The WorkSmart senior partners...

Barry M. Keesan, CEO (M.B.A.)

Barry Keesan, responsible for the overall direction of WorkSmart, focuses his professional consulting practice on leadership and management development as well as the delivery of OutComm events for high-impact strategic planning and group problem solving.

Barry is a values-driven management and leadership professional, a dynamic facilitator who has presented, managed, and delivered programs and services to a diverse group of companies and organizations including Eastman Kodak, GetingeUSA, Suburban Energy Systems, Rochester Institute of Technology, Crosman Corporation, General Dynamics, Prudential, and many others.

Previously, as the entrepreneur-founder of Logical Operations (now Element K), he guided the computer learning and publishing company from startup in 1982 to its pre-eminence in the U.S. and internationally as a global provider of end-user technology training. Along the way, he led the company to Inc. 500 status and five straight years as a Rochester Top 100 company, to its acquisition in 1991 by Ziff-Davis Publishing, for whom he served as Division President and General Manager until 1994. As CEO, he launched a global distribution and multi-language translation effort resulting in sales offices and key distributor relationships in Learning Systems Inc., England/UK, Belgium, France, Germany, and Canada.

Barry has an MBA in management and has extensive experience in organization development and strategic learning, with a particular interest in the study of personality and its application to group and system dynamics.

Currently Adjunct Faculty in the MBA programs at St. John Fisher College and Rochester Institute of Technology, he is an experienced educator with more than 25 years experience in the design, management and delivery of technical and employee development services. He has presented papers at many national and international conferences including TechLearn, American Marketing Association, IEA, ASTD, IEEE, and many others.

Donna A. Dickson, President (M.S.)

Donna has focused her career on developing strategies to improve organizational performance through targeted employee development. As a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, as a consultant partner in a variety of businesses, and as a WorkSmart team member, Donna strives to provide the highest quality learning opportunities most appropriate for the environment and learners.

A seasoned and skilled education professional, Donna is masterful at analyzing and addressing complex and challenging organizational learning situations. Over the past twenty years, she has provided instructional design and employee development support for a wide variety of businesses and situations from high-tech engineering applications, to manufacturing production processes to front-line supervision skills. Her clients have included Eastman Kodak Company, Xerox Corporation, The Sentry Group, GetingeUSA, JP Morgan Chase, Preferred Care, and Wegman's Food Markets. She also serves as an adjunct faculty member at Rochester Institute of Technology, where she has been recognized for excellence in instruction for five consecutive years and, in 2003, was awarded the Kazmierski Award for outstanding service to the human resource profession.

Donna works with her client partners to examine all aspects of their learning needs and takes pride in designing creative solutions that go beyond the classroom experience to ensure effective communication, targeted on-the-job reinforcement and top-down support. A strategic thinker, she routinely partners with Human Resource professionals to help them gain buy-in for employee development initiatives and with managers to help them ensure the highest return on investment for learning expenditures.

WorkSmart is a trademark of WorkSmart Learning Systems inc.