About Us

ALTER, Inc. is a consulting group of strategic learning professionals that can help you answer these questions and provide the means to sharpen your business performance. We are pioneers in distance learning, former training directors, faculty members, management consultants, market researchers, and business owners. We have evolved a fresh approach to getting the best from training and learning technology. Our approach helps clients align their training and evaluation operations with the standards of practice for the rest of their business, transforming their results into actionable recommendations that improve the bottom line.

 
ALTER, Inc. - Principals' Brief Bios

	Godfrey Parkin has over 25 years of experience in international business, OD, market research, and performance consulting. His successes include radically transforming the culture of A.C. Nielsen in 35 countries; quadrupling the revenues of Credit Suisse's securities sales teams worldwide; transforming a failed U.S. training department into a profitable, pioneering e-learning vendor; and helping a small company beat all the big LMS vendors in their bid for Porsche's global business. A regular columnist and contributor to industry publications and online communities, he writes his own learning strategy blog, Parkin's Lot.
	Sarah Ward has worked in training and development for over 15 years. Her expertise includes distance learning, learning technology, and the evaluation of learning. Developing and managing award-winning training programs for the FDIC, the Resolution Trust Corporation, and the Patent and Trademark Office, she has also trained for the FBI, State Department, the M&M Mars Corporation, the Army Management Staff College, and the U.S. Air Force. As Director of Training for a software development firm, she introduced some of the first distance learning courses and Internet training. As Executive Director of a new university research center, she received grants of over $1M to evaluate adult learning technology and its application. Starting ALTER, Inc. in 1999, she co-ran the evaluation unit for Ford Motor Company’s FORDSTAR, the world’s largest distance learning system. A Tier One supplier to Ford, Ms. Ward wrote standards of evaluation through Level 4, which are mandated for every course. She also produced evaluation metrics for national training and certification programs, created a graduate degree program and staff development seminars, procured accreditation for the training of 250,000 dealership staff, developed a scholarship program, and coordinated a distance learning degree with Northwood University. ASTD has honored Ms. Ward as a pioneer in learning technology and a leader in the training and development industry. A frequent speaker at conferences, she served on ASTD’s International Conference Program Selection Committee and helped re-design the TechKnowledge conference. She also founded the Learning Technology Forum for ASTD and runs the Wearable Computer Design Contest for IEEE’s International Symposium on Wearable Computers (to explore the future of mobile devices for training). Her standards for online learning have been used by universities to teach distance learning design and development. Returning to school mid-career, she created a Ph.D. program in distance learning at Virginia Tech, in which she is ABD. Her latest ventures have been helping an American Express subsidiary create a new training and evaluation protocol for its 12,000 field advisors and presenting Evaluation Strategy development workshops.
	Karen Medsker is Professor Emerita of the School of Business Administration at Marymount University where she was Department Chair of HRD and taught instructional design and performance improvement. She has also worked in performance consulting for over 30 years, serving corporations, government, and nonprofit organizations. Previously, she was Director of Instructional Development at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, and an instructional technologist at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Karen earned her Ph.D. in Instructional Systems at Florida State University. She has published two books: The Conditions of Learning: Training Applications, co-authored with Robert M. Gagne, and Models and Strategies for Training Design, co-edited with Kristina Holdsworth, as well as many articles and book chapters. Karen has been active for many years in ISPI chapter work, for which she will receive the D.C. chapter's Lifetime Achievement award in 2006. She was a charter member of the New Jersey and Indianapolis chapters and is a past president of the Indianapolis and Potomac chapters.