Short Biography

Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia), Vice President of Enterprise for Pistachio Consulting, works at the intersection of social messaging and workplace learning, focusing on the trends, markets and dynamics shaping a distributed, collaborative and mult-generational business culture. A former Fortune 500 learning exec, coauthor of Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Technology and Practice and cocreator of the Pistachio Consulting Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison, she writes the Fast Company blog “Learn At All Levels.” Her latest book, The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media, will be out in May 2010. Marcia was Information Futurist and Vice President of Education for PeopleSoft, Senior Manager of Worldwide Training at Microsoft and Editor in Chief of Learning in the New Economy magazine. She brings an insider’s perspective to the fields of enterprise technology, corporate community building, human capital development, HR,distributed leadership and education. She has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, CIO Magazine, PCWeek, Information Week, Business 2.0, and has appeared on ABC World News This Morning. She is a Batten Institute Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and a Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research.

The Rest of the Story

Leola Chidester wrote on my Kindergarten report card, "Although Marcia wants to be President, she'd make a terrific teacher." She went on to explain that my constant curiosity and endless energy could be used to help people learn new things and see different points of view. Years later, after rethinking my political aspirations on a train across Northern Africa, I recalled Mrs. Chidester's words and I decided to pursue my passion for learning with a passion.

I have spent much of my life in corporations, often unraveling overly cumbersome education departments, moving functions into the business line or redesigning software programs so they don't require endless training. Over the years this has required work in areas as diverse as education, business development, marketing, product management, human resources, OD, interface design, usability, learnability, publishing, and online community.

I've served as senior counsel to corporations, schools, governments and non-governmental organizations. I was Vice President of Education and Information Futurist for PeopleSoft, Senior Manager of Worldwide Training at Microsoft and Editor-in-Chief of Learning in the New Economy magazine. I currently write the "Learn At All Levels" column for Fast Company.

Over the last 25 years I have studied, lived and worked on three continents. I authored Learn More Now (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), co-created Creating a Learning Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2004), wrote the forward to Engaging Learning by Clark N. Quinn (Jossey-Bass, 2005), and contribute to dozens of other magazines and books. I've also appeared on ABC's World News This Morning, the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine.

I'm ultimately interested in helping people work together, tap into how they learn so they can attain personal and professional success through means other than lengthy and often costly traditional (even online) training programs. I refer this as "liberating the social learner in each of us." I aim to educe a passion for learning in each person's soul, allowing for the unconstrained pursuit of personal joys. I'm happy to report, I'm not alone in this quest.

On the personal front, I'm married to a brilliant and handsome tennis coach, Karl Conner. We have a young son who keeps us humble and animals that keep us grounded. We live and work on a 50-acre homestead in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. I whitewater canoe and volunteer my time to talk with parents and teachers about creative solutions for children who have learning disabilities.

I head the enterprise practice for social media consultancy Pistachio Consulting, serve as fellow of the Society for New Communication Research and the Batten Institute at the Darden Graduate School of Business, facilitate workshops on new forms of organization design, social media and complexity, and serve as advisor to terrific executives around the globe.

At work or at play, I love learning and helping other people learn. I hate to see people miss out on what's interesting around them because they haven't figured out how to master new information quicker. Sometimes this knowledge-transfer happens in a classroom. Most of the time it happens informally and when we least expect it.

I also love to share what I know and I am learning so if you're interested in these same sorts of things, let me know what resources you've found particularly useful.

Always learning,
learning all ways,