Susan Sclafani

FWE Steering Committee Member, Founder Susan Sclafani Consulting Former Assistant Secretary Of Education.

Susan K. Sclafani is a creative, high-energy, accomplished leader, manager, collaborator, and organizer in the educational arena at the local, state, national and international levels.

Dane Linn

Vice President, Immigration, Workforce and Education.

Dane Linn is a Vice President for the Business Roundtable. In this role, he oversees the Education & Workforce Committee, advancing the BRT’s positions on education reform, U.S. innovation capacity and workforce preparedness. He is also the lead staff member for the Immigration Committee, promoting an approach to immigration reform that will help drive U.S. economic growth and keep the American workforce globally competitive.

Linn joins the BRT most recently from The College Board, where he served as Executive Director of state policy. Prior to The College Board, Linn served as Director of the Educational Policy Division of the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices. During his 16 years in this role, Linn represented governors’ education policy issues at the federal level and to state and local associations. He also co-led the development of the Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by 46 states.

In addition, Linn has led national efforts to ensure more students are college- and career-ready and worked on issues related to STEM, early childhood, Perkins and the Workforce Investment Act, and high school redesign. Before joining the NGA, Linn worked for 14 years in the education system as Coordinator of the Office of Special Education Programs for the West Virginia Department of Education, Principal of Guyan Valley Elementary School in West Virginia, and teacher and later the Assistant Principal at Matheny Grade School also in West Virginia.

Linn is a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and holds a master’s degree in Education Administration from West Virginia Graduate College and bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and Special Education from Cabrini College.

William Decherd

Partner at McKinsey & Company

William Decherd is a partner in McKinsey’s Dallas office. His work focuses on go-to-market excellence topics in the technology and insurance sectors. As a part of his go-to-market excellence practice, William often helps clients upskill their sales teams. William is also a leader in McKinsey’s learning organization. He is the global partner lead for the firm’s One Firm Onboarding and Individual Excellence learning journeys. In this role, William is responsible for onboarding all colleagues and for training pre-manager consultants. This encompasses approximately 8,000 colleagues at any given time. William graduated from Harvard College with an AB in History and Literature and received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Heather Stefanski

Chief Learning Officer at McKinsey & Company

Heather Stefanski is the Chief Learning Officer at Mckinsey and leads 250+ people across the learning and talent development function.  Heather has spent the last 19 years at Mckinsey in the people space across talent acquisition, talent development and learning.  Prior to her talent and learning roles Heather was a consultant focused across operational topics including supply chain, purchasing and product development.

Heather’s experience includes:

▪Establishing a new talent management function at McKinsey to support the development of increasingly diverse population of talent with deep expertise across analytics, digital, and implementation

▪Developing and maintaining a people architecture with 30+ career pathways to support the career development of all colleagues at Mckinsey

▪Continually updating the Firm’s Leadership Development Model to reflect strategic priorities

▪Establishing a One Firm approach to onboarding all new hires and supported global roll out

▪Designing program to support onboarding and development of senior hires into the Firm

▪Driving work to enhance our technical talent value proposition resulting in the creation of new technical fellow roles and the development of a technical competency model

▪Building out the Firm’s experienced hire recruiting function to better support the increasingly diverse talent needs

Heather has an undergraduate degree in Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford University

Neo Cai

Senior Professional Trainer for Alibaba Global Initiatives.

Neo is working for Hupan School, Group OD, Alibaba Group, as a senior manager since Dec 2014. He is in charge of Alibaba’s frontline and middle level manager’s management and leadership development and provides talent development and OD solutions for BUs.

Neo graduated from Beijing Xinhua University in 2001 with a major in Computer applications and in 2007 with an MBA from Beijing University and the University of Northern Virginia. Neo’s first job after completing his undergraduate education, he worked for two  years as a computer expert, after which he joined a UK HR consulting company, IWNC. He worked for IWNC for over 8 years, transitioning from an IT expert to an HR consultant and training expert. During his work at IWNC, he involved on over 200 projects and provided services for over 100 clients. He became a talent development and OD development expert.

In 2012, Neo Joined Oracle where he was in charge of organization and talent development for Oracle Greater China and Oracle China R&D, which has over 6700 employees in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.  Neo also was OD and TD consultant for Oracle Global Product Development Organization, which has around 30,000 employees globally.

Anja Hartmann

Owner and Principal, bucketrider—an executive consulting, coaching and counselling practice.

Dr. Hartmann founded bucketrider after 12 years as a partner & consultant with a global top management and consulting firm.  She works with large businesses, industrial players, public and non-governmental institutions to support the strategic, organizational and personal development needed to deal with today’s business challenges. She also holds an M.A. in history, philosophy, and computer science, as well as a PhD and a post-doctorate degree in political & social sciences.

Her work and thinking are founded in her academic education in social sciences, including a PhD from Philipps-University Marburg, and a postdoctorate degree (“Habilitation”) from Johannes Butenberg-University. Her academic studies covered topics ranging from the theory & implementation of international peace cooperations (M.A. Thesis), to the workings (and shortcomings) of political & diplomatic relationships in Early Modern Europe (PhD Thesis), to the success factors of change management in revolutionary times (Habilitation Thesis). Over the years, she has written & (co-) edited nine books and published more than a dozen articles in academic journals and compilations. When not with her clients, she enjoys being coached by her young son.

Dr. Hartmann is a Fellow (Habilitationsstipendium) of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and a Scholar of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstitung des deutschen Volke.

Alice Amegah

Ph.D. Candidate, University of Cambridge.

Alice  is an emerging expert in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) for development. She has experience in adolescent mental health and development, careers guidance and counselling through voluntary and paid work with local and international organisations like Tema General Hospital, Education and Employers Charity, Forum for World Education and UNESCO. Currently, as part of her doctoral studies the University of Cambridge, she researches young women’s participation in STEM in vocational pathways in Ghana.  As a TVET researcher, Alice hopes to reconceptualise gender equity and access for girls and women in STEM-related TVET programmes and careers.