Leadership & Navigation

As a Business Strategist and Executive Coach, LaFern Batie leads The Batie Group, LLC, a business consulting and leadership development firm serving organizations around the globe. With extensive Fortune 500 corporate leadership experience and widely recognized expertise, she works with international organizations and leaders across diverse industries to maximize their collective and individual performance. Leaders value her high business acumen, ability to quickly connect with teams, thorough and efficient approach to identifying challenges and commitment to helping them achieve results that exceed their expectations. 

Follow LaFern on Twitter @LaFernBatie.
 

Amanda Andrade is the Chief People Officer for Veterans United Home Loans, an award winning organization including Fortune Magazine’s Top 100 Great Places to Work. Amanda’s responsibilities focus on employee growth, innovation, success, health, happiness and the preservation of Veterans United’s company mission to Enhance Lives Every Day.

In addition to leading human resource organizations in both the public and private sectors, Dr. Andrade has served as an Adjunct Professor for various colleges, including most recently Stephens College and the Jack Welch Management Institute. 

Joe Gerstandt brings greater clarity, action, and impact to organizational diversity and inclusion efforts.

Joe has worked with Fortune 100 corporations, small non-profits, and everything in between. He speaks at numerous conferences and summits, and blogs at joegerstandt.com. He is a featured contributor for the Workforce Diversity Network Expert Forum and his insights have been published in Diversity Executive, HR Executive, and numerous other print and on-line journals.

A strong advocate for resetting the diversity and inclusion conversation, Joe sees these issues as poorly understood and often misunderstood.

Nathan D. Ainspan, Ph.D. is the Research Psychologist with the Transition to Veterans Program Office (TVPO) of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. TVPO oversees the military-to-civilian transition process for the Department of Defense to ensure that all service members transitioning from military service are prepared for their next step into civilian life. Dr. Ainspan's role is to ensure that any future enhancement to the program are based on behavioral and psychological science and best practices.   He has also written, taught, and spoken about the psychological issues impacting wounded and transitioning Service members. His personal research focus has been on improving civilian employment opportunities for transitioning Service members, helping service members translate their skills and experience into civilian terms (and helping companies to understand them), and the psychosocial benefits that employment can have on wounded warriors, injured veterans and people with disabilities. He has edited the following books: The Oxford Handbook of Psychosocial Interventions for Veterans, When the Warrior Returns: Making the Transition at Home, and Returning Wars Wounded, Injured, and Ill:  A Handbook. Dr. Ainspan has also just begun editing the How to Hire and Retain Veterans: A Guidebook for Business Leaders and Human Resources Professionals for Oxford Press. He is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a Fellow of APA Divisions 18 (Psychologists in the Public Service) and 19 (Military Psychology). He was recently awarded the Raymond A. Katzell Award by the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology which is presented to an industrial/organizational psychologist whose work has had a major and widespread impact on society's well-being that has reached a substantial part of the public.  He was also awarded the Psychologists in Public Service Distinguished Career Award from APA Division 18.  

Grace A. Odums, an independent strategy consultant, has a growing consultancy spanning over fifteen years.  Her impressive client list boasts Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 companies including: Disney ABC Media NetWorks, Waste Management (PA/WVA Area), Fairmount Southampton Resorts, Chevron-Phillips, Siemens Medical Solutions, Wells Fargo Bank.  

A much sought after international speaker, Grace welcomes the opportunity to partner with organizations and professionals in the areas of management coaching, revenue recapture, change leadership, optimum customer care, talent performance enhancement, productivity improvement, increased efficiencies, balanced scorecard architecture, and diversity strategy creation with diversity scorecard and strategy map development and system-wide implementation.

Grace A. Odums, an independent strategy consultant, has a growing consultancy spanning over fifteen years.  Her impressive client list boasts Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 companies including: Disney ABC Media NetWorks, Waste Management (PA/WVA Area), Fairmount Southampton Resorts, Chevron-Phillips, Siemens Medical Solutions, Wells Fargo Bank.  

A much sought after international speaker, Grace welcomes the opportunity to partner with organizations and professionals in the areas of management coaching, revenue recapture, change leadership, optimum customer care, talent performance enhancement, productivity improvement, increased efficiencies, balanced scorecard architecture, and diversity strategy creation with diversity scorecard and strategy map development and system-wide implementation.

Amanda Andrade is the Chief People Officer for Veterans United Home Loans, an award winning organization including Fortune Magazine’s Top 100 Great Places to Work. Amanda’s responsibilities focus on employee growth, innovation, success, health, happiness and the preservation of Veterans United’s company mission to Enhance Lives Every Day.

In addition to leading human resource organizations in both the public and private sectors, Dr. Andrade has served as an Adjunct Professor for various colleges, including most recently Stephens College and the Jack Welch Management Institute. 

Penny Zenker is a productivity expert, strategic business coach, international speaker and trainer, and best-selling author of "The Productivity Zone". Her P10 Productivity Accelerator System balances the skills and mindset to recognize and change unproductive behaviors. The program is based from her extensive experience as a Master Neuro-Linguistics practitioner and Neurostrategist, as a successful entrepreneur, founding and selling her own multi-million dollar business, and as a Tony Robbins Business Coach, coaching highly successful business leaders around the world. She will challenge you to think differently and inspire you to be your best. Most importantly, her easy to understand frameworks make implementation fast and easy.

Dr. Jody Janati teaches in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Minnesota. She has an Ed.D. degree in Organizational Leadership and her primary interest area pertains to interpersonal conflict resolution strategies. As an author and independent consultant, she offers a variety of public and professional workshops on conflict reduction tactics and effective interpersonal communication skills. Follow Jodi on Twitter @jjanati.