Our team of seasoned professionals has over 35 years of experience.

who we are

TopTier Training and Consulting is an independent consultancy.  Our professional team is comprised of people experienced and acclaimed in their individual areas of specialization.  We are a mix of talent from diverse backgrounds, life experience and cultures.  We share a set of common beliefs and commitments related to the quality, reliability and utility of our work.  We bring a set of research-substantiated understandings about how adults best learn and change; and, we have the skills to actualize them in real and measurable ways. 

Why did we launch a consulting agency?

 Supporting educators and organization leaders to become better at their task of serving people and communities is a niche of enormous importance.  Through our mission, we help grow the body of knowledge on which they rely, and we all get better at our work.

The connection between our two markets, educators and non-profit organizations (NPO), is a natural one.  Education is about growing people and educators must stay on top of their game. The work of human service providers is also about growing people.  So we work to grow the people who grow people.  And we bring the best professionals in both fields to do the job.

We believe that a lifetime of experience is a terrible thing to waste. Our work is about helping organizations and schools become smooth operations that continuously expand resources for their clients/students. We have experience in senior leadership roles in schools, districts, non-profits, government and at United Way. We have a keen understanding and familiarity with all aspects of non-profit resource development—human and financial.  Our extensive knowledge of both the public and private sector funding communities is one of our greatest assets.

For educators and NPO workers, there are many commonalities. Both must maintain a set of manageable systems that enable the most efficient and effective service delivery.  All staff and stakeholders are part of an organizational framework where each has a set of roles and responsibilities for the organization and the clients.  Absent those systems, life can get difficult and can produce negative consequences.  And that inevitably impacts the client/student.   With 22-years of experience as a non-profit executive, we’ve seen it all. 

Our founder has worked more than 15 years in the design and delivery of graduate level degree programs for educators and non-profit professionals at an esteemed university.  So our consultancy is a rich blend of academic and applied experience.  She was lucky enough to land a University position as Associate Faculty in the area of Adult Learning and Development.  It was a new national model for graduate degrees is this field.  People from all areas where human resource development was a need, came to the program.  Training and management professionals in high tech, finance, government, media, medicine and law, academia, and human service came to get better at growing their people. 

For five years, our founder was a full-time employee at United Way of Chicago’s Agency Services Division.  She served as Senior Consultant to struggling human service agencies across Chicago.  Her group served thousands of staff, board and other stakeholders at hundreds of non-profits in the city of big shoulders.  She personally designed and delivered programs in strategic planning, board development, team-building and customized training for all staff and volunteers.   

Our work at TopTier is all about teaching and learning.   Our programs are engaging and not didactic.  Participants learn by doing.  They work in groups, partnerships and individually.  They build on their own wealth of experience. Goals for consultations are set together; outcomes are measurable; new tools and strategies have real world application—always.   Ongoing support is recommended to answer questions, problem-solve and coach. 

Participants learn about learning and how to make it happen.   And for even those who come feeling reluctant about whether there is really anything more to learn about their work, success is inevitable.  It is no longer just about moving through a training manual within a given time frame, but more about whether the participants can use the information that they’ve learned.  Once they learn about their own role in meeting participants’ learning needs and interests, they become lifetime converts.