Specialized Professional Competence
Michael L. Venn, Ph.D. has more than twenty years experience as a consultant, leader, and educator. Mike is the co-founder of Tradewinds Consulting, LLC where he provides clients his expertise in leadership development, strategy formulation and execution, change acceleration, assessment, organization development, facilitation, and training. He has consulted to numerous Fortune 500 companies, smaller publicly and privately held companies, and government agencies.

Experience/Background
Prior to Tradewinds Consulting, he was responsible for leadership development as the Director of Organizational Development at Kohler Co. and Director of the Amoco Management Learning Center at Amoco Corporation. Mike has facilitated strategies for multiple industries and government agencies, served as program manager on a project developing web-based, SCORM-compliant simulations to teach U.S. Army personnel influencing and dealing with resistance skills including serving as lead designer on part of the project.

In addition, Mike has presented and taught globally on the topics of leadership, change management, motivation, performance management, and the use of continuous improvement tools for planning and management. Mike contributed a chapter on Electronic Performance Support Systems to the book In Action: Conducting Needs Assessment (American Society for Training and Development, Alexandria, Virginia) and is co-author of the book The Manager as Leader (Praeger Publishing, Westport, Connecticut). After serving eight years on the Board of Directors for the Association of Internal Management Consultants, Mike was recently awarded Member Emeritus status.

Education/Professional Achievements
Mike earned his Ph.D. with an emphasis in computer-based training and testing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also earned a Masters in Jazz Pedagogy from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and a B.S. in Music Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.