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Clarity

Donna Hook

New Jersey

Presentations, Public Speaking & Leadership Coach.
Empowers individuals to speak and lead with confidence and skill
Co-Author of, "CAPTIVATE: Public Speaking Secrets from TED Talks"
Trainer, Public Speaker, and Mentor
Toastmasters International, Awarded Distinguished Toastmaster in 2012

Fortune 500 Management Experience;
Senior IT Manager
Project Management
IT Estimation
CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Certified
Healthcare, PBM, Software Development Industries.

Small Business Owner

$1.67/min

3 Calls

8 Reviews

34 minutes
Avg. call

Mentoring Public Speaking Leadership Software Engineering Project Management Leadership Development Process Improvement SDLC CMMI Presentation Coaching

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Leadership Development

Mentor for new and experienced Leaders. Focused on accessing and growing leadership skills, practical management of complex issues and eliminating barriers to success.

Sr. Manager in a fast-paced Fortune 100 company.
Distinguished Toastmaster
Presidential Distinguished Club
Presidential Distinguished Area
Small Business Owner

Presentation Coaching

Train and Mentor individuals to gain confidence as a Speaker and Leader. Help hone presentations for ease of flow and better audience reception. Guide practice techniques with time-tested principles.

IT Project Management

Experience is in small to mid-size projects with a range up to $7 million.

20+ years experience in a Fortune 100 company
Delivery Manager
CMMI Certified
SDLC Expert
IT Auditor
Production Support
Application Development
Healthcare

Answers 5
Reviews 8

Answers

Donna Hook answered

What are some methods to improve the speed in which I'm talking during presentations?

While practice, practice, practice will help you speed up, the ultimate question is, does the audience share your same feedback? There are many questions that need to be understood to best help you, such as, What type of speech are you giving - ie. Is it purely research or factual based? Who is your audience? Is there a timeline for your speech? Is the material boring to you? Are you presenting from memory? And more... It would be best to understand your speech project before giving specific guidelines. Should you want to pursue a more in depth look into your presentation material and delivery I'm happy to help.

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Public Speaking

Presentation Coaching

Speaking

Donna Hook answered

How do we develop a small-project management workflow, or hire someone to develop it for us?

Having working in multiple Fortune 500 companies as a Project Manager, and IT Delivery Manager, the head of a Production Support team, and certified in CMMI process I can tell you there are a number of questions that need to be understood before your formal structure can be fully defined. From the perspective of a 10,000 foot view there is always a starting and ending point that need to be tracked plus managing the tasks in the middle. For example, How / what initiates your IT requests? Is there a central way these efforts are communicated? Are specific approvals needed before the work can start (aka, is there a budget to do the work). Is an estimate needed first or do you go right to project? Who manages the project? How do the impacted teams get identified / notified? Does scope creep ever happen? if so, how does that get approved / paid for.? In essence, there are a lot step by step tasks that can be thought through and grouped together into logical components and recorded for tracking purposes in a spreadsheet. Ultimately your goal is to create a repeatable process with the proper oversight to ensure time / cost / quality / scope are as expected. Once you understand the tasks, you can identify who is responsible for the oversight. And then you can document the process. Some people may suggest creating the process first and assigning responsibility second, and id'ing the tasks third. Either way, having a formal structure to your projects (without overkill on the process) will serve your company well. Any need to discuss further let me know...

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Project Management

Donna Hook answered

What tools must I have in order to create, market, and sell an online course?

Search Devin Slavin in Google. He just held an excellent symposium on online course creation.

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Digital Marketing Strategy

Small Business Online Marketing

Coaching

Donna Hook answered

How to demonstrate leadership when you are not the boss and the company is not a traditional startup?

One suggestion I have for you is improve communication and leadership skills by joining a local Toastmasters club (www.toastmasters.org). Use the Find a Club tab. This may not help with your immediate work situation but in the long run it will definitely help with your confidence building. Besides improving your communication skills there's a world of opportunities in Toastmasters to grow your leadership skills. It certainly worked for me. I was promoted in a prior job as a direct result of my participating in Toastmasters; being able to communicate and lead more confidently lead my promotion. Re. your current work situation, perhaps you can have a 1 on 1 with your boss and see what type of projects are available that can give you the kind of visibility you're looking for. Be careful of taking on your own projects on company time... It may not be what the boss wants to pay you for. Though if you do choose to go ahead and "create" something you deem useful, be sure it's not the detriment of your assigned work. Have any questions about Toastmasters or otherwise, please let me know.

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Leadership Development

Career Development

Donna Hook answered

Whats a productive method for changing workplace procedures in small company?

First, you need to be crystal clear if the changes to the procedure still supports the policy (or goals) mandated for the organization (ie. Compliance directive, as many HR departments have). If the change impacts this negatively you may want to think twice before moving forward, so as not to put the small business at risk. If ok to move forward, keep in mind procedures are the “recipe for success” that support policy. They are the step-by-step tasks. You don’t mention your level of authority over the acquired small business however the person in charge has every right to direct change. The most simple mentor is to introduce what’s changing, highlight the benefits and say, “effective on such and such a date we will be moving to this new workflow.’ Your procedure should be documented and part of a larger set of documented company assets. It should be easily accessible for all to access. Remembering that change can be difficult for some people you may want to ease into the discussion dropping hints about the benefits of the new method and proposed changes. You’ll also need to ensure training plans are sufficiently in place for a smooth transition. Expect that a smooth transition may take 3 or more weeks depending upon the nature of the change and addition of any tools / additional training req’d. Plan accordingly and be supporting of questions. You can also have some or all of the group pilot a project with the new steps and share feedback. Maybe there’s opportunities to learn from and pick the best of the best between what the staff currently does and what you’re proposing. Be open to learning and sharing for a smoother transition and ‘continuous’ process improvement. Good luck! If you have questions feel free to reach out.

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Human Resources

Management

Small Business Development

Reviews

Donna was a true pleasure to work with. She has exceptional leadership skills, is very knowledgeable in the IT Project Management role and has an excellent personality. Donna and I were co-workers at Express Scripts (formerly Medco Health Solutions). I would highly recommend Donna to any company!

Michael Gerace, SSGB Source: LinkedIn

Donna is a GREAT example and promoter for Toastmasters. Beside her excellent ability to speak to any size audience, she has management skills which improved everyone's experience in Toastmasters.

Donna understands process and can see it and work to improve it for ANY organization.

Donna has organized many different events, pulling in the right talent to encourage others to attend.

Great person to have on board to help your department or company succeed!

Patricia (Pat) Ferdinandi Source: LinkedIn

Donna has the ability to make people feel very comfortable with her as she guides them in getting the job done on time. She has an ability to dig deep to find the root of the problem and resolve it especially in a crisis situation. People are drawn to her ability to management a project and people. Her technical and management skills are outstanding. I worked with her at Merck Medco and would welcome the opportunity to do it again. Wherever she goes they will be very fortunate to have her there.

Danuta Kuc, PMP Source: LinkedIn

Donna is a great leader. Whenever a Toastmasters event or leadership position occurs during meeting times, Donna is sure to step up and help her fellow Toastmasters. Through this process, Donna continues to gain confidence in her speaking skills. With this confidence and her innate entrepreneurial spirit, Donna strives to venture and gain financial opportunities that make sense in her family's lives. What a marvelous opportunity to get to meet Donna and her family. They are a joy. In Northern New Jersey, they say we look alike. I consider that an honor. My next comment is that I'm Donna Hook....she's not.

We've competed together in Toastmasters contests, we've held training together and we've organized together. Donna is as good a leader as she is a team player. What an extraordinary person to have with you in your organization: as a vendor or a colleague or a competitor. Get to know Donna Hook. You'll be the wiser and richer for it.

Karen Seeman, CDPE Source: LinkedIn

I had the great pleasure of working with Donna while I was at Medco responsible for New Product Development. One of these products was a Patient Level Prior Authorization system that allowed parameter driven (i.e. quantity and days supply) authorizations to support Clinical coverage reviews and appeals. Donna was the tech lead and also served as the BA and Trainer of the system providing extremely detailed and comprehensive documentation. The product was a great success with our internal and external customers and Donna was the leading contributor.

Bill Jackson Source: LinkedIn

Donna is an excellent, results-oriented Project Manager who gets the job done - on-time and within budget ! She is very customer-focused and creative in finding solutions to possible and unforeseen issues. I would highly recommend Donna.

Elahe Hassankhani Source: LinkedIn

When I was at Medco one of my responsibilities was to form and direct the Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG) one of my key hires into the group was Donna. She had extensive subject matter expertise and relationships into one of the most critical areas of the company and functioned great in her capacity in helping represent this groups interests and process in procesures in defining standardized processes at the Enterprise level and helping the areas she was responsible for quickly and effective adopt and institutionalize changes so they were compliant helping the firm raise it's CMMI Certification level which was a mission critical effort. Donna was well respected by her peers on the team and was clearly a leader among them. Her area and responsibilities were well managed and she had a strong work ethic, attention to detail, and always pursued quality results. She was a joy to have as a team member and functioned many times self directed.

Frank Kovacs Source: LinkedIn

I had the pleasure of working with Donna on a Pilot program at Medco regarding a Project Managment process upgrade. Donna went above and beyond her role to ensure the project not only was a process upgrade, but accepted our feedback in order to capture other items we can add into the proces. This would allow all end users a time savings and be able to provide the data/documents in an easier format. Many thanks to Donna in her role in this !

Scott Kessler Source: LinkedIn

Member since August 2013