Society for Technical Communication
STC’s mission is to improve the quality and effectiveness of technical communication for audiences worldwide. STC is concerned with the education, improvement, and advancement of its members.
STC-PMC fills these needs on a local basis through a wide range of activities, including monthly meetings; career and education information; and competitions for technical publications, and online communications. Check out our chapter brochure.
Event Description
“Say do you remember dancing in September?” sang Earth Wind & Fire on their 1971 hit song “September.” Well, we may not be dancing (although you never know with this crew) but we’re certainly going to have a fantastic time at The Philadelphia 2018 HR, Training, & Talent Networking Extravaganza on September 11, 2018!
Featuring fun activities, plenty of food, raffles, prizes, and a discounted cash bar – plus amazing views from the beautiful Pyramid Club in Center City – this is one party you won’t want to miss. Register now as we expect a packed room for this one!
Join L&D Philly and our partner organizations – ATD Philadelphia, ATD Mid-New Jersey, Philly SHRM, Greater Valley Forge HRA, Delaware SHRM, Beacon, The Philadelphia Society of People and Strategy, the Philadelphia Chapters of: The Society of Technical Communication, the National Speakers’ Association, the Association of Career Professionals, the Philadelphia Area New Media Association, Visuals for Change, the Center for Millennial Engagement, and others as we kick start the fall with a night of excitement, elegance, and best of all – freebies!
Program
Registration and refreshments start at 6pm!
At 6:30, we’ll kick off with some introductions and news, and then go into a fast-paced, but fun structured networking activity facilitated by local training guru, comedian, and host of Meet the Author – Theresa Hummel-Krallinger.
Then, it’s open networking time! Catch up with old friends/colleagues and meet some new ones! We’ll bring the house down and close out the event with our Basket Raffle – where you could win a business or L&D starter library, tickets to Meet the Author, a free DISC assessment, a free resume consultation, free career coaching sessions, a free professional headshot, or other great prizes!
As the 2017-2018 program year closes, the chapter took the time to celebrate another successful year, as well as celebrate our STC Community of the Year win on June 12th at the Great American Pub in Conshohocken, PA.
During the end of the year acknowledgements, and abridged version of this video showing the year in review was shared. The expanded version here include photos from our end of the year event.
We had a great year! Enjoy!
As the war for talent rages on, the talent development landscape continues to shift under our feet and L&D professionals are being asked to play a more strategic role in the fight to attract, retain, and grow talent. Market disruptions, generational differences, AI, robotics, AR/VR, changing consumer tastes, low unemployment, the gig economy, and a host of other trends contribute to the chaotic pace of change. It can be difficult to know what works anymore.
That’s why we’re going to ask a panel of innovative L&D leaders what solutions they’re employing to tackle today’s talent development challenges.
Longtime talent and organizational development consultant Gus Prestera will be the moderator for this panel discussion, which is co-hosted by Philly L&D and Beacon.
What will you get out of it?
This is no academic affair: you will walk away with practical strategies, tactics, technologies, and ideas for dealing with a range talent development challenges, including:
Plus, you’ll have a great time networking with colleagues, and maybe you’ll even bask in the victory of winning a door prize. What else could you want for a Wednesday morning?!
Join us as the leading edge meets today’s realities; bring your questions and your energy; don’t miss out on the opportunity to hear what approaches these innovative L&D leaders are using to drive results for their organizations.
Panel
Emma Engel | Chief Learning Officer | Unisys Corporation
Emma Engel is Chief Learning Officer for Unisys University, setting and executing the learning strategy across technical, business and personal development for all 22,000 associates and leaders. In her 11-year tenure at Unisys, she has designed and implemented the Executive Leadership program, various Sales enablement initiatives and transformed the corporate university into a consultative yet metrics-driven organization that aligns and adapts to the ever-changing needs of a global information technology company. Emma has held key leadership roles in corporate L&D, consulting organizations, business focused and sales roles. Her experience has extended across multiple industries and is underpinned by a solution focused consultancy approach with key stakeholders across the business. Constantly challenged with a global and incredibly virtual audience, Emma seeks to balance the requirement for technical innovation that drives learning with cost constraints and a small team.
Karen Basile | Chief Learning Officer | Johnson Controls
Karen Basile is the chief learning officer of Johnson Controls enterprise learning function. Karen has been with Johnson Controls and Tyco (pre-acquisition) for four years. Karen’s work involves leading a global learning team in leadership development and core skills development programs and curriculum; promoting sales effectiveness and development. Karen has over 23 years’ experience in Talent and HR roles. Previously, Karen was the Talent Management Leader for VWR, a global lab supply and distribution company. In that capacity she was responsible for talent acquisition, talent strategy, leadership development, and learning. She also held HR and Talent roles for over 5 years at General Electric, as the global training leader for sales and marketing across all GE businesses, and talent and HR roles within GE Energy. Karen holds a B.S. in Marketing and International Business from Penn State and an M.S. in Organizational Dynamics from University of Pennsylvania.
Susan Gunn| Executive Director |People Advisory Services – EY
Susan Gunn is an Executive Director in the People Advisory Services practice of EY. A global business executive with deep expertise in the Human Capital function and more than 25 years of HR experience, Susan has advised executive leaders on matters pertaining to HR strategy and transformation, executive compensation, mergers & acquisitions and C-Suite, including CEO, succession. Most recently, Susan was the SVP of Global Talent and Compensation for Aramark. In this role, Susan had leadership responsibility for Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, Learning & Development, Compensation, HR Technology, HR Analytics, HR Shared Services and HR Transformation. Prior to Aramark, Susan was CHRO of Gardner Denver, a $2.3 billion, publicly traded, global manufacturing company with 40 manufacturing operations in more than 20 countries. In 2013, the National Diversity Council named her one of Pennsylvania’s Most Powerful & Influential Women. Susan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Graduate Certificate in Human Resources with honors, both from McGill University.
Eric Brand | Sr. Director of Training | Endo Pharmaceuticals
Eric Brand is the Senior Director of Training at Endo Pharmaceuticals, where he has responsibility for all aspects of talent development, from new sales rep onboarding to leadership development. He has close to 30 years in the health care industry. An engineer by training, Eric started his career in healthcare in R&D, then Regulatory Affairs, after which he moved over to the field-based part of the business as both a sales representative and a District Manager. For the past dozen years, Eric has either been in Training, or had the training and development function report to him directly. He has worked in some of the largest companies in the sector and has also been a part of start-ups. Eric’s approach to training is pragmatic, and geared towards solving an identified problem, with an expected business outcome in mind.
Event Sponsors
Are you just starting your college experience and want to explore your academic pathways before selecting a major? Or are you a non-traditional undergraduate ready to complete your degree after taking time for work and family? Maybe you’re eager to earn your career-enhancing master’s or want to gain new skills and credentials through short non-credit professional courses. No matter where you are in your journey, Drexel’s Goodwin College of Professional Studies can find the program that’s right for you, around your goals and schedule.
Degreed is a better, smarter way to discover, learn and certify the skills you need for the future. Degreed connects all the resources people use to learn and grow, including corporate learning systems and millions of courses, videos, books, articles, podcasts, and subject experts from thousands of sources. Then we add data science and machine learning to provide people and businesses with the tools, analytics and feedback they need to stay ready for whatever’s next. Founded in 2012, Degreed is headquartered in San Francisco, with additional offices in Salt Lake City and Amsterdam.
.png?resize=529%2C75&ssl=1)
Well, another STC year is about to wrap up. And what a year it has been for Philadelphia! I’d like to review the highlights of our chapter for the past season.
Whew! That’s a lot! Our leadership team put in a ton of hard work this year, not just on programming and the conference. We also awarded a scholarship to a student and sponsored two student STC memberships. PMC’s new mentor program paired nine new technical communicators with our experienced volunteers in the Philadelphia area. Additionally, PMC now has two members on the STC Board of Directors: Jessie Mallory and Todd DeLuca. The past Society President, Adriane Hunt, is a PMC member. I chaired the Distinguished Community Service Committee and sat on the Scholarship and the Community Affairs Committees at the society level. Meanwhile, Steve Adler served on the Community Achievement Award Committee. No matter how you look at it, the Philadelphia Metro Chapter was a driving force in the tech comm community, both locally and internationally.
All our work did not go unnoticed as we were awarded the Platinum Community Award for all our chapter programming and outreach. Additionally, our innovations with gaining sponsorship for our conference won us our third Pacesetter Award. On an individual level, PMC awarded Ellen O’Brien the Distinguished Chapter Service Award, a lifetime achievement award for chapter volunteers. And the final feather in our cap was being awarded Community of the Year at Summit, which is a great honor, and one which we had never received prior to this year.
PMC could not have had such a banner year without the hard work and dedications of the following volunteers:
The time has come to talk of many things. Besides the usual shoes, ships, and sealing wax, it is time to talk about the future. This is the end of my PMC leadership tenure. My volunteering with the chapter started in 2005, when I was tricked into running for president. Fortunately, I lost to Lori Corbett who set me up as the scholarship manager. From there, I was treasurer for several years, along with webmaster, vice president, acting secretary, membership manager, and president. So now it is my turn to take on the one role I haven’t tried yet – Immediate Past President. I leave you in the capable hands of Danielle Villegas, Karen Levine, Madison Hughes, and Jen Meservey who are next year’s President, VP, Treasurer, and Secretary, respectively. I’m very happy with the balance between experienced and newer volunteers on the board. The key to a successful community is volunteers. Please consider volunteering to help PMC continue to be the powerhouse community that it has become.
Timothy Esposito
STC-PMC President
Our own treasurer, Ellen O’Brien, was recently awarded the Distinguished Chapter Service Award (DCSA) at CONDUIT. This is the highest level of recognition that an STC member can receive within the geographic community, and it’s considered a lifetime achievement award for chapter service.
O’Brien has been a member of STC and the Philadelphia Metro Chapter for 30 years, and she has been volunteering for around eight to 10 years. “My first stint was as a competition judge, which I really enjoyed,” she said. “If you do that long enough, they ask you to be a lead judge and then a co-chair for judging. I’ve helped out at the CONDUIT conference in recent years, but always in a secondary role. Then in 2015, when I was out of work and had a little time on my hands, I was asked to run for chapter treasurer. So I’ve been doing that for the last three years.”
O’Brien said that she was asked to volunteer for each of her roles through the years. “In each case, someone reached out to me, saying, ‘I think you’d be a good judge,’ or ‘We need help with such and such,’” she explained. “That personal connection made all the difference—it helped me get over my initial reluctance, and once I started volunteering, I met some really interesting, very committed people. That made it easier to continue and try the next thing.”
In her role as a competition judge, O’Brien said that she “provided constructive feedback and opportunities for growth to the various authors. I know I learned a lot by reviewing a variety of entries, including some types of projects that I haven’t had an opportunity to work on in my own career.” As treasurer, O’Brien remarked that she was “the voice of reason” in her efforts to “be a good steward” of members’ money and keep an eye on “the long-term financial health of the chapter.” O’Brien added, “We’re still here and we still have money, so I guess I did my job!”
However, O’Brien feels that her greatest accomplishment has been her own personal growth. “Being a chapter volunteer forced me to get up off the couch and try things that were new to me,” she explained. “STC has always been there for me as a resource throughout my career, even before I was active in the chapter. The publications, the workshops and conferences, the job bank, and, most importantly, the people, have all had a significant impact on my career.”
O’Brien said that she was “completely surprised” to learn that she had won the DCSA. “There are so many others who have done so much more for the chapter over time,” she said, “but if my contributions over a few years helped move the chapter forward, I’m happy.”
O’Brien said that she has no plans to run for elected office in the future, but she would like to keep helping the organization in other ways. “I do want to see our mentoring and academic outreach efforts remain strong,” she said, “so I could probably be convinced to help out in a supporting role.”