Virtual Learning Series

Lei Comerford

Lei is a highly effective Leadership Coach, Facilitator and Learning & Development Consultant experienced helping organizations improve productivity, effectiveness, and engagement.  Lei has over 14 years of strategic and operational experience in healthcare specifically the bio-pharmaceutical and pharmacy benefit management (PBM) industries as well as over 5 years in hospitality. She has dedicated years delivering best practices in customer service, coaching, mentoring, project management and facilitation to individuals, teams, and organizations.  She has held many internal leader roles in corporate settings as well as is the founder of her own consulting firm.

Lei is master facilitator certified in a variety of assessment tools and holds the ACC accreditation through the International Coaching Federation (ICF).  She facilitates leadership development programs, implements internal coaching and mentoring programs, coaches 1:1 with leaders at varying levels, facilitates team coaching, conducts needs assessments, designs annual learning portfolios, team journeys, and onboarding programs.

Melissa Villanueva Jass

Melissa Villanueva Jass is a values driven leader on a mission to passionately advocate for the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women, BIPOC, veterans, and other minority groups, to inspire and motivate leaders at all levels to create a culture of inclusion, equity, belonging, recognition, and appreciation, and to courageously collaborate with honesty, integrity, and relentless enthusiasm.

Throughout her career, Melissa has always been fascinated by stories that speak to the human heart and touch the mind. Her natural ability to connect with others allows her to create trust with her clients, business partners, interview subjects, and teams. Throughout her career, she has flourished under the pressure of live broadcast events, training and facilitating workshops, and interviewing and working with talent from store clerks and truck drivers to executives and celebrities. She has contributed to a broad spectrum of programs and events, including custom designed leadership development programs, high potential mentor programs, women's focused development initiatives, corporate broadcast events, and more. She is capable and comfortable in the roles of Consultant, Business Partner, Producer, Writer, Director, Project Manager, Client Liaison, and Stage Manager.

Melissa produced “Resting Places”; an award-winning HD documentary narrated by Liam Neeson. "Resting Places" explores in depth roadside memorials around the world and the impact they have on society. As part of the Wal-Mart sponsored Heroes Project, Melissa traveled across the country, conducting interviews and producing documentary style stories which salute those who make sacrifices for the sake of others.
She loves collaborating with others as much as she enjoys finding the story in everyone. Her incredible empathy provides her with the true gift of stirring emotion; not only in the subjects she interviews and the people she is working with to develop, but also in the audiences she intends to reach with each program and event.

She has worked side by side with many noteworthy people, including Liam Neeson, Gary Busey, Charles Durning, Dr. Maya Angelou, Antonio Banderas, Jeffery Katzenberg, Will Smith, Halle Berry, Susan Lucci, Melanie Griffith, Col. Tommy Franks, Coach John Wooden, Cal Ripkin Jr., Derek Jeter, Phil Vasser, Brooks & Dunn, Mr. T, Carl Weathers, Michael Buffer, William Goldberg, Bryan Adams, Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, Cindy Crawford, Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen, Jeff Gordan, Richard Petty and American Idol’s Taylor Hicks, Carrie Underwood, and Diana DeGarmo.

Bridget Richard

Bridget Richard Coaching was founded on the belief that women are stronger friends, partners and business women when we are getting as much out of life as we put into it.  I have worked as a master's level psychotherapist for the 14 years, the last 6 of which were in my own practice. In that time, I have learned more than a few tools you can use to help create harmony between all the major areas of your life. After all, when I am not coaching, I am a working mom, wife, cat lover and Scout mom.

Cindy Zauner Warner

Cindy Warner is a highly sought-after author, executive coach and leadership development expert delivering life-changing experiential learning, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence to leaders around the globe.  Her passion and expertise is igniting leadership potential to drive more engaged, empowered, and nimble organizational cultures.

Cindy has 25 years of experience coaching hundreds of leaders and teams from young professionals to senior executives across the globe in multiple organizations and industries, including Kimberly-Clark Corporation, MillerCoors, Milwaukee Electric Tool, and more.  She is best known for her authentic and empowering style that ignites potential, optimizes individual strengths, and overcomes barriers with efficiency and fun.

Cindy delivers results through focused, productive coaching and experiential learning, often partnering with horses to jump-start insight and learning agility. Her clients build more effective relationships and lead with higher self-awareness and confidence.

Cindy is an adjunct professor at the St. Norbert College Center for Exceptional Leadership and president and owner of Professional Executive Coaching, LLC for over 14 years. She has a Master of Science in Human Resources from Marquette University with primary focus on organizational development. Her specialized expertise in leadership development and executive coaching was developed her entire professional career in human resources, supported by International Coach Federation and equine assisted coach certifications, and multiple credentials in learning design, corporate university architecture, organization development and talent management. Cindy recently integrated her passion for horses into her work to continue bringing best practice learning and life-changing emotional intelligence to leaders around the globe.

Helene Segura

As The Inefficiency Assassin™, productivity expert and time management keynote speaker Helene Segura empowers stressed out professionals on the go with the productivity tools to slay wasted time. Personal inefficiency at work leads to increased stress levels, lower morale, higher absenteeism, more turnover – and rising spending on employee health care and hiring. Why not improve productivity, decrease stress levels, and increase profits instead?

The author of two Amazon best-selling books, Helene has been the featured productivity expert in more than 100 media interviews including publications such as Woman’s Day Magazine and Money Magazine, as well as on Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC affiliates. She has coached hundreds of clients to productivity success and performance improvement by applying neuroscience and behavioral modification techniques to wipe out destructive, time-wasting habits. Kanban, Kaizen and time management may be fuddy duddy terms; Helene’s content-packed keynotes and workshops, however, are anything but. Helene turns time management on its head by sharing both client case studies and pop culture examples to teach her mind-bending framework for decreasing interruptions, distractions and procrastination so that companies can spend more time generating revenue.

Marsha Friedman

Marsha Friedman is a personal development coach and the principal and founder of MEF Consulting Group.  Her purpose is to help other people succeed by recognizing their strengths and encouraging them to use and build on them.  The thought of talent wasted, time wasted, energy wasted, and possibilities wasted fuels her personal mission. The thought of optimizing your talents, time, energy, and possibilities is what fuels her personal mission of guiding you to your full potential.

As a coach, Marsha guides mid-level managers, small business owners and individuals to their full personal and professional potential by helping them identify and overcome the hurdles standing between them and their vision of success. Her exceptional combination of passion, interpersonal skills, and leadership expertise has made her an exceptional leader and coach. Prior to founding MEF Consulting Group, Marsha was the head of learning and organization development for Diebold Global Service Logistics.  Her 30+-year career at Diebold spanned across the organization from finance to customer service and from operations to organizational development. She holds certifications as a Registered Corporate Coach™, Master Trainer, Myers Briggs, and DiSC facilitator, and Distinguished Toastmaster.

Dr. Scott Allen

Scott J. Allen, Ph.D., is the Standard Products—Dr. James S. Reid Chair in Management at John Carroll University. Allen is an associate professor and teaches courses in leadership, management skills, and executive communication. He's received the Wasmer Outstanding Teaching Award for his work in the classroom.

Scott served as a Mulwick Scholar in the Boler College of Business, and his primary stream of research focuses on leadership development. Scott has published more than 50 book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. He is the co-author of The Little Book of Leadership Development: 50 Ways to Bring Out the Leader in Every Employee, Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: A Guide for College Students, and the textbook Discovering Leadership: Designing Your Success (2019). Scott’s most recent publication is Captovation: Online Presentations by Design. He is also the host of the podcast - Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders.

In addition to writing and speaking, Scott consults, facilitates workshops, and leads retreats across industries. He is a faculty member of the Institute for Management Studies, and recent engagements include Lubrizol, Key Bank, EY, Siegfried Group, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Sherwin Williams, Progressive, NASA-Glenn, FedEx Custom Critical, Thompson Hine LLP, Cleveland Clinic, Leadership Cleveland, and Cleveland Bridge Builders. Scott is the chair and co-founder of Captovation, a services firm dedicated to “Presentation Coaching for the Digital Age.” He is also the co-founder of the Collegiate Leadership Competition. He has served on the board of the International Leadership Association, Association of Leadership Educators, and Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society.

Dr. David Burkus

One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David Burkus’ forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever.

He is the best-selling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USAToday, Fast Company, the Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. Since 2017, Burkus has been ranked as one of the world’s top business thought leaders by Thinkers50. As a sought-after international speaker, his TED Talk has been viewed over 2 million times. He’s worked with leaders from organizations across all industries including Google, Stryker, Fidelity, Viacom, and even the US Naval Academy.

A former business school professor, Burkus holds a master’s degree in organizational psychology from the University of Oklahoma, and a doctorate in strategic leadership from Regent University. 

Kev Khayat

A 100-watt light bulb lights up a room. A 100-watt laser cuts through metal. For social impact, be a laser, not a bulb.

I coach, train and consult with nonprofit and mission-led leaders and managers. I help them focus on what really matters and eliminate noise, implement any change or initiative quickly and fully with minimal pain and help build positive cultures of learning and growth. I also host the Nonprofit Problem Solver weekly conference call and podcast. Register at nonprofitproblemsolver.com and/or visit kevkhayat.com. Let's talk about how to accelerate and maximize your impact so you can be mission accomplished in 40 hours a week or less.

Want more detail? I help organizations and their people get the best out of themselves. I catalyze behavior change to improve what people do at work and how they do it. While some recommend a "systems and processes" approach to effectiveness, I focus on people and their attitudes and actions for performance and growth.

Sarah Eppink

Sarah founded Aisling Group LLC, a leadership development consulting and professional coaching firm, to support individuals and organizations in their journey towards realizing their vision. Sarah is a dynamic professional who exudes passion for supporting others and organizations as they reach their goals.  She is able to connect with all levels of the organization and is an authentic leader.  Sarah has nearly 20 years of designing and executing development programs that support organizational and personal change.

Sarah is an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation, and a Board Certified Coach through the Center for Credentialing and Education.  She graduated with her bachelor's degree in psychology from Cleveland State University and her master's degree in organization development from Bowling Green State University. Sarah also possesses numerous professional Leadership development certifications.

Sara Greenstein

Sara Greenstein is a purpose-driven executive and creator of sustainable value for employees, customers, shareholders and the environment. Armed with a strong sense of purpose, a desire to do good, and deep expertise in process, product, customers, safety and innovation, she has successfully led the transformation of several leading U.S. manufacturing and service companies, including UL (Underwriters Laboratories) and U.S. Steel.

In November 2019, Ms. Greenstein joined Lydall, a leading manufacturer of value-added engineered materials and specialty filtration solutions, as President & CEO. Under her leadership, Lydall has quickly pivoted to address the surge in demand for personal protective equipment driven by COVID-19. As one of the only companies in the U.S. and world capable of creating high-efficiency filtration media for N95 respirators, surgical masks and air filtration systems, the company is singularly focused on deploying its 150-year manufacturing experience to create critically needed products that protect both people and places.