Joan Smith is the president of Acme Consulting Group, Inc., a firm specializing in human performance and productivity.
Joan is a former assistant general manager for ambulatory care at Mercy Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. She has managed both line and staff functions, and has overseen both mergers and divestitures in the health care industry. She has been a featured speaker at several industry conferences, and has had articles published in Health Care Today and Professional Women.
The Cleveland chapter of the American Society for Training and Development named her professional manager of the year for an unprecedented two consecutive years in recognition of her "outstanding and innovative work in maximizing the potential of human resources." She has served as a board member for the Development Agency of Greater Cleveland, the Audubon Society, and the Ohio Youth Orchestra.
She is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants and the Society for Professional Consulting, as well as the American Management Association. Her written work has included articles in Training magazine and Cleveland Business News.
The facilitation of strategic retreats, conducting customer focus groups, training in conflict resolution, and coaching in creative thinking skills have been numbered among her works.
She once taught herself to play the saxophone, and found herself at a political rally playing alongside then-candidate Bill Clinton. He told her she had no future in music, but then again, neither did he.
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, and over 500 other leading organizations. He serves on the boards of directors of the Trinity Repertory Company, a Tony Award–winning New England regional theater, Festival Ballet, and the Newport International Film Festival.
His speaking typically includes 30 keynotes a year at major conferences, and he has been a visiting faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, Boston College, Tufts, St. John's, the University of Illinois, the Institute of Management Studies, and the University of Georgia Graduate School of Business. He has held an appointment as adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Rhode Island, where he taught courses on advanced management and consulting skills. He holds the record for selling out the highest-priced workshop (on entrepreneurialism) in the 21-year history of New York City's Learning Annex. His Ph.D. is in psychology and he is a member of the American Psychological Society, the American Counseling Association, Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He serves on the Board of Governors of Harvard University's Center for Mental Illness and the Media. He has keynoted for the American Psychological Association on two occasions.
He is a 2006 inductee into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame and the concurrent recipient of the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award of Excellence, representing the top 1 percent of professional speakers in the world.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 25 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill). His newest is The Million Dollar Consulting Toolkit (John Wiley and Sons). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into German, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Korean, and Chinese.
He is interviewed and quoted frequently in the media, and is an active member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. His career has taken him to 56 countries and 49 states. (He is afraid to go to North Dakota.)Success magazine has cited him in an editorial devoted to his work as "a worldwide expert in executive education." The New York Post calls him "one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in America." He is the winner of the prestigious Axiem Award for Excellence in Audio Presentation.
In 2006, he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Press Institute, the first-ever for a nonjournalist, and one of only seven awarded in the 60-year history of the association.
He has coached the former and present Miss Rhode Island–Miss America candidates in interviewing skills. He once appeared on the popular American TV game show Jeopardy, where he lost badly in the first round to a dancing waiter from Iowa.