Susan Harrington
Workplace Learning Professional

This year, when the Senior Training Director’s Forum Committee was discussing event topics for 2008, Susan suggested an event dedicated to the use of Storytelling as a tool for learning, business, and organization development. Bringing together the talents of Gary Hirsch from On Your Feet improv and professional storyteller Will Hornyak, “The Power of Storytelling” event became a lively, fun and interactive session that provided the audience with several practical tools to take back and use at their place of business.

Margaret Jennings from the Senior Forum committee says, “I’m delighted that Susan has been nominated as the volunteer of the month. Her strength on our committee is her innovative program ideas and total reliability in implementing a program.”

It’s this type of creative thinking that Susan has aspired to bring to her projects throughout her career. As a certified professional coach, the past few years she has been teaching classes at Portland Community College and coaching private clients on issues of transition, communication skills, leadership, performance improvement and career development. Prior to her coaching and consulting business, she was the Training Department Manager, Senior Instructional Designer at CMD Agency (formerly Creative Media Development). In this role she established, led and managed a department of instructional designers and writers that developed custom training programs for Fortune 500 companies.

She received her Masters degree in Education with a specialization in Instructional Design from San Francisco State University and has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art from the California College of Arts. She still likes to paint, but right now her main hobby is playing in a marimba band called Zimba! The band plays all around the Portland area during the summer months and samples of their music can be heard on their website: zimbamarimba.com.

Recently, Susan has decided to leave the world of self-employment and once again align with an organization. She is excited to be starting a new position in August with a global company headquartered here in the Northwest.

In her words, “I really feel that the ASTD is a terrific organization. Our Chapter is particularly active and is composed of people who genuinely care about learning and developing the people involved in creating effective learning. It’s a great organization for networking, for keeping updated on industry topics and tools and for meeting like-minded people. Naturally, contributing to the organization takes time and commitment, but it pays back in multiple ways!”

Thank you, Susan, for sharing your creativity and passion with our members!

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