LAURA ERKENEFF, founder of Training for Techies, Inc., and its popular series, Insights to Leadership, using her 20 years experience, Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology, and her AMA-certified business acumen to work with groups and individuals in leadership development training, coaching, organization development for technical and non-technical business  professionals and building leadership programs at all levels of the organization.

By focusing on integrating her clients’ areas of expertise with their leadership and business skills, Laura’s solid practices consistently deliver performance improvement  results.  Her clients engaged Laura’s expertise for help in technical leadership development, new hire orientations, designing training courses in leadership development, leading design teams for technical and business symposiums, designing and implementing systems for technical leadership development, and providing executive coaching programs as part of  organization development projects.

JIM TIETZ has provided technical leadership to small teams and large organizations in the course of a 20-year career in semiconductor engineering. He began his career as the lead technologist of a team at Dow Corning that introduced a new class of spin-on dielectric materials for low dielectric constant applications. Upon joining Applied Materials, Jim led a group of engineers that designed and shipped the world’s first semiconductor production equipment for 300mm wafer processing. Later, his organization at Lam Research revitalized the dielectric etch product line, leading to breakthrough technical advances that regained market share supremacy against two entrenched competitors. Jim has made groundbreaking contributions throughout his career through technical insight, marketing perception, and management excellence. Jim’s personal success is founded on developing the team personnel to achieve optimal performance. He has taught the principles that lead to technical and business success to hundreds of employees of all levels, leading to measurable productivity increases. Jim holds a doctorate in Physical Chemistry and a BS in both chemistry and computer science.

PEG VIDETTA has taught hundreds of technical professionals all over the globe how to communicate detailed data and concepts into business actions and deliverables. She is an accomplished trainer and because of her engineering background has high credibility with engineers and other technical professionals. Peg is a model for others of how to get to the heart of the issue and communicate the key message.   Peg has held positions in engineering, applications, training, technical marketing and management. She has a BS in Physics, and work experience in the aerospace and semiconductor equipment industries. She is currently a consultant and coach in presentation skills for engineers and scientists.

CINDA VOEGTLI, Founder and CEO of ProjectConnections.com, has 20+ years of development and management experience in companies of different sizes, cultures, and radically different project environments, with years in both line management and senior project  management roles. She has managed up to $50 million project budgets; built organizations from the ground up in two start-up companies; coached individuals at the executive, technical director, line manager, and contributor level; coached project managers and their teams; and consulted on project and portfolio processes at corporations such as Lam Research, Nellcor, and Mobil Corporation. Cinda brings frank and practical advice from years in the trenches in her various roles, to help individuals and organizations be effective and successful at their personal work, on their business-critical projects, and in their overall careers.

JEFF RICHARDSON has over a 15 years of experience working with project leaders and technical teams at Fortune 50 companies, high-tech startups and Silicon Valley universities. Jeff’s engineering and OD background combined with an expertise designing experiential teambuilding activities enables him to create highly engaging and technically relevant workshops and webinars. Jeff wrote the book on project team startup at a Fortune 50 company while facilitating 34 multi-million dollar startup programs.  He survived a 4 company M&A process integration project before moving on to consult with and teach project leaders at companies like GE, Cisco, Intuit, Hitachi, Santa Clara County to name a few. As an educator, Jeff was one of the lead designers for Stanford’s Advanced Project Management Program, in addition to designing/teaching project leadership programs at San Jose State and UC Santa Cruz – Extension.

Jeff has a MS in Organization Development & Change Mgmt(Executive Program) @ University of Texas at Dallas as well as a BS in Mechanical Engineering @ State University College at Buffalo.