Meeting Leaders’ Toughest Challenges: Focus on Women in Learning Leadership 

Sharon Claffey Kaliouby is VP Strategic Alliances for Learning Pool, and is an advocate for analytics-led, personalized workflow learning in collaboration with customers. She plays a leading role in delivering Learning Pool’s unique value proposition in a crowded learning technologies market, to make a significant contribution to the industry, as well as build a global brand and achieve ambitious growth. Most recently she was a Learning Fellow & Advisor for Elliott Masie Productions and previously held roles including Head of Global Learning & Development for State Street Global Advisors and at Thomson Reuters, Head of the Sales Academy Learning Partners ensuring consistent learning and sales enablement, globally. Sharon is co-founder of the #WomenInLearning initiative, she was one of the 2019 Top 50 Leaders in Learning & Development – in the Americas, the 2018 Learning Professional of the Year from the Global Learning & Performance Institute, and a two-time member (1993 & 1994) of the USFA’s Nationals gold medal women’s sabre fencing team.

Dr. Erin Donovan is a learning leader. Throughout her career she has supported the learner, whether they were in the classroom, on the sales floor, in the boardroom, on the phone, or on the production line. She embraces the modern learner and strives to be a force for forward-thinking change. She offers creativity, a connection to data, an agile planning mentality, and the need to be close and serve those who actually do the work.

Pamela S. Hogle, a program manager at The Learning Guild, focuses on eLearning technology and trends and explores the ways that L&D professionals can lead changes in mindset and behavior throughout their organizations. She brings these interests to her work creating engaging and relevant content for Learning Solutions magazine and Learning Guild conferences. An experienced journalist, technical writer, and eLearning content developer, Pam has worked in Israel and the United States. She holds master’s degrees in journalism and human-canine life sciences. 

Betzi Quirós is a senior learning and development manager at Amazon Business, where she leads a team of learning professionals focused on strategy, design, and execution of onboarding and continuous development programs for North America. Prior to this, she worked as a senior instructional designer for seven years, creating global learning experiences tied to impact business goals.

Betzi is passionate about DEI and making her workplace a safe place for authenticity and belonging. She does this by being part of the Leadership Committee of her organization’s Women’s Advocacy Circle, a grassroots affinity group focused on promoting a more inclusive work environment for women. Additionally, she leads the Amazon Business Women’s Leadership Program, a 3-day workshop focused on helping women overcome gender challenges in the workplace.

Shanna Smiley currently serves as the National Director of Multicultural Leadership Development (MLD) for the YMCA of the USA. MLD is a national strategy that strives to address the barriers, gaps, and systems that have contributed to an underrepresentation of diverse leaders throughout the organization, and works to diversify leadership pipelines all across the country to ensure that our YMCAs better reflect the diverse communities that we serve.

A recognized leader in the Equity and People Development fields, Shanna is a 2001 graduate of Purdue University. Her previous career roles include working for Walt Disney World, Starbucks Coffee Company, and Qdoba.