Thomas Cooke
President

Thomas Cooke is the founder and president of Learning Outsource Group.  Included in his corporate leadership responsibilities is the management of the company’s extensive capabilities and performance development services to clients throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Pacific Rim.

As an internationally recognized speaker and facilitator since 1992, he has been a featured speaker at numerous executive leadership conferences for a variety of organizations. He has authored or co-authored various training programs including Sales Management Leadership in the 21st Century. He most recently coauthored the book, We’re On Your Side…A Message from Managers, released by iUniverse Publishing in January, 2008. Thousands of managers and executives from over 20 countries have participated in programs he has created or facilitated during the past several years.   He is considered an authority in Sales Education and Sales Management Leadership Development.

Before entering the training profession, Tom also spent 13 years with Ricoh Business Solutions, formerly Lanier Worldwide, a global provider of document imaging and voice processing technology and services. As an Account Executive, he won the Chairman’s Council Award for sales excellence.  He then held positions as a Regional Sales Trainer, Branch Sales Manager, and was twice awarded District Manager of the Year for assignments in Milwaukee and Chicago.  In 1990, he was awarded the prestigious Manager of the Year Award for responsibilities as Vice President, Midwest Region Manager based in Chicago.  He was then promoted to the company’s Intercontinental Division as Managing Director of Lanier Pacific Pty. Ltd. based in Sydney, Australia.

Tom has a Bachelors Degree from Ohio University in Economics and completed post-graduate studies at Georgia State University.  He serves on the Ohio University College of Business Professional Sales Advisory Board, and is currently involved with several major universities conducting research and publications on Sales Management Effectiveness.  He is also a member of ASTD and numerous other civic and professional organizations.  He resides in Ormond Beach, Florida.

Kim D. Ward

Kim D. Ward is the Director of Training and Development for Learning Outsource Group based in Ormond Beach, Florida. He has been involved in the training and consulting industry in a variety of capacities since 1990. His expertise encompasses organizational assessment and analysis, strategy/process re-organization, consulting, curriculum development, video script development and video talent, keynote speaking, and seminar facilitation. Kim has been instrumental in helping hundreds of organizations achieve and exceed sales growth and profitability objectives.

Kim has authored and co-authored numerous training programs including Leading High Velocity Change; Partnering for Success; and Management Leadership in the 21st Century.  His most recent book released in 2008, We’re On Your Side…A Message from Managers, followed Decisions Without Mistakes…Common Sense Decision Making Strategies for Today’s Managers and Leaders  both released by iUniverse Publishing.

Since 1993, Kim has personally delivered seminars throughout the United States and Canada to over 120,000 participants. His professional presence, personal success and ability to engage his audience has earned him an excellent reputation in a number of industries including communications, technology, transportation, e-commerce, staffing,  automotive, office automation, medical, and distribution.

Kim, with over 25 years of sales, management, and executive leadership experience serves on the Professional Sales Advisory Board at Ohio University, and is a frequent guest speaker at the College of Business. He is also a member of numerous civic and professional organizations and resides with his family in Longwood, Florida.

Gary B. Connor

A graduate of the University of Delaware, Gary has over 25 years experience in human resource education and development. He has developed over 45 training programs, and is the author of Buyer’s Side Selling, Instant Sales Meetings (Fenman Ltd.) and Sales Games & Activities for Trainers (McGraw Hill), now in its second printing.

For over a decade, Gary has authored or facilitated training skills programs to thousands of participants. His audiences range from managers to high level executives, sales, customer service, and human resource professionals. He works with companies such as American Express, ADP, Pitney Bowes, US Postal Service and Office Depot.

Prior to his association with Learning Outsource Group, Gary was the Director of Sales Training for Pitney Bowes. His current responsibilities involve speaking, program facilitation, curriculum design and development, program certifications, profiling and assessment testing, and consulting. He also manages the company’s operations in Atlanta, Georgia.

He has been a keynote speaker for many organizations, including Sales & Marketing Executives, American Society for Training & Development, U.S. Postal Service, and the Professional Society for Sales & Marketing Training. He is also a member of numerous civic and professional organizations.

Kevin Davis

Kevin Davis is the president of TopLine Leadership Inc., a leading sales and sales management training company serving clients from diverse sectors and an affiliate of Learning Outsource Group. TopLine shows companies how to dramatically increase top line revenue growth by implementing a consistent sales process based on a deep understanding of how customers buy.

Kevin is the author of Getting Into Your Customer’s Head: 8 Secret Roles of Selling Your Competitors Don’t Know (Times Business / Random House), which was voted one of the best sales books by Selling magazine, and one of the top 30 business books by Soundview Executive Book Summaries (out of 1,500 titles considered annually). The audio book version of Getting Into Your Customer’s Head was published in June, 1998 by Lessons in Leadership. Kevin has been quoted in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Sales & Marketing Management, and the New York Times Syndicate.

Kevin is a dynamic speaker and was recently selected a featured speaker of the Lessons in Leadership Distinguished Speakers series, a select group of 15 leading speaker / authors (others include Stephen Covey, Warren Bennis, Michael Hammer, Tom Peters, Peter Senge and Ken Blanchard) appearing at special events in cities nationwide.

Prior to starting his firm in 1989, Kevin was a sales representative, account executive, sales manager, and district general manager during a distinguished career with Lanier Worldwide, a Fortune 200 company. In each of Kevin’s positions he earned Lanier’s Chairman’s Council award, presented annually to producers ranking in the top five percent. He also earned Lanier’s prestigious “District Manager of the Year” award. As a sales manager, Kevin hired, trained, and coached over 200 salespeople.

Kevin is a member of the National Speakers Association. His formal education includes a B.A. in Business Administration and extensive post-graduate work at U.C. Berkeley on the subject of instructional design.

Teri Dunn

Teri Dunn is the Director of Consulting for Print Management Solutions Group, a division of Learning Outsource Group, and a master facilitator for the company’s Selling Managed Print Services professional development program.  Teri’s responsibilities follow a distinguished career of 26 years with Global Imaging Systems companies in Pennsylvania, Washington and Oregon and finally as Global Corporate Vice President of Marketing.  Teri’s responsibilities which originated in sales led to roles of Vice President of Sales, Executive Vice President, Company President, and Group President.  In her role as Corporate Vice President of Marketing she assumed the rollout of Global’s successful national Print Management initiative.  Teri was also responsible for curriculum, administration and training of the “Sales and Marketing” module within the National Global Leadership Institute.

Throughout her business career, Mrs. Dunn has made outstanding contributions to the community.  In 1998, she was selected as one of the city’s Top 50 business leaders as a member of the Leadership Pittsburgh program.  She was a member of the Rotary Club of Pittsburgh for twelve years, serving two terms as a Board Director.  In 1997, she was honored by the State’s Governor, Tom Ridge, for her personal contribution in the statewide fight against hunger and was recognized as one of Pittsburgh’s Community Champions in 1998.  Teri served on the Board of the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank and was Board President from 1996 to 1998.  In Washington, Teri implemented community service programs and policies to promote volunteerism with employees with NW Kidney Center, Boys and Girls Clubs, NW Harvest and several other organizations.

In 2001 The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank asked Teri to return to celebrate its 15 year anniversary and accept the award for Vision and Innovation.  In 2002 California University of Pennsylvania recognized her with the Alumni Professional Excellence Award.  In March 2003 Kentucky Governor Paul E. Patton appointed Teresa N. Dunn a Kentucky Colonel.  In July 2004 she joined the Board of Directors of the Wesley Institute in Pittsburgh, PA.

Teri has delivered Managed Print Services presentations at numerous industry manufacturer events.  Throughout her career she has also taught Business Communications at Robert Morris College, shared an instructor position for Duquesne University’s School of Leadership & Professional Advancement course:  Leadership Trends in Information Technology, has guest lectured at California University of Pennsylvania and has been published in several periodicals including Document Magazine.

In addition to her current consulting activities, Teri sits on the Board of Directors of Rampart Global, Inc. an engineering management resource company.

Paul Baker

Paul Baker is the Director of Sales for Learning Outsource Group. His diverse background of 20 years in a variety of industries creates a deep understanding of business challenges in today’s highly competitive business environment. With success and expertise in start-ups and turnarounds, he led a number of dynamic teams that consistently grew market share and profit attainment. Leveraging these skills enables Paul to effectively identify organizational challenges and opportunities, aiding them in achieving higher performance with targeted sales education and training solutions, process improvement, benchmarking, and leadership development.

Prior to the training profession, Paul spent over 10 years in the document management arena most notably with IKON Document Services, a Ricoh company, from which he brings his specialized knowledge and expertise in the print, imaging, coding, e-discovery and forensic document solutions fields.

While with IKON, he won the Top Gun award as the number one account executive in the entire company, and was then promoted and named Sales Manager of the Year for two consecutive years out of 200 sales managers nationally. He was then promoted to a Managing Partner position where his region was number one in profit increases year-over-year. His sales, operations and leadership results then elevated him to Regional Sales Director where he consistently outperformed budgets, which resulted in him being awarded the Value Added Service Award twice out of over 1,000 employees.

Paul has a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado and resides with his wife and two children in Denver Colorado.

William D.S. Smitley, Ph.D.

William Smitley has over 20 years experience in human and organizational performance improvement.  He has worked with senior executives, managers, sales personnel, professional staff members, and hourly employees to improve productivity and efficiency.  Bill has developed and delivered adult training in a wide range of skill areas including sales, sales coaching, quality management, supervision, change management, communications, customer service, train-the-trainer, and presentation techniques.

Dr. Smitley has delivered training to executives and managers in five continents.  He has worked, lectured, and co-taught with authors Philip B. Crosby, W. Edwards Deming, and Robert D. Gilbreath.  As an executive at Philip Crosby Associates – the world’s largest consulting practice devoted to quality management and improvement – Bill developed and directed a rigorous mentoring program that assembled executives from around the world to enhance their abilities to communicate, consult, teach, and live the concepts of continuous improvement. Over 50 executives attended from Johnson & Johnson, Chrysler, Trustee Savings Bank of UK, Bell Atlantic, Japanese Management Association, General Motors, SPOORNET of South Africa, and Voluntary Hospitals of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Smitley’s expertise also includes the design, development, and delivery of surveys and assessments to determine organizational strengths, weaknesses, and improvements in relation to strategic/operational plans.  Working with the Gallup Organization, Bill co-developed surveys and research to assist the design and marketing of training products.  His recommendations for performance and organizational improvements in culture, values, quality management, training, and work processes have been delivered to executives and implemented with tangible savings.

Bill has presented, taught, and published articles nationally and internationally on education, applied statistics, and quality.  He is a frequent guest speaker in the Executive MBA Program at Rollins College Crummer Graduate School of Business.  Dr. Smitley holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in educational psychology.  His doctorate is in educational and psychological measurement and evaluation from the University of South Florida.

James G. Thornton

Jim is the founder and president of Results Unlimited, a high performance, world class training and consulting company that specialized in sales training and process development for the staffing, telecommunications and gaming industries.

Since 1990, Jim has been highly successful as a nationally recognized speaker, trainer, and business consultant. After 13 years of proven sales results with leading corporations – NCR, Johnson & Johnson and Norrell Services, Inc., Jim founded Results Unlimited to help sales professionals and sales organizations be more effective in both tactical and strategic selling situations.

His common sense approach and deeply held beliefs have motivated and educated thousands of salespeople to reassess their attitudes and sales process. He has authored numerous training programs including the highly successful PRO-QuEST Series. Jim is a graduate of Western State College with a major in both business administration and marketing.

Active in many community and church affairs, he resides with his family in Denver, Colorado.

Sandy Skiver

Sandy is the National Operations Administrator for Learning Outsource Group. Sandy’s extensive experience in the corporate training industry dates back to 1995. Her current responsibilities encompass the management of all operational areas for the company including scheduling, travel and logistics, shipping and receiving, program administration, client communications, and client support. In addition, she sits on the company’s management council to provide operational support to launch new and expanding products and services.

Sandy also manages the company’s business alliance relationships and personally assists clients with the development of employee competency profiles and assessment technology testing and reporting. She works with many of the company’s largest clients including Verizon, Intuit, Xerox, Alsco, First Data and many others.

Sandy is involved in a number of professional and civic organizations and resides with her family in Deltona, Florida.

Gina Steger

Gina is the Marketing and Business Development Administrator for Learning Outsource Group. Her extensive experience encompasses all aspects of marketing, e-commerce, advertising, database management, and client communications. In her role, Gina oversees all marketing related projects, customer relationship technology, public relations, and all creative concepts related to corporate branding, marketing literature, trade show participation, and other projects from creative inception through project production and completion.

Gina supports the marketing strategies and client acquisition efforts of Learning Outsource Group’s affiliate organizations and subsidiaries. She also works closely with the company’s vendors and print production providers.

A Florida native, Gina resides in Port Orange, Florida with her husband and daughter.