The Whelan Group is an internationally recognized and respected business writing and communications training firm that has more than 25 years of experience training leaders, executives, managers, and staff in 20 countries across the globe.
The firm's clients are a virtual "Who's Who" in the worlds of business, finance, law, healthcare, nonprofit, and government.
Whelan Group Founder and President Michael Whelan started his career in the business world as a business reporter in New York City. His quality work and training style attracted early on the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has long-term continuous clients.
In our increasingly competitive global world, the Whelan Group has shown leading institutions how to sharpen their business communications skills and gain a competitive edge.
From e-mail to business letters, from reports to business plans and proposals, from PowerPoint to other presentations, the firm delivers seminars with practical, proven ways to communicate more effectively. Key to training that "sticks" is its discovery method of training.
OUR STAFF
Whelan Group trainers include widely experienced business writers, marketing communications experts, workshop facilitators, writers, and editors.
Michael Whelan, founder and president of the Whelan Group, has specialized in written and oral communications throughout his career. He began his career as a business journalist in New York for The Gallagher Presidents’ Report, a hard-hitting, news-breaking weekly targeted to corporate chief executives. As Associate Editor, Whelan covered news across the full spectrum of U.S. business, viewed from the top management perspective. He regularly interviewed the CEOs of dozens of major corporations, including those of the Fortune 500 companies.
Whelan then went on to become manager of marketing MCI Communications in its early years, when MCI made marketing and business history by successfully breaking what until then had been AT&T’s monopoly on long distance communication. In that role he managed, among other projects, the marketing communications for the packaging and launch of the nation's first long distance calling card, which rocked the telecommunications industry.
Whelan moved from MCI to launch the Whelan Group and designed its highly successful flagship seminar, Ten Secrets to Powerful Writing. For more than 20 years, the seminar continues to be requested in the US and more than 20 other countries around the world. Whelan continued to add other seminars and instructors focused on business communications. He extended the scope of the Group to specialized versions of Ten Secrets to Powerful Writing for Lawyers, which proved a popular offering with the DC Bar/ Georgetown University National Law Center.
While running the Whelan Group, he also developed an expertise in issues of finance, as Secretary on the Investment Committee of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank. In that position he sat in on and recorded minutes on some 2,000 investment decisions of IFC senior management, making financial commitments ranging from $5 million to $300 million per project in every sector of business worldwide.
Whelan has also served a term as president of Washington Independent Writers, which at the time was the largest professional association of independent writers in the US. His articles have been published in The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. He holds a B.A. in literature, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, from Catholic University and an M.A. in literature from Canisius College. In his spare time he writes poetry, and his work has been published in professional poetry journals. Whelan points out that this writing is a world apart from the writing of business communications, but certain skills of language mastered by the poet can also be of great value also in business.
Drawing on this background, Michael Whelan offers a unique combination of training skills:
- Invaluable hands-on experience working with the highest levels of corporate management in the real world of business and knowing the caliber of written and oral communications they expect from their managers and staff.
- Depth of worldwide experience in distilling and teaching managers and staff the secrets of powerful business writing and business communications in a highly engaging way that gets rave reviews.
Darcie Kortan, Senior Associate, holds an MFA in Writing and teaches business writing, business communications, diversity in the workplace, and management at the university and graduate level. She has taught in the MBA program at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business -- one of the top business schools in the U.S. -- and on the faculty at Marist College in New York. Darcie is co-creator of the high-tech-industry version of Whelan Group's Ten Secrets to Powerful Business Writing. Her experience in the high-tech sector includes three years at Xinet, a Berkeley, California software company, where she worked in both technical writing and training. She has also worked as Creative Manager at Catchword, a San Francisco Bay Area naming and branding firm with an extensive high-tech clientele. At Catchword, she generated thousands of names for clients, including Microsoft, Oracle, AT&T, and Pepsi. Through the Whelan Group, she continues her work as a consultant for corporate identity, creating corporate names and taglines.
Rozanne Weissman left the Alliance to Save Energy after 13+ years and 20 awards to start her own marketing communications consultancy in April 2010. Rozanne Weissman & Associates handles all aspects of marketing and communications and in addition provides powerful business writing and results-oriented e-mail training in conjunction with the Whelan Group which has trained employees across the world for more than 25 years. Weissman brings more than 20 years of award-winning management and hands-on experience for both private and public employers and clients in strategic planning, positioning, and partnerships, branding and corporate identity; integrated marketing communications, public service, public affairs, and advertising campaigns; issues and crisis management; creative problem solving, community outreach, electronic and print publications, website development and redevelopment, audiovisuals, and radio and TV shows. She has counseled and helped with training of leaders, managers, and staff of various organizations on such things as business writing and dealing with media.
Over the years, she has won more than 60 marketing, communications, and advertising awards for her campaigns and collateral materials and has been a presenter at a number of national and international conferences as well as a media spokesperson over the years.
Most recently working at the Alliance to Save Energy, Weissman was promoted in September 2008 to Senior Director of Consumer Campaigns. She managed major award-winning, multimedia public awareness-building, integrated marketing communications and branding campaigns with interactive websites, social media, cutting-edge elements, and diverse nonprofit, governmental, and for-profit partners. For the Alliance over the years, she had managed 19 successful national and New York State consumer campaigns.
Weissman had been Director of Communications and Marketing at the Alliance since 1997 and was responsible for all marketing, advertising, and communications, including strategic planning, media relations, and campaigns. She had also managed two website redevelopments and electronic and print publications.
Prior the Alliance, Weissman ran her own firm. Her diverse client list included a cable TV/multimedia corporation (Discovery Communications, Inc— Discovery Channel Pictures and Discovery Networks), Fortune 50 telecommunications companies (BellSouth, Bell Atlantic-NYNEX merger), corporate foundation focused on education and technology (BellSouth Foundation), media distribution company, business trainer, restaurant, government agencies in health and the arts, environmental association, Montessori school, combined exercise studio and art gallery, biotechnology company, and statistical analysis expert witness firm.
As President of Animal Tracks Inc., an environmental educational operating foundation which originated on the profit end as a “green marketing” consumer program by Wal-Mart, Weissman increased its marketing and reach by 6.5 million people through a merger, educational endorsements, corporate sponsorship to 100,000 schools, and licensing agreements.
As Vice President, Corporate Communications for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for six years, she helped to double federal funding for public broadcasting and to raise its positive media coverage. She started her career as a business and consumer reporter, handled promotion and marketing for a large daily newspaper, and also worked on Capitol Hill and on Senate and presidential campaigns.
She has been a public speaker at a number of national, international, regional, and local conferences. In addition, her articles have appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines including Ladies Home Journal, The Washington Post (business, weekend, style), The Washington Star, Northern Virginia People, Playgirl, The Washington Journalism Review, More Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Air California, Pathways, Women's Wear Daily, and Family Weekly.
www.linkedin.com/in/rozanneweissman
Joseph Chamberlin, Senior Associate, brings to the Whelan Group more than 25 years of organizational development and training experience. He has designed and delivered oral and written communication workshops as well as management development programs both in the U.S. and internationally. He is also a skilled facilitator at engaging employees in helping to shape organizational plans and policies. Chamberlin has presented programs for, among others, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Casualty Insurance, Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, Catholic Relief Services, American Radiology Services, CARE, and the Loyola College MBA Fellows Program.
Cynde Sears, Senior Associate, has worked more than 25 years in teaching and training, helping students and clients to improve their understanding of a range of disciplines and ideas and providing them with skills to demonstrate that understanding.
Ms. Sears comes from a truly multi-disciplinary background. She has an undergraduate degree in science and a graduate degree in public policy, and has had careers as a research scientist, classroom teacher, and technical consultant.
Applying instructional design methods and theories, she has prepared and delivered thousands of hours of training on a wide range of topics to diverse audiences. She is especially good at working closely with her clients to ensure that course content, tone, and delivery method meet their needs.
Her courses have addressed personnel management skills for Department of Defense managers; hazardous waste management requirements for state and Federal environmental staff; Plain English requirements for regulators and rule-writers; and risk management/business continuity planning for non-profit organizations.