Speakers

Annette Bechtold
Senior Vice President - Operations and Strategic Development
Digital Insurance

Named 2010's "Employee Benefit Advisor of the Year" by Employee Benefit Advisor Magazine, Annette Bechtold has more than 30 years of experience in the industry and has held various leadership positions in the field. She holds a bachelor's degree in finance, with a special emphasis in insurance and risk management. Bechtold is a certified insurance counselor licensed in life, health and property/casualty.

Digital Insurance is the nation's leading employee benefits agency specializing in insurance for small businesses and mid-sized companies. The firm's national footprint, technology, resources and benefits expertise help customers control costs and simplify the health care journey. Digital levels the playing field for employers and employees, delivering the same advantages experienced by large organizations. Respected for its industry leadership and responsive service by knowledgeable professionals, the privately owned company's innovative solutions empower customers to navigate the complexities of health care reform and guide individuals to become better health care consumers.

 

Lisa Callaway, J.D.
Clark Baird Smilth LLP

LISA R. CALLAWAY is Of Counsel for Clark Baird Smith LLP and brings more than twenty years of experience providing skilled employment and labor law counsel to private and public sector clients.

Before joining Clark Baird Smith LLP in 2011, Lisa was the Vice President and General Counsel for The Management Association of Illinois, a not-for-profit employers' association that assists more than 1,000 businesses and organizations with legal and human resources issues. While there, she assisted employers in collective bargaining, arbitration, employment discrimination, wage and hour, and general labor and employment law matters. She also provided training, conducted workplace investigations and advised on business issues. Lisa was also part of the senior management team and her experience extends to managing a small business.

Lisa's previous experience includes practicing labor and employment law with several Chicago law firms, including Seyfarth Shaw LLP. She has litigated cases in federal and state courts and before the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Illinois Human Rights Commission and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Boards.

Lisa frequently lectures on labor and employment law issues and has authored articles on sexual harassment, employment discrimination, employment termination, Sarbanes-Oxley, social media and workplace Internet/e-mail abuse. Representative groups before whom Lisa has presented include the American Bar Association, State and Local Government Committee; Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association; the National Association of Fire Equipment Distributors; National Business Institute; National Association for Business Resources; Illinois Public Employer Labor Relations Association; Illinois Association of School Boards; Western States Labor Relations Association; Chicago Labor and Employment Relations Association and Illinois Society for Human Resources Management.

Lisa is an adjunct faculty member at Loyola University of Chicago, Graduate School of
Business, and has been a guest lecturer for the Loyola University Institute of Human Resources and Industrial Relations and Department of Education and Northern Illinois University,Department of Education.

She is a past chairperson of the Chicago Bar Association, School Law Committee. She is an
advocate and active member of the Illinois Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).

 

Mary Lynn Fayoumi, CAE, SPHR, GPHR
President & CEO
Management Association

Mary Lynn Fayoumi is the President and CEO of The Management Association of Illinois, an employers’ association that has been successfully providing human resources information and services to Chicagoland employers for more than a century.

Her special expertise ranges from human resource strategy to the wide spectrum of organizational effectiveness, human resources policy, current employment trends, workplace culture, people management, communication and leadership.  Mary Lynn is a prolific writer, quoted and published regularly in a variety of local and national publications. Her weekly online business column is the most-read feature on the Association’s web site.

Mary Lynn is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Iowa with a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Industrial Relations/Human Resources.  She also holds an MBA in International Management with Honors from the Thunderbird School of Management.

 

Candace Fisher, SPHR
Manager Training & Development/Certified Coach
Management Association

Candace Fisher is the Manager of Training & Development for The Management Association of Illinois. In this role, her primary duties include assisting members with design and implementation of training and other organizational development programs for their Human Resource staff, supervisory and non-supervisory employees. In addition, Candace is responsible for facilitating various open enrollment classes and organizational development programs offered by The Management Association, including sessions in Spanish. Ms. Fisher also provides onsite Human Resource assistance to member organizations and responds to numerous inquiries via The Association's member hotline.

Prior to working for The Management Association, Ms. Fisher was a Human Resource Manager and an HR Generalist for organizations in the greater Chicagoland area. Her background includes work in training and development, employee relations, labor relations, benefits negotiation and administration, recruiting, workers' compensation and overall strategic management of the Human Resource function.

Ms. Fisher obtained a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from the University of Illinois, Urbana, as well as a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a Senior Human Resource Professional (SPHR) as designated through the Human Resource Certification Institute(SHRM) and a Certified Coach.

 

Suzy Fox
Institute of Human Resources & Employment Relations
Loyola University Chicago

Suzy Fox, GPHR, MBA, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Resources and Employment Relations, School of Business Administration, Loyola University Chicago. She researches counterproductive work behavior, workplace bullying, and individual and cultural characteristics of successful professional women internationally. Her research goal is to help develop interventions (training, organizational policy, and public policy), toward building healthy workplaces. She has co-developed measures of workplace bullying, counterproductive work behavior, organizational citizenship behavior, autonomy, and job-related emotions. Her co-authored books include Counterproductive Work Behavior: Investigations of Actors and Targets (Fox & Spector, 2005) and Successful Professional Women of the Americas: From Polar Winds to Tropical Breezes (Punnett, Duffy, Fox, Gregory, Lituchy, Monserrat, Olivas Lujan, & Fernandes dos Santos, (2005), and Gender and the Dysfunctional Organization (Fox & Lituchy, in press). She is currently engaged in several writing and intervention projects around workplace bullying with Arthur Freeman, director of the Clinical Psychology program of Midwestern University.

Dr. Fox will be leading a presentation and discussion about confronting workplace bullying at the Management Association's upcoming HR Conference & Annual Meeting. We are extending the opportunity to participate in Dr. Fox's Workplace Bullying Policy Survey to all of our members, regardless of your participation in our Conference. The survey is anonymous and takes approximately 15 minutes to finish. If you only wish to complete part of the survey, please be sure to scroll down to the end and click FINISH in order to submit your responses. Read more...
Click here to participate.

 

 

Joe Gerstandt
Talent Anarchy

Talent Anarchy is the dynamic speaking duo of Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt. These Talent Anarchists use their collective experiences, common beliefs and different perspectives to deliver a thought-provoking, actionable keynote in an engaging and, at times, comical way.

Joe Gerstandt is the sage consultant. He's a middle-aged white guy who is a national thought-leader on issues of diversity and inclusion–need we say more? He brings a unique and powerful perspective to everything he does. The core of Joe's work is to help organizations solve issues of diversity, culture and innovation through consulting, training and speaking. Listening to Joe speak, you will hear tales of his days as a U.S. Marine and Gulf War veteran blended with his experience in sales, education, and community-building. To say that Joe is intense and passionate about his work would be an understatement. He is one part professor, one part philosopher, and one part "not quite right." Be prepared.

 

Kelly Hayden, J.D.
Director, Employment Law Services/General Counsel
Management Association

Kelly Hayden, JD, Assistant General Counsel, is labor/employment counsel for The Management Association of Illinois.  In her role, Kelly provides representation to employers before the Illinois Department of Human Rights, the Illinois Human Rights Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and other state and federal agencies.  She also assists employers with hiring, discipline, and termination procedures; preparation of release and severance agreements; and the drafting and reviewing of employment policies and employee handbooks. She also provides employment law compliance training for managers, supervisors, and HR professionals covering many topics including sexual harassment, discipline and discharge, the FMLA, ADA and drug and alcohol testing. As a representative of The Management Association, Kelly frequently lectures to professional organizations on numerous employment law topics and contributes to The Association’s monthly newsletter and website

Kelly came to The Management Association from a large Chicago law firm where she primarily represented school districts and other units of local government. In this role, Kelly represented clients in federal and state court actions concerning claims of discrimination and wrongful discharge. Kelly also assisted her clients in contract negotiations, grievance and arbitration matters, and student discipline and residency issues.

Kelly has a J.D. from the Indiana University, Bloomington School of Law and a B.A. in English and psychology, also from Indiana University, Bloomington. Kelly is a member of the Chicago Bar Association, and served on its labor and employment committee as the legislative liaison. Kelly also currently serves as a fire commissioner for the Village of Frankfort Fire Protection District.

Todd Hayden
Robbins, Schwartz, Nicholas, Lifton & Taylor

Todd Hayden has practiced since 1992, in the areas of school and municipal law. He provides governmental employers with guidance and counseling regarding labor and employment, including employee discipline and termination, board governance, collective bargaining, contract, public finance and transactional matters.

Todd has represented employers in various employer‐employee disputes including federal and state litigation, EEOC/Department of Human Rights charges, State Labor Board Proceedings and grievance and arbitration proceedings. Todd has extensive experience in collective bargaining, including unit formation proceedings, negotiations, mediation and interest arbitration. He has performed construction contract reviews, served as local bond counsel and worked on school boundary changes.

 

Wayne Hovland
Aurico Reports

Wayne Hovland has developed third- party administrator programs for local, national and international clients. Mr. Hovland spent 34 years with the Chicago Police Department. While there he wrote the investigative process on positive employee drug tests. Next, he developed the department's random drug testing program. He was placed in command of this unit until he retired. Upon retirement, he was hired as a consultant by Psychemedics, the world's largest hair testing company, where he worked with the police departments in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles in the development and implementation of their drug testing programs.

Jason Lauritsen
Talent Anarchy

Talent Anarchy is the dynamic speaking duo of Jason Lauritsen and Joe Gerstandt. These Talent Anarchists use their collective experiences, common beliefs and different perspectives to deliver a thought-provoking, actionable keynote in an engaging and, at times, comical way.

Jason Lauritsen is the reformed corporate guy. For nearly a decade, he spent his days in the belly of the beast as a corporate Human Resources leader where he had to actually "walk the talk" each day. Today, he consults with organizations to help them transform how they approach talent and leadership development. Since his first management job as a corn detasseling team leader at age 13, Jason has been studying people and why they do what they do. Classically impatient, curious and well groomed, Jason's early career was a rapid progression of sales and management roles including launching, leading and ultimately selling a small business in his mid-twenties. He's a leader, sales guy, entrepreneur and corporate executive–all rolled up in one.

 

Andrew R. Meeks
Managing Partner
Oak Consulting Inc.

Mr. Meeks is Managing Partner of Oak Consulting Inc, a human resource consulting company that specializes in career transition services and organizational development. He has over twelve years experience in consulting and counseling with a diverse background in career counseling, talent management, organizational assessment, executing coaching, conflict management and team building. Mr. Meeks is currently enrolled in Benedictine University's prestigious Master of Science in Management and Organizational Behavior and has completed his Organizational Development concentration requirements and is expected to graduate in 2009. He currently is qualified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® from CPP, Inc.

Mr. Meeks' prior experience includes sales/marketing management, advertising, public relations, business plan development, product management, channel marketing, tradeshow/promotions and information systems management with both emerging and established technology companies. In recent years Mr. Meeks has provided information to and been quoted in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and Crain's Chicago Business. He has also been invited to speak at various association meetings on the topic of career management.

Mr. Meeks currently serves as a director for the Madeline Meeks Foundation, dedicated to help those less fortunate in the areas of food, shelter and education and is a member of the Illinois Management Association and SHRM. Mr. Meeks is also an Elder and a youth leader for the Knox Presbyterian Church Youth Fellowship program, encouraging positive self-image and spiritual growth in high school students.

 

Joseph Perkoski
Robbins, Schwartz, Nicholas, Lifton & Taylor

Joe Perkoski focuses his practice on labor and employment law, representing both public and private employers in collective bargaining, contract maintenance and grievance arbitration matters. Joe also represents employers against claims involving discrimination, wrongful discharge, sexual harassment and labor/management relations issues. Joe has litigated civil rights and discrimination cases before federal and state courts and agencies. He also has litigated unfair labor practice charges before the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board, the Illinois State and Local Labor Relations Boards and
the National Labor Relations Board.

 

Lauren Soderstrom, PHR
Training Specialist
Management Association

Lauren Soderstrom, Training Specialist, provides training services on a variety of Human Resource and Leadership topics for The Association and for member organizations. She also consults with members on employee relations issues. She comes to The Association with over 5 years of Human Resource, Training and Organizational Development experience in the real estate and legal industry.

Lauren holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and is PHR certified through SHRM.