Chris Dawson is a learning and development professional providing consulting, training and coaching services to individuals and organizations in the disciplines of change management, performance improvement, organizational effectiveness, leadership and management development, and personal growth. She brings her expertise in these areas to R. Alliance LLC, a consulting firm specializing in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of IT projects.
Chris has over 20 years of experience in a variety of Human Resources functions. Working for Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 companies gave her the opportunity to spearhead change management and leadership development initiatives on a global scale. Prior to R. Alliance, she delivered results in a number of organizational structures including centers of excellence, matrix organizations, and virtual teams. Her previous employers also include a quasi-government/not for profit organization. This diverse background cultivated Chris’ ability to understand business challenges and what it takes to manage talent at all levels in many types of organizations, bringing a broad, comprehensive perspective to her consulting and coaching practice.
Her corporate credentials and education give Chris the capability to implement proven solutions to address challenges. Among these she has successfully established a centralized training department saving the organization over $500,000 within 90 days through effective vendor selection and management. Later she overhauled an existing Training team into a Learning and Development function which broadened the organization’s learning options to include on demand e-training, a structured process for individual development, and targeted classroom offerings.
As a Change Manager Chris has led or assumed large scale system and policy integration initiatives. An integral part of these efforts has been her ability to embed new policies, practices, processes and systems into the corporate culture using targeted communications that keep impacted employees productive and motivated during the transition. Her approach results in a faster return to desired efficiency and quality standards by effected staff. She has overseen the development and launch of management and leadership development programs which identified and enhanced the skills of high potential individuals. This enabled organizations to save on costly executive recruiting and retain critical corporate knowledge by promoting valuable resources into strategic leadership roles.
Chris has worked one on one with leaders to enhance their leadership skills, build personal insight and sharpen their aptitudes by providing coaching and leveraging a variety of assessment tools to assemble individual development plans and support continued growth. The overall results of which have been measured by increases in employee satisfaction surveys and reaching key business goals.
A native of New York, Chris earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Pace University as well as a Master’s Degree in Human Resources Education from Fordham University. She has continued to pursue her passion for individual development with targeted study in Human Performance Improvement from the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), a certificate in coaching from Coach Training Alliance and graduate level course work related to Executive Coaching. She currently resides near Richmond, VA.