Political Savvy in the Workplace
Panel

June 15, 2006

Note:  Senior Training Directors' Forums are targeted for training and development professionals who have a minimum of 10 years of training and development (or equivalent) experience and are responsible for developing training and development strategy. Director level professionals are also responsible for decision making in their organizations. These programs are designed to offer strategic insight and time for round table interaction with peers.

Overview

Your skill at navigating organizational politics may be as important as your professional competency as a training or OD leader. The goal of this event is to explore political dynamics that enhance or distract from your ability to succeed as a leader. At this session, we will hear from and interact with senior leaders in a variety of fields about their political experiences in the workplace. You'll hear about both successes and failures and how to transform them into wins for you and your staff.

During this event, panelists will describe a time when they used political savvy to advance or defend their objectives. At break-out table discussions, you will have the opportunity to further explore panelist experiences and to share your experiences with others.

Panelists

Dennis Hopwood
Former VP, HR
Standard Insurance
Portland, Oregon

Dennis Hopwood was most recently the Vice President of Human Resources for The Standard. He has also held senior HR positions in several job sectors including technology, manufacturing, financial services and higher education. Dennis received his masters degree in higher education administration from the University of Wisconsin. He is a board member of the Columbia Land Trust as well as a member of the Sustainable Development Commission.

Rebecca Perry
Senior Director, OD and Training
Digimarc
Portland, Oregon

Rebecca Perry is a seasoned organizational development consultant who worked for 13 years as a consultant and 12 years as a human resources manager and business partner with Hewlett-Packard and Kaiser Permanente. She is experienced in many aspects of organizational improvement initiatives including strategic planning, organizational diagnosis, executive coaching, succession planning, and whole-system facilitation. She is currently the Senior Director of Organizational Development and Training at Digimarc, an Oregon-based company dedicated to the state-of-the-art counterfeit deterrence and secure ID. Rebecca has a masters degree in applied behavioral science/organization development.

Jean Avison
VP, Learning and Development
Wells Fargo
Portland, Oregon

Jean Avison is Vice President, Learning and Development Manager of an eLearning development and cross-sell learning team within Treasury Management University, a learning organization within Wells Fargo. Jean has over 20 years of experience in the financial services learning and development arena. Her experience spans retail, small business and commercial financial services. For over a decade she has provided learning solutions within the Wholesale Banking Group. Most recently, her responsibilities encompass the management of a major eLearning initiative for the Wholesale Financial Services team of Wells Fargo. The focus of this initiative is to provide engaging, "just in time" learning to a nationally disbursed sales force.

Peggy McClure, MS, MBA
VP, Clinical and Service Quality
Kaiser Permanente
Portland, Oregon

Peggy McClure, MS, MBA, is vice president of clinical and service quality for the Kaiser Permanente Northwest Region. She is accountability for clinical quality oversight and improvement, in partnership with an assistant medical director of the Northwest Permanente physician group. She also manages medical operations for appointment and after hours advice call centers, population-based care, health education services, utilization management, health information management, and data quality. Peggy has over 30 years of experience in health care, including 21 years at Kaiser Permanente. -After college, she served in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer and worked in health care systems planning in Alaska for seven years. She is past chair of the Oregon Health Systems in Collaboration Steering Committee and a former SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) volunteer.

Details

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