Marcia Conner
Fixing problem. Creating opportunities.

Marcia Conner works with senior leaders to put collaborative technologies into action. Because the challenges organizations face are too big for individuals or organizations to solve alone, Marcia aligns social strategies with corporate culture to speed innovation, inform decision-making, and invigorate an organization's value chain. She rises above the rhetoric of "engagement" to connect, streamline, and energize ecosystems for new and dramatically improved results. Research topics often address internal social networks, multi-generation business culture, learning management, and leadership preparedness.

The collaborative tools Marcia uses are naturally relationship-driven, and can equip people to tap the collective brainpower of the larger community in new and extraordinary ways. Online communities, media sharing, microsharing, and content networks introduce ideas in quick bursts, when it suits the flow of work, without a big learning curve.

For enterprise clients, Marcia addresses change readiness and overcomes stymied collaboration with cultural assessments and strategic recommendations. For software vendors, she provides tactical guidance in go-to-market strategies; reviews products for usability, learnability, and adoption; delivers competitive evaluations; and recommends software partnerships. For the broader market, she delivers educational programs to level-set senior teams around what collaboration technologies can offer and when/where they work best.

In every engagement, Marcia translates her corporate experience into the credibility that executives demand. She has confronted and overcome the same pressures and responsibilities leaders face, bringing to bear the agility and advantages of social media. When a strategy runs off course, innovation bogs down or an enterprise-wide system under-performs, Marcia delivers on the promise of new social technology to unleash the way people really think and behave. She overcomes resistance and skepticism with fact-based examples of success. Clients have spanned industries and diverse markets, including Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, IBM Lotus, Standard & Poors/McGraw Hill, WD-40 Company, Kaplan, and the United National Development Programme.

Her latest book, The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media, co-authored with Tony Bingham, addresses modern organizational challenges such as widely dispersed employees and striking differences in work styles, particularly across generations. With case studies from Deloitte, IBM, Mayo Clinic, TELUS, Chevron, and even the CIA, Conner shows how social media can transform the workplace by harnessing the experiences of colleagues working across the globe as easily as if they were side by side. She is also author of Learn More Now (Wiley, 2004), coauthor of Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Technology and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and contributor to over 100 articles, book chapters, and market reports including the Pistachio Consulting Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison.

A 20-year veteran of the enterprise market, Marcia is a Fellow of the Altimeter Group and at the Darden School of Business, founder of the popular Twitter #lrnchat, and has written the "Learning at all Levels" column for Fast Company magazine since 2004. She was Information Futurist and Vice President at PeopleSoft, Worldwide Manager at Microsoft, VP of Enterprise for Pistachio Consulting, Editor in Chief of Learning in the New Economy magazine, and a Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research. She has been quoted on the BBC, in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, CIO Magazine, CLO Magazine, Information Week, and has appeared on ABC World News This Morning. She is a much-sought after public speaker and frequently speaks at top technology conferences such as Enterprise 2.0, Internet World, DevLearn, and Lotusphere.

Marcia's from St. Louis, Missouri and attended college in four countries and on three continents. She currently lives between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley (or on an airplane, depending on the day of the week). Keeping her grounded are a mediocre tennis game, memories of whitewater canoe racing, fantasies of being a triathlete, her husband Karl (a 2nd-career tennis pro) and her curious insightful son, Clarke.

More about Marcia on MarciaConner.com, her blog Learnativity, and in real-time @marciamarcia.