Faculty
Denise Gleason-Beard
Denise has been a Certified Training Facilitator, Master Trainer and Leadership Coach for the past 20 years. With a hospitality background in Human Resources, Recruitment and Training, she has rolled out a number of brand, corporate, certification, train the trainer, and customer service training initiatives at hotels across Canada. Since leaving the hospitality industry 13+ years ago, Denise has been designing, developing, facilitating and coaching over 45 soft skill (personal/professional development, communications/behaviour, leadership/management/administrative and customer service) courses to the private (corporate/hospitality) and public sectors across Canada. Her educational background includes Bachelor of Arts, English, at St. Mary’s University (Halifax NS), Teachers and Trainers of Adults, Algonquin College (Ottawa ON), and Facilitation Certifications.
Graham Birkenhead
Graham is a business excellence-focused senior manager and consultant with an engineering background. A former officer in the Royal Air Force and now a management consultant, he brings an eclectic mix of management and consultancy skills built up over 30 years of field experience. He uses these skills to support and coach clients in the implementation of the changes required for scaling and growth. Graham provides a unique people-centric and lean perspective to business problems. He excels at finding the root cause of any issue and developing creative solutions and processes that build on the underlying strengths of the organization. He has a keen understanding of people and organizations as behavioural systems. He is on a mission to help transform the way people work, and the way they work together, creating the cultural and operational foundations for sustainable growth. He has a passion for teaching, educating, and sharing knowledge and understanding. Graham has lectured at Masters level, taught underwater using hand signals, and led numerous workshops and training events on diverse subjects such as leadership, networking, lean thinking, and knowledge management.
Ian Hornby
Ian has been involved in policy analysis, communications, and group facilitation/consultations work for more than 40 years, in federal politics, as a public servant within the Government of Canada, and latterly as a consultant. They have provided strategic advice to prime ministers, ministers, and senior officials. Ian is a leading policy consultant specializing in regulatory and legislative analysis, providing their services to many Canadian government departments, particularly to transportation, health, and immigration agencies. Their background and work straddle the two disciplines of policy analysis and communications. This combination makes them extremely adept at consultations and qualitative research, policy and options analysis, and then finally selling the results to management and communicating with Canadians. They continue to offer a wide range of practical training courses for public servants which parallel their fields of expertise. These areas include policy and diversity analysis, performance measurement and evaluation, and the mechanics of government. Ian has facilitated his courses in capital cities across Canada and in remote communities as far north as Wemindji and Cambridge Bay. Ian holds an MPA from Harvard University.