The Future of Learning Think Tank

Karen Kocher

Director of WW Learning, Microsoft

Karen Kocher is a foresight oriented, business-astute executive who solves complex issues, manages polarities, and leverages deep expertise as an influencer, thought leader, and change agent. She brings an exceptional business partner approach with demonstrated leadership credibility across business units and functions in large, global organizations. Karen has held senior human resources, healthcare, and sales leadership roles in insurance, information technology, consulting, and business outsourcing across the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Karen has spearheaded innovative solutions that dovetail with organizational objectives and metric goals including a social/collaborative global portal resulting in greater change agility, and the redesign of a performance management model that increased growth and retention. She has led successful enterprise-wide initiatives linking business strategy with human resources planning while building and developing key capabilities, enhancing organizational culture, and designing and deploying strong leadership development frameworks.

Currently, Karen is the Global General Manager of Talent and Learning Experiences for Microsoft. In this role her focus is on identifying, co-creating and operationalizing the big and small moments that matter so all employees are empowered to do their best work.  Karen’s first Microsoft role was as the General Manager of 21st Century Jobs, Skills and Employability.  The emphasis of this role was powering the planet through sustainable individual employability and organizational strategic talent pipelines. Emphasis was on a repeatable, systemic experience used by individuals across the globe resulting in demonstrated and applied future-ready skills and jobs.

Previously, Karen was the Talent Executive and Chief Learning Officer for Cigna Corporation, a Fortune 90, $39B global organization where she led leadership effectiveness, learning, organizational development, strategic talent planning, employee insights/engagement, and performance management for 40,000 employees worldwide. 
Prior to Cigna Karen worked with IBM, as Global Executive, Software Division, designing and implementing IBM’s social learning product strategy, and as Global Offering Executive, Global Services Division, providing general management to IBM’s Advanced and Emerging Technologies Learning Services Segment.

Earlier, Karen was Vice President/P&L Leader, New England Learning Services Business for IKON Office Solutions. She started her career with Aetna as a Medical Containment Specialist, promoted four times into risk management, information technology and sales roles.

Karen earned a BA in Political Strategy and Communications from DePaul University. She also earned the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation, a testament to her insurance and business acumen.

Karen is a member of six Boards including Excelsior College Board of Trustees, Jobs for Americas Graduates (JAG), Glint and Upskill America. She has received numerous awards including the Women Super Achiever Award from HR Excellence in Mumbai, India in 2015. Karen has been featured in several publications and is the contributing author to three published works.

Jim Lucari

Head of WW Certifications, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Jim Lucari leads certification solutions enablement in Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s WW Sales Enablement organization. He is responsible for sales and technical certification exam development and program operation, certification course development, certification architecture and framework, translations, HPE Press publications, and remote lab operations. Jim has been in IT technology work for over 40 years, with experience primarily in networking and storage technologies. He also has 20+ years of experience in training development and delivery with 10+ of those focused on technical certifications.

Jim has been actively involved in the IT Certification Council, serving as Treasurer and Vice-Chair of the board for a total of 4 years. Jim has also served in other CompTIA task forces with the Future of IT Skills being the most recent.

Rob Nail

Managing Director, Hammerfx

Rob is an Associate Founder and former CEO of Singularity University and currently works as an Advisor, Mentor, and Coach, and is exploring interactions with artificial intelligence for the future of work and education at HammerfX and his upcoming webcast “Robot & Rob”. He is also a serial entrepreneur, engineer, investor, director, surfer, and a struggling homeschooler, but mostly, a proud husband and father. His personal mission is to build bridges to an amazing future.

Gordon Pelosse

Sr. Vice President, Employer Engagement, CompTIA

Gordon was the Canada Country Manager and Head of Global Support Delivery for US Central for Hewlett Packard Enterprise Global Support Delivery Organization. For the past 10 years was an active member of the Americas Global Support Delivery Leadership Team. In his role, Gordon managed the P&L, led a team of people across Central US, Latin America, and Canada responsible for the end-to-end delivery of the HP Enterprise Services portfolio. After leading his team to win the HP Global Customer Satisfaction Award in 2015, Gordon continued to drive for a best-in-class customer experience, in business, service operations, and support delivery.

With over 40 years of industry experience, Gordon brings immense knowledge delivering excellence in business and customer support. After joining HP as part of the 2001 Compaq acquisition, Gordon held various leadership roles, spanning country leadership, channel delivery, commercial services business, and services leadership across Canada and the US.

Gordon’s background includes senior roles with companies such as Compaq, AT&T, Texas Instruments, and as General Manager at Cablenet, a Division of Cogeco. Gordon is a graduate of Vancouver Community College. He attended Kwantlen University in Vancouver and City University for postgraduate studies.

Gordon is actively involved in the IT community and has long-standing relationships with customers and partners across North America. He currently is the Past Chairman of the Board of Directors of Computing Technology Industry Associations (a Board Member since 2013) and was a founding member of the Canadian CompTIA Business of IT Community in 1999/2000, where he has served as both Chair and Past Chair.

Barbara Petitt

Managing Director, Professional Learning, CFA Institute

Barbara Petitt leads the organization’s professional learning team, responsible for offering high-quality, practitioner-relevant educational content to help members and industry professionals strengthen their knowledge, skills, and competencies. She started in the London office as Director of Curriculum Projects, EMEA, and then served as head of journal publications and managing editor of the Financial Analysts Journal. More recently, she served as senior head of curriculum and learning experience, leading the team responsible for the curriculum and all study tools for the credentialing programs, and overseeing the migration of these programs to the Learning Ecosystem, a state-of-the-art digital platform.

Prior to joining CFA Institute, Barbara Petitt worked in consulting and held faculty positions in higher education in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. She also served as Director of Online Studies at Laureate Online Education. Her expertise is in designing, developing, and delivering educational products and services that serve corporate clients’ and adult learners’ needs. She holds the CFA charter and a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Grenoble Alpes and a Masters in Management from EDHEC Business School.

Sunil Prashara

President & CEO, Project Management Institute (PMI)

Sunil is the President & Chief Executive Officer of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and a globally recognized thought leader on new ways of working and the growing shift toward project-based work known as The Project Economy. He has carried this message forward to audiences worldwide, including major global forums hosted by the Economist, the United Nations Global Compact, and several Fortune 500 companies.

Tom Reilly

Sr. Vice President, CompTIA Learning, CompTIA

Tom Reilly is a learning and technology innovator with experience developing eLearning solutions that move the needle on learning and productivity for Fortune 500 companies and technology startups. Tom heads up learning for CompTIA where he and his team build books, eLearning, virtual labs, simulations, and practice tests to help people land technology careers to unlock their future potential. In his spare time, Tom teaches job targeting skills to the unemployed and tells spoken word stories.

Drew Rosen

Director, Global Learning Strategy, VMWare Learning, VMWare

Drew Rosen is a seasoned digital learning and development strategist. From a young age, he was naturally drawn to math, music and technology. This sparked his desire to launch a career in IT, where he has served in a range of roles -  as a network engineer, systems engineer, education specialist, product marketing manager and education expert. Today, he’s Cisco’s senior director of customer experience in Cisco’s Learning & Certifications function. In his role, he leads the team responsible for learning experience research and design for Cisco’s customer-facing learning products.

He’s passionate about influencing the way people learn, so that knowledge transfers and sticks. That’s what led him to Cisco’s training organization, where he led the digital transformation of Cisco’s learning business. This effort included the development of new learning delivery platforms and technology, digital learning materials, digital libraries for performance support and cloud-based self-paced learning using DevOps and agile frameworks.

Drew encourages his team to never stop learning. To him, career development is a lifelong journey – there will always be more possibilities for innovation and problem solving. And that’s where he’d like to stay – in a constant mode of growth.

Russell Sarder

CEO, Netcom Learning

Russell Sarder is an award-winning entrepreneur, author, and CEO of Learning.

Under his leadership, NetCom Learning – a global leader in managed learning services, training, and talent development company - has become a multimillion-dollar business and has won many awards such as Learning Partner of the Year by Microsoft, Top 20 IT Training Company by Training Industry (several years in a row), and more.

He has authored two books: Building and Innovative Learning Organization and Learning: Steps to Becoming a Passionate Lifelong Learner and Effective Learning Methods. With his passion for technology, Russell spearheaded many revolutionary breakthroughs in the technical training domain. His association with the leadership council of the top tech firms like AWS, Microsoft, and CompTIA culminated into several successful projects like the Technology & Training Magazine, and the amalgamation of an exhaustive range of cybersecurity and technology training solutions, to name a few.

He also incepted Sarder TV, which is an online media platform and an interview version of TED. Sarder TV features a series of exclusive content from thought leaders from various industries, and it is based on the core values of Continuous Learning, Innovation & Performance.

Ann Marie Sastry

CEO, Amesite Inc.

Ann Marie is a tech entrepreneur and educator. She founded Amesite, an award-winning software company, to address one of the most important challenges of our time: delivery of effective online learning. Amesite’s Learning Community Environment systems provide artificial intelligence driven online experiences that serve custom, third-party, or existing customer content. Amesite works with its business, university, and nonprofit partners to provide branded, scalable, and effective experiences for learners anywhere.

Dr. Sastry was previously CEO, Board Director, and co-Founder of Sakti3, recognized as one of MIT’s 50 Smartest Companies 2015, and as a Crain’s Detroit Business Cool Places to Work winner 2017. The company was acquired by Dyson in 2015 for $90M. Sastry was invited to the White House in 2015 to be recognized for her technology entrepreneurship and meet with President Barack Obama.

Prior to starting her companies, she was Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, UM’s highest teaching honor, at the University of Michigan, for 17 years. Sastry was recognized with some of the highest honors in her scientific fields, including the ASME Frank Kreith Energy Award 2011 and NSF’s Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers 1997. She has co-authored over 100 publications and has delivered invited technology and business lectures and seminars globally, including NSF, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and others. Her technology and business work have been featured in WSJ, Fortune, Forbes, The Economist, USA Today, The New York Times and on the cover of Inc.

Sastry is active in business mentorship and philanthropy, with emphases on education, environment, and poverty alleviation.

Tacy Trowbridge

Head of Global Education, Adobe

Tacy Trowbridge is a lifelong educator and learning enthusiast whose passion is inspiring learners in all stages of learning, giving them a voice and empowering them to develop essential skills. Today, she drives thought leadership and advocacy for Adobe’s Global Education Team and is the host of The Creative Educator Podcast.

Tacy started her career as a teacher in California schools, earned a master’s degree in Learning, Design and Technology at Stanford, and led learning, workforce development and research initiatives at the University of California and Stanford.

Gordon Trujillo

Vice President, Head of Enterprise Learning & Development, DaVita

Gordon is the Global Head for HR & Learning Systems at Visa where attracting, engaging and developing the next generation of Payments talent that uplifts economies everywhere is core to his mission. He leads a product team that ensures Visa’s employees will be delighted in their interactions with experiences at scale. He is a 20+ year veteran of the HR field in roles within strategy, product, engineering and operations across multiple industries and client groups. A lifelong learning professional and futurist who is constantly attracted to the intersection of business, technology and people for good.

Kathy Yankton

Sr. Learning Architect, Cisco

Kathy Yankton has dedicated her career to empowering people in all stages of life to grow their skills and knowledge through education and learning.

Currently a Sr. Learning Architect in the Learning and Certification organization at Cisco, Kathy has a critical role in shaping current and future learning experiences for the customer learning community. As a lifelong learner herself, she often turns to research to discover creative solutions to complex and challenging problems. Some of her current areas of interest include: information processing (encoding, storage, and retrieval), adaptive assessment, intelligent tutoring systems (ITS), intelligent agents/mentorbots, data-driven personas, personalization, gamification, and neurodivergent learners.

Kathy began her career at Cisco in 2003 as a Quality Assurance lead with the Training and Certification organization. She later discovered her true calling and passion for learning science after taking a hands-on approach to helping her son who was diagnosed with dyslexia and auditory processing disorder mitigate the challenges of his learning disabilities. As a Sr. Learning Architect, she has brought her research-driven insights and expertise in “how people learn” to shape all aspects - strategy, frameworks, content, and platform - of the digital learning ecosystem and experience. Kathy’s first priority is advocating on behalf of learners and representing their “voice.” She prides herself on staying continuously connected to the learning community, enabling her to bring their needs, goals, pain points, and experiences back to the center of the learning experience.