As an organization of volunteers, ATD NNJ appreciates the hard work of members who give their time, talent, and expertise to make our chapter a success. |
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Christine Grazio President Christine Grazio is a Northern NJ Chapter member since March 2018. She started her career in higher education, followed by 10 years in yearbook sales with Herff Jones. She transitioned to a training and development role for the Herff Jones, where she focused on sales training and implementing a blended learning strategy. She designed, developed and facilitated sales, product, and account management training, and rolled out a new mobile learning platform. Since 2020, Christine has been a part of the global Quality Compliance Learning team at Philips, moving from her initial position as eLearning Instructional Designer into a Learning Program Manager role, where she provides end-to-end project management support to the training development and delivery process. Christine is passionate about lifelong learning and has experienced first-hand how valuable an engaged professional community can be to career development and professional growth. She’s eager to give back to the NNJ ATD community and to help others connect and discover the value. She brings a BA in English, River University, Nashua NH and certificates in Instructional Design and Project Management for Learning Professionals, ATD. |
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Scott Gingold Past President As an Enterprise Partner at WJM Associates, Scott combine an uncompromising commitment to customer service with a sweeping knowledge of coaching theory, research and practice. A continuous learner, Scott’s clients appreciate his contagious enthusiasm as a thinking partner. Scott partners with internal and external teams to deliver customized solutions to meet client’s strategic objectives, which has resulted in building and maintaining long-term client relationships. During his 20 years in the industry, Scott has been fortunate to work with national and global organizations across many industries. Since joining NNJ ATD approximately 15 years ago, it has been a major force in his career development. As talent development was a second career for him, Scott found the relationships he formed within the chapter extremely valuable to his personal and professional development. Early on, some of the more seasoned members were informal mentors to him, and he greatly appreciated their guidance. Scott wants to ensure that this support is available to the next generation of talent development professionals. Scott’s first role was a volunteer on the Finance team. Then, he served on the Marketing team, eventually becoming VP, Marketing. Credentials: B.A., History, Cornell University; M.A., Organizational Behavior, Fairleigh Dickinson University; Executive Coaching Certification, Columbia University; TypeCoach Certified Professional |
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Maurice Ford VP Technology Maurice Ford, an L&D professional has held the position of Instructional Designer for several global pharmaceutical companies in the tri-state area. He has held the position of Lead eLearning Developer for the City of New York on an L&D - Change Management project involving 83 NYC government agencies, encompassing over 90,000 users (employees). He has also held the position of Senior Instructional Designer for Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. \ MOL-IT (America). Mr. Ford currently holds the position of Senior eLearning Developer / Instructional Designer at Epstein Becker & Green, P.C., a national law firm with a primary focus on health care and life sciences; employment, labor, workforce management, litigation and business disputes. At EBG Mr. Ford develops eLearning products designed to help employers in jurisdictions with mandatory training requirements, as well as those in locations without them, encourage behaviors that foster a work environment free from discrimination and harassment. Mr. Ford has a Master’s degree in Information Technology from Mercy College(NY), a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Baruch College, and an Associate's degree in Marketing from Bronx Community College. Mr. Ford has also worked as a Adjunct Professor for the City University of New York teaching web design and development. He also served as a Communications and Logistics Officer in the US Army. |
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Paul Nichols VP Communications Paul Nichols is a seasoned instructional designer with experience in developing training solutions in the consulting and cloud-based Human Capital Management (HCM) / Payroll industries. He brings the knowledge and perspective of numerous years as an instructional design professional who specializes in designing and developing attractive and instructionally-sound training solutions including self-paced eLearning, microlearning, blended instructor-led training, instructor-led conference workshop sessions, publications, job aids, and social media. His background includes designing and developing training solutions for the sales, client, and associate training divisions of ADP, Realogy’s ZAP CRM app, the STAR (System for Tracking and Administering Real-property) space management software for the Public Buildings Service (PBS) / US General Services Administration (GSA), the sales divisions of Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals and IMS America (now known as iQvia), and Energy Transportation Corporation. |
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Kristen Illes VP Programming Kristen brings over 25 years of management and leadership development experience, providing her clients with in-depth industry knowledge and a full scope of tools and processes based on best practices. For the last 10 years, she served in a senior executive role at Coro New York Leadership Center, a premier leadership development organization. She earned her M.A. and B.A. in psychology from Marist College and is a Certified Professional in Talent Development. Kristen is passionate about supporting the development and success of individuals, teams, organizations and ideally contributing to the greater social good. There is nothing she loves more than partnering with clients to design and implement innovative solutions that engage their people in the work and create the desired impact and results desired from their change initiatives. Kristen also has a special interest in supporting the growth of more inclusive workplaces and addressing gender imbalance on executive teams. |
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Pamela C. Sammarco VP Leadership & Talent Development As CEO, Green Training Associates LLC (2009), Pam develops exceptional people to solve the world’s challenges and build sustainable organizations. We accelerate business growth through Training, Talent, and Coaching Solutions. Pam is a trusted advisor for her clients’ talent development priorities, helping people and businesses perform at their highest potential. Pam's high energy style, courage, and whole-person approach makes every facilitated program feel like a conversation, inviting you to interact with the learning experience. Pam has deep experience as a strategic leader of complex training strategy to execution, leadership, future readiness capabilities, organizational development, culture change, sustainability and STEM professional development. Pam's strength is to transform learning into business impact with extensive expertise as a solution architect. She designs performance-based learning experiences using a cognitive science-based model. Pam holds her Certified Professional in Talent Development (2007) demonstrating her lifelong dedication to advancing people's performance. Pam is an NNJ ATD Past President and Board officer since 1999. Past President 2004 (executive 2003-2004-2005); VP, Programs 3 years; current role VP, Leadership & Talent Development where she creates a thriving volunteer community that connects people with activities to run our organization. She joined in 1985 to talk with professionals who are passionate about the work we do. Our community is filled with terrific friends and colleagues. Pam’s training career: Citicorp, American Express, Alcatel-Lucent and Medco Health Solutions. For leadership development and succession planning, certified to deliver Hogan Leadership Assessment Systems. Pam earned her M.S. degree in Applied Psychology, HR Management, Stevens Institute of Technology; B.A. Industrial/Organizational Psychology, math and statistics minor, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Psi Chi Psychology National Honor Society, Douglass College, Rutgers University. |
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Melody Kombo VP Administration For over 15 years, Melody has worked in the learning & organizational development field, leadership development, across public, private and government entities. She has extensive experience creating, managing, evaluating, and supporting teams at leading institutions like Anthem Health, Morgan Stanley and Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Her take has always been that employee development is the ultimate competitive advantage in the marketplace. Melody deeply understands how to harness talent as both an in-house leader and external consultant. She has overseen strategy, delivery and implementation of L&D solutions, managed departmental budgets, delivered OD interventions that reduced employee attrition, created leadership and career progression courses, and administered psychometric personality profiles. She joined ATD (both National and NNJATD) to be part of a community that “speaks” her language. It presented a chance for her to continue to grow and learn, meet new people in the industry, network, and give back by volunteering. She is pleased to be part of a strong and active association. Board Volunteerism History: 2019 - NNJATD Volunteer: Programs, Finance, Administration |
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