ITHACA PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY (PDD) 2015

The Ithaca Branch held an entertaining and informative half-day Professional Development Day on 
Friday, June 12, 2015, at Ithaca College.

The program included three great speakers, lunch, a leadership book from one of our speakers, networking opportunities, and four (4) Professional Development Units!

Ithaca PDD team and speakers

Ithaca PDD Attendees

Our speakers included:

ROXI BAHAR HEWERTSON, CEO

Leadership expert Roxi Bahar Hewertson brings over three decades of practical experience in the worlds of higher education, business, and non-profits. She is an entrepreneur, consultant, speaker, and author of the acclaimed book, “Lead Like it Matters...Because it Does" www.leadlikeitmattersbecauseitdoes.com providing leaders with a step-by-step roadmap and practical tools to achieve great results. She is the CEO of Highland Consulting Group, Inc. and AskRoxi.com

Roxi has spent her entire career being a leader and learning the truths about how and why leaders lead the way they do. For the last 20 years, she has helped both emerging and expert leaders boost quantifiable job performance to achieve or exceed organizational and personal goals. 

At the core of Roxi's success as CEO of Highland Group Consulting, Inc. and AskRoxi.com is her passion to empower leaders on their journey to building their leadership skills, honing their interpersonal effectiveness and sharpening their capacity to create great results. Her academic, corporate and entrepreneurial experiences are broad and deep. It is likely any problem you come across, Roxi has also experienced and then solved them.  She brings practical, common-sense and proven solutions to complex leadership and organizational problems, making her advice and counsel highly requested by leaders across the country.

Her trademark “Leading with Impact: Your Ripple Effect,” leadership intensive, moves leaders through four mastery levels: personal, interpersonal, team and system – a compelling process for self-discovery and sustainable results. Her work has contributed to significant business growth, increased employee engagement, and reduced training costs and litigation. She has successfully negotiated union contracts and turned once adversarial relationships into positive working relationships.

Roxi is an expert in Organizational Development, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Effectiveness and Human Resources Management, and has taught this body of knowledge at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations where she received her Masters Degree. She also served as Director of Administration, Facilities and Finance at Cornell, where she built a competitive leadership development program with a waiting-list of applicants competing for admission every year for the past 20 years. There, she was responsible for a $250M non-academic operations budget and 2,000 professional, bargaining unit, and administrative staff.

Roxi has coached over 100 executives and hundreds more leaders. Today, she works with an array of leaders including executives and C-Suite women and men who have a deep desire to make a difference in their communities and the world.

Highland Group Consulting, Inc. is based in North Carolina and New York.

DANIEL KOPCOW, P.E., PMP

Dan Kopcow is a chemical engineer with over 27 years of experience in environmental consulting, remediation, and construction. His technical expertise includes project and construction management and lead engineer for execution of all phases of complex, multi-million dollar environmental programs and projects including turnkey delivery (investigation, design, construction management, and O&M). Utilizing his P.E. licenses in NY, NJ, PA, and CT, as well as his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, Mr. Kopcow has performed design and constructability reviews and process engineering of large, complex Federal, State, manufactured gas plants, and private-sector projects for all contract types.

JOHN MONTGOMERY

John Montgomery spent more than 30 years at IBM in various IT and finance positions. Following that, he taught public speaking and office technologies at Jones International University and Elmira Business Institute. Currently, he is writing and performing stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and humorous videos on technology on his own and as a founding member of the Moose Pie sketch comedy group. He has done shows throughout New York State including Tioga Downs casino and the Gotham City Improv Theater in New York City.