We saw a great turnout at our last Professional Luncheon in 2019. In addition to networking and enjoying a hearty holiday lunch, participants learned how to better manager change from our VP of Professional Development, Christa Duggan, and honored chapter award winners.
ATD STL’s Member of the Year is Kathleen Young. How do you plan a success event for 150 learning professionals? First recruit someone with extraordinary organization skills, unwavering enthusiasm and perseverance. We were lucky enough to have found all of that and more in Kathleen who stepped forward and agreed to be our chairwoman for our annual conference. The results were amazing.
Kathleen started planning in January. She recruited volunteers, scheduled space, built the agenda, created handouts and swag bags, arranged for catering, everything from set up to clean up. It all came together at Wells Fargo on September 12 where we had 50% more participants and 33% more breakout sessions than we had last year. Not to mention her years of work facilitating the Facilitator Special Interest Group. Congratulation Kathleen!

ATD STL’s Professional of the Year is Patricia Sherwood. Patty is a dynamic leader for L&D at Rabo. There have been many large-scale changes at Rabo over the last two years and Patty has been leading employees through the change on a regional level primarily from her office here in St. Louis. This year she was heavily involved with the development and roll-out of our revised corporate culture program. She led work streams to organize the live synchronous kick-off meetings in Minneapolis and to embed the newly formed Cultural Commitments into the daily operations at Rabo.
Patty has willingly accepted leadership roles on several projects. In addition to her business as usual projects over the last two years at Rabo, she influenced programs that impact every employee and provide leadership to the employee volunteers who were working to implement unified and aligned programs to the newly formed North America region of Rabobank. Her impact has been great, and her servant leadership has made an impression on all the employees she has engaged with during the several large-scale projects she has tirelessly contributed to at Rabo.

Our President-Elect, Thomasine Joyce also introduced your 2020 Board.

2020 Board Left to Right: Thomasine Joyce - President, Michelle Rogers - VP Membership, Analicia Humes - President Elect, Katie McDuffie - VP Finance, Christa Duggan - VP Professional Development, Houston Southard - VP Operations, Danielle Buscher - Past President, Anthony Palazzolo - Advisor. Not pictured: David Cluphf - VP Administration, Micheal Newsham - VP Technology, Carla Bailey - VP Communicaitons, and Kallie Klein - VP Community Engagement.
We are so grateful for our members and we wish you the happiest of holidays. We look forward to seeing you next year.