Meet Our Leaders

President- Richard Fletcher

Richard Fletcher, CHT is Sr. Director, Learning and Organizational Development for Zaxby’s Franchising, a franchisor of gourmet chicken restaurants with 525+ locations and 20000 employees throughout the Southeast. He has been with Zaxby’s since 2003. Richard has responsibilities for overseeing the structures, systems, and processes within the organization to improve organizational effectiveness and is also responsible for identifying, recommending and implementing short and long term strategy for design development and delivery of leadership, team-related, professional, and interpersonal skills development programs.

Richard has over 25 years of executive level experience in sales, operations, organizational development and training with other national companies such as Wolf Camera, Zaxby’s and Sprint PCS. Richard is a national member of ASTD and VP Special and Geographic Interest Groups for ASTD Atlanta. He is an active member of the Council for Hotel and Restaurant Trainers (CHART) and Regional Director for the CHART’s Atlanta Regional Training Forum.

Richard received a Bachelor of Science degree from Auburn University. He is a certified EQ-I®, EQ-360® administrator and has received the Certified Hospitality Trainer (CHT) certification from CHART. When he isn’t busy developing people, he loves hitting the links and traveling. Asked to choose his favorite Zaxby’s menu item, he hesitates since he likes them all. "But if I have to pick, I’d go with the Kickin' Chicken Sandwich!"

President-Elect - Vanessa Carey

Vanessa Carey is the Director of Enterprise Organizational Development for West Corporation. West Corporation specializes in the creation of solutions that cover every aspect of voice communication. These include, to name a few: Conferencing and Collaboration – InterCall, Public Safety – Intrado, Automated Services - West Interactive, West Business Services, Direct Response Solutions - West Direct, Receivables Management Solutions - West Asset Management, Facility and Home-based Agents and several more. You may recognize names like InterCall, Sprint Conferencing, and Raindance who have found their home under the West umbrella. West processes billions of minutes in voice-related transactions every year with 30,000 plus employees located throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Vanessa has been with West for seven years and leads a team that serves as internal consultants to all the business units at West. This includes responsibilities for all facets of organizational development, corporate related training, leadership training, team building, interpersonal skills development, and executive coaching. Her time at West has been all about progress through developing and launching West University, an Enterprise wide trainer’s forum, virtual training, online exit interviews, and employee engagement surveys, and many other developments. Prior to West she served at Cox Communications as Manager of Leadership Development and implemented a formal succession planning process. Vanessa has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Masters of Education (M.Ed.) in Counseling with twenty years’ experience in adult education, counseling, training and development, management and leadership development. She is a national member of ASTD and enjoyed volunteering at this year’s ICE Convention. If she is not developing people she is performing for them. She is active in music and drama and has a passion for travel. Antarctica is on her destination list in order to complete her goal of visiting all continents.

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CFO - Sheila Gann

Sheila Gann, growing up in a small town in eastern KY, obtained her BS in Business Administration with a degree in Accounting from Colorado University in 1989 while raising two sons. She has been an accountant for over 30 years and has recently set out for a career change by going back to school and obtaining a MS in I/O Psychology and two post-grad certificates in Human Resourse Management and in Leadership from Capella University. Leadership is where her passion lies and hopes to one day become an Executive Coach.

In his current role, Brian is responsible for managing leadership development for the company’s middle to senior management team members. He has spent the majority of his career developing talent within various industries, including federal government, finance and public education. At Gulfstream, Brian specializes in facilitating leadership skills using the Situational Leadership II© model developed by the Ken Blanchard Companies, Inc. Additional professional specialties and responsibilities include redesign and facilitation of the Certified Manager© program, developing training strategies in alignment with the leadership competency model, instructional design and training evaluation and analysis. Brian also specializes in the delivery of several additional tools to build leadership and team skills, such as the Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI®), Championing Diversity, Franklin Covey® and delivery of the company’s Leadership Competency Model.

For more than eight years, Brian has been a member of the national American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) organization and currently serves as the vice president of member services. During his years as a member, Brian has received several certifications through ASTD, such as the Creating Leadership Development Programs certificate and the National Trainers certification.

Brian was born and raised in the Virginia-Washington, D.C. area. In 1997, he graduated from Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tenn., with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, and in 2011, he completed his Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Phoenix. His interests include spending time with family and friends, travel, good food, reading and physical fitness.