally and nationally. This involvement has helped her develop her own leadership capabilities, stay informed about trends in the talent development industry, and develop her personal network. When she’s not working, you can find Jennifer spending time with her family and their extra-large dog or watching British dramas on tv with a glass of red wine while knitting or crocheting.

Founding Director

Kimo Kippen is a native of Hawaii, and currently alternates between Warsaw, Poland and Honolulu. Kimo is a thought leader, speaker, and advocate for learning, a former executive at Hilton and Marriott, and was recognized by CLO Magazine as the 2015 CLO of the Year. He's a former chairman of ATD (2007), chairman of APIA Scholars, and a board member for the Center for Talent Reporting (CTR) and CTDO Next.

Kimo serves as advisory board member at CAEL, CLO advisor at the Defense Acquisition University, Advisory Board member for Strategic Education Inc. (SEI), Gnowbe, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), World Institute for Action Learning (WIAL), and GP Strategies. He is a Program Director for The Conference Board Talent & Organizational Development Executive Council, USA and the Learning & Development Council, Europe. He is also an adjunct professor/advisor at Catholic University of America (CUA), George Mason University (GMU).

Kimo has an MS from RIT, a BS from the University of Hawai’i, and is a graduate of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland's Post Graduate Program.

Founding Director, Mentoring Program Coordinator

Over the last 20 years, Michelle Lentz has become a recognized leader in learning strategy within the corporate space and has frequently presented at industry events. Michelle was recently tapped to modernize the training strategy for UPS global call centers. Michelle has served on the ATD TK conference committee and received the ATD Volunteer-Staff Partnership award. She formerly led the HR Custom Learning team for Oracle, ran Write Technology consulting focusing on technical writing instructional design, and helped create and launch the original Lectora development tool. Michelle holds certifications in Synchronous Training, Integrated Talent Management, and 360 Feedback. Michelle has contributed to several books, including ATD Press’s Ready, Set, Curate: 8 Learning Experts Tell You How and L&D's Playbook for the Digital Age.

Michelle happens to be a certified sommelier and currently lives in Bentonville, AR, with her nutty dachshund, Ringo.

Founding Director

Penny leads the learning design and development team for Meta’s Global Sales Learning. Prior to Meta, Penny was at NetApp where her charter was to implement agile learning design methodologies and transform the design and development process by integrating dynamic, next generation learning methods. The breadth of her talent development work focuses on the intersection of strategy, leadership and culture, and organizational transformation.

Penny joined the L&D Cares team to advocate for the individuals that make up our profession and to help build capability in others to assist them in achieving their career goals.

Founding Director

Tina Bjork has previously led Global Learning for IT and Integrated Services at The Coca-Cola Company, Learning Experience Design at Wayfair, created a guidebook for Upskilling and reskilling at scale with i4cp, and is currently leading learning and performance strategy at Edward Jones. She is focused on defining and building the people capabilities needed to help organizations execute their ever-evolving strategies.

Tina has been leading, designing, deploying and measuring learning solutions for the last 16+ years, and has led the transformation of onboarding and continuous development programs for numerous functional areas.

Having recently relocated from Atlanta, Georgia, to Southern California, Tina is now a member of the ATD Orange County chapter. She is Luma Design Thinking Practitioner Certified, and highly skilled in integrating human-centered design throughout the learning process to creatively and collaboratively discover new ways to engage the modern learner.

Tina has a Master of Education with a focus on Instructional Technology, from the University of South Florida.