ATD Board of Directors

Jim is recognized across multiple industries with more than 30 years of global achievement in high-visibility positions, including C-suite and senior leadership roles of CEO, Chief Learning Officer, VP GM, VP Business Development, and VP Human Resources Development, as well as roles in Sales Management, Training and Education, Operations, and Administration.

Jim’s learning roles have included CLO for NVR, VP HRD for Nextel Communications, both VP HRD and VP GM for Ciena, and VP for McGraw-Hill. At McGraw-Hill, Jim supported the game-changing launch of a revolutionary authoring platform, bringing the power of adaptive learning into the self-managed hands of learning organizations everywhere.

Recognized for thought leadership and innovation, both through the design and execution of successful go-to-market business strategies, and as a leader in talent management and learning industry breakthroughs, Jim currently serves as Managing Director for Newport Consulting Group.

Prior to this role, Jim served as President and CEO of American Energy Services, leading the company’s redesign and bringing the company to a successful sale in 2019. In a second CEO role, Jim successfully repositioned TXO Systems to be a qualified and recognized provider of services to the US Government, making TXO the only such company in their space.

Tony Bingham is the President and CEO of the Association for Talent Development, formerly ASTD, the world’s largest professional association dedicated to those who develop talent in organizations. Tony works with a staff of 180, a board of directors, and a worldwide volunteer network with a shared vision to help create a world that works better.

Deeply passionate about change, technology, and the importance of talent development, Tony encourages business leaders to create cultures of learning that align talent development efforts to business strategy and leverage technology to drive performance. His focus is on elevating the impact of the talent development profession while adding value to ATD members and the global community.

Tony helped lead the transformation of the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), originally established in 1943, into a global membership organization serving a tech-savvy, dynamic, and vital profession. In 2014, the transformation resulted in a major rebranding effort that included a new name: the Association for Talent Development. This dramatic change is indicative of the organization’s portfolio expansion under Tony’s leadership.

Michael Arena, Ph.D., is the Co-founder of Syndezo. Previously he was Vice President of Talent & Development at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he was responsible for the global talent practices, leadership development and learning, organizational effectiveness, new employee success strategies, and the organizational research activities to enable the growth and innovation for AWS. Michael was nominated to the Thinkers50 Radar class of 2020 for his work leveraging network roles in creating adaptive organizations: brokers, connectors, energizers, and challengers.

Prior to joining Amazon, Michael was the Chief Talent Officer for General Motors Corporation where he was responsible for enterprise talent management, cultural transformation, leadership development, talent acquisition, and people analytics. While at GM he launched GM2020, a grass roots initiative designed to enable employees to positively disrupt the way they work, which was highlighted in Fast Company and Fortune magazine. This initiative and others are highlighted in his best-selling book, Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations.

His research on adaptation and networks won the 2017 Walker Prize from People + Strategy and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review, and Sloan Management Review. Prior to GM, Michael spent two years as a visiting scientist with MIT’s Media Lab researching human networks. He also served as Senior Vice President of Leadership Development at Bank of America, where he co-designed and launched the Center for Future Banking, to positively disrupt consumer banking.

Michael is a faculty member in Penn’s Masters in Organizational Dynamics program and acts as a design thinking coach within the Stanford School.

Cheryl Doggett is vice president, Global Talent Management at Intuitive. In this role, she leads a global Center of Expertise responsible for designing and deploying innovative, data-driven talent management and development solutions aligned to Intuitive’s mission and business strategies.

Cheryl joined Intuitive in 2022 from Elevance Health where she built an enterprise talent strategy to enable significant growth and digital transformation. During her time, she helped the company hire over 25,000 employees, while improving employee engagement to achieve placement on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For and become certified as a Great Place to Work®.

Cheryl brings more than 20 years of business and HR experience driving organizational change and transformation. She has served in key leadership positions with global organizations in the technology, MedTech, and financial services space.

Kristine Ellis is the Director of GuideWell/Florida Blue’s Employee and Executive Leadership Development team. Always knowing that she wanted to help people—first as a teacher, then school administrator, public speaker, trainer, coach, consultant, and now, with business professionals and executives—she is living out her passion working with employees, leaders, and executives on topics such as communication, competency development, strategic thinking, personal branding, and work-life balance.

In the past 20 years, Kristine has worked with a wide range of professionals, from teachers and school administrators to senior executives. In each case, she uses research-based frameworks, insights, and humor to instill confidence and inspire growth in every individual. Kristine has many qualifications, including a master’s degree in supervision and leadership from the University of Central Florida. She is also a credentialed Master Performance Consultant, and ICF Credentialed Professional Certified Coach, and Certified Executive Coach.

In her spare time, Kristine loves going to the beach with her family, cycling and martial arts, where she holds third degree black belt status in Ko Am Mu Do. She is an active ATD member and currently serves as the Chair of ATD’s National Advisor for Chapters and is on the Advisory Board for UNF’s Continuing Education Leadership Institute.

Girish Ganesan is a strategic leader credited with driving change and building best-in-class teams. A creative thinker with passion for innovation in improving organizational performance, he has international experience across multiple HR disciplines including Organizational Change and Transformation. Girish has extensive global experience, having lived and worked internationally over his 19-year career.

In his current role as Senior Vice President, People, he leads the global people function across multiple countries and divisions of S&P Global, including Global Ratings, ESG/Sustainable 1, Digital Technology Services, Legal, Government Affairs and Security, and Global Risk Assurance.

Prior to this role, Girish was Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion and Head of U.S. Talent at TD Bank Group. He was responsible for the strategy and execution of practices and programs that positioned the bank and its 90,000 employees globally, as an inclusive organization. Girish also lend end-to-end talent practices including talent acquisition, talent management, executive development, organizational effectiveness, and learning and development.

Prior to TD Bank, he was with Manulife where he held a variety of senior positions in total rewards, shared services, and HR business consulting. His last role at Manulife included leading a multi-functional HR shared services portfolio servicing 38,000+ employees in 15 countries.

Paul has extensive experience in education, marketing, management, and sales with several learning organizations. He has a successful track record in delivering quality executive and front-line development programs, providing exceptional customer service, achieving measurable outcomes, and forming impactful strategic partnerships.

Paul most recently served as the Director of Learning and Development for the homebuilding company, NVR, Inc. During his time at NVR, he directed all aspects of NVR's investment in strategic and tactical training, management and leadership development, succession planning and internal communication, supporting NVR's mortgage and settlement services as well as company-wide customer service and sales training initiatives.

Prior to his time at NVR, Inc. Paul served in multiple roles for Ciena, a networking systems, services, and software company.