Learning Assembly

Stacey Oliver-Knappe

Vice President of Human Resources, Romacorp, Inc.

Stacey Oliver-Knappe is the Vice President of Human Resources, Romacorp, Inc., the parent company of Tony Roma's. Her 25-year career has focused on human resources and hospitality operations with organizations such as Walt Disney World, Wyndham Vacation Ownership, and Marriott Vacations Worldwide. Stacey also owned a consulting company in her journey, impacting a multitude of industries and company sizes. During her career, she has personally trained more than 10,000 people in leadership and professional development skills and has reached many more with customized workplace learning programs. Stacey has developed training programs—rolled out to tens of thousands of employees internationally—for some of the largest companies in the hospitality industry and for customer contact centers across various industries. Her expertise is helping employers provide innovative employee solutions and policies to improve organizational health.

She has a Master's in Adult Education, focusing on Training and Staff Development, from the University of South Florida. She has also achieved her Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) Certified Professional and Professional Human Resources designations, and co-authored the book, Compassion@Work. She lives in Orlando with her husband Rolf and her cats Tim and Tam, named after the amazing Australian cookie. As a devoted lifelong learner herself, she is currently working on improving her cooking skills; she has completed a marathon and is a feisty kick boxer.

Scott McComas

Public Speaker and Trainer

Originally from Maryland, Dr. McComas is coach, public speaker and professional development trainer. He obtained his Masters in Sport Psychology in 2009 and his Clinical Psychology Doctorate (PsyD) in 2014. An avid fan of sports, technology and travel, he's jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, hiked the Australian bush, and has (briefly) shared a stage with Sir Ian McKellen.

His passion is helping people achieve success in business and life through workshops that teach and apply performance and resilience psychology skills. With these skills you create the proper mindset for success, change limiting beliefs that may exist in you and your team, become a more effective communicator, create self-sustaining motivation, and increase healthy stress response.

The key to all of this is building awareness. In order to become more personally and professionally aware, you must realize and take action over the things in life you have full control over: your mindset, your responses and your effort. Improved awareness creates choices. More choices mean having more control. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Jeff Birk

Speaker, Trainer and Comedian, O.C. Tanner Institute

A frequent speaker at ATD, the world's largest training and development conference, Jeff Birk has inspired thousands for the last 25 years as a trainer, speaker, stand-up comedian and corporate emcee for the likes of Honda, Bose, Virgin Trains, Footlocker, Pepsi and Pier 1 Imports. His rare combination of stand-up comedy along with years of corporate keynoting and training engages and inspires audiences around the world. With a unique balance of humor and poignancy in every message he delivers, Jeff draws on his trademark style and experience to make presentations on employee recognition, career achievement and team building more purposeful, meaningful and memorable. In his spare time he listens to as much music as he can, ranging from Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd to Hans Zimmer.

Shelly Weir

Senior Vice President of Career Development, American Hotel & Lodging Association

Shelly Weir serves as Senior Vice President of Career Development for the American Hotel & Lodging Association and its 501c3 Educational Foundation where she oversees the strategic vision of workforce development. She supports the AHLA and Foundation agenda through career development to help strengthen the lodging industry workforce, and leads efforts to direct employee recruitment, retention and up-skilling programs while promoting the industry's career pathways.

In her role, Shelly also drives the lodging industry strategy and oversight of AHLA's apprenticeship programming. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Committee on Attracting Businesses to Apprenticeship under President Trump's federal task force on apprenticeship expansion. In 2018, she orchestrated a groundbreaking initiative to enable a cost-free college degree for hotel associates nationwide the first of its kind industry wide program.

Shelly is a member of the National Network of Business & Industry Associations, National Workforce Needs Coalition, National Advisory Board for DECA and the Business & Industry Advisory Council of the Association for Career Tech Education. Shelly obtained her Bachelor's Degree from Florida State University and her MBA from Auburn University. She resides in Orlando, Florida with her husband and two sons.

Sean Frontz

Training & Development Professional, FranklinCovey

Sean Frontz has led thousands of sales teams and organizations around the world, helping them achieve new levels of success. He understands what it takes for businesses to transform themselves to achieve excellent results. Sean is a master at finding the root cause of barriers and helping clients shift their paradigms.

Sean is best described as passionate, engaging and informative, as his coaching and consulting expertise was forged during his 15+ combined years with leading global sales organizations.

An engaging speaker and master presenter, Sean is able to combine leadership theory with the knowledge of real world business issues. Sean is able to deliver with excellence not only in the classroom, but elevates the ho-hum webinar into an interactive presentation that completely engages his clients.

Sean is certified to teach in almost every area of expertise that FranklinCovey specializes in, meeting the needs of clients by tailoring workshops that are not off-the-shelf, rather a highly-customized combination of approaches and disciplines. He has worked with a number of Fortune 100 and 500 companies.

Sean holds a Master's Degree in Psychology from Loyola University, graduating cum laude. He also graduated with honors from Wheeling Jesuit University with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Theology.

Sean lives in Charleston, SC with his wife of 17 years and their five children.

Jerome L. Rekart

Associate Vice President of Learning Science and Workforce Insight, Southern New Hampshire University

Jerome L. Rekart is the Associate Vice President of Learning Science and Workforce Insight for the Workforce Solutions Unit at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). At SNHU he leads the Workforce Insight team, which applies quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to help university partners measure and describe the workplace impact and value of educational offerings. Prior to joining SNHU, he was a professor of Education and Psychology and authored the book, The Cognitive Classroom. However, he gave up tenure to join SNHU and help characterize the new forms of learning they developed through their College for America program, which uses project-based, workforce-relevant coursework to upskill working adults. He has a B.S. in Biochemistry from Indiana University, MSc and PhD in Psychology from Northwestern University (concentration in Brain, Behavior and Cognition), and did his postdoctoral training at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.