The Rest of the Story

Leola Chidester wrote on my Kindergarten report card, "Although Marcia wants to be President, she'd make a terrific teacher." She went on to explain that my constant curiosity and endless energy could be used to help people learn new things and see different points of view. Years later, after rethinking my political aspirations on a train across Northern Africa, I recalled Mrs. Chidester's words and I decided to pursue my passion for learning with a passion.

I have spent much of my life in corporations, often unraveling overly cumbersome education departments, moving functions into the business line or redesigning software programs so they don't require endless training. Over the years this has required work in areas as diverse as business strategy, product development, marketing, management, human resources, OD, interface design, usability, learnability, publishing, and online community.

I've served as senior counsel to corporations, schools, governments and non-governmental organizations. Over the last 25 years I have studied, lived and worked on three continents. I also authored Learn More Now (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), co-created Creating a Learning Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2004), wrote the forward to Engaging Learning by Clark N. Quinn (Jossey-Bass, 2005), and contribute to dozens of other magazines and books. I've also appeared on ABC's World News This Morning and the BBC, as well as being quoted in the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine.

I'm ultimately interested in helping people work together, tap into how they learn so they can attain personal and professional success through means other than lengthy and often costly traditional (even online) training programs. I refer this as "liberating the social learner in each of us." I aim to educe a passion for learning in each person's soul, allowing for the unconstrained pursuit of personal joys. I'm happy to report, I'm not alone in this quest.

On the personal front, I'm married to a brilliant and handsome tennis coach, Karl Conner. We have a young son who keeps us humble and animals that keep us grounded. We live and work on a 50-acre homestead in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. I whitewater canoe and volunteer my time to talk with parents and teachers about creative solutions for children who have learning disabilities.

In addition to my work with Altimeter Group and Fast Company, I head a team that quietly solves urgent business problems, stand up branded education organizations for small firms want to develop leading edge learning programs, facilitate workshops on new forms of organization design, social media and complexity, and serve as advisor to terrific executives around the globe. I'm the sort of person who people call when they're unsure who to call. I have made a career of fixing problems and creating opportunities.

At work or at play, I love learning and helping other people learn. I hate to see people miss out on what's interesting around them because they haven't figured out how to master new information quicker. Sometimes this knowledge-transfer happens in a classroom. Most of the time it happens informally and when we least expect it.

I also love to share what I know and I am learning so if you're interested in these same sorts of things, let me know what resources you've found particularly useful.

Always learning,
learning all ways,