ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dory Willer is a certified executive coach with more than 30 years of experience as a senior HR executive, keynote speaker, and strategic planning facilitator. She has broad and diverse experience working for blue-chip and Fortune 100 companies, leaving her last corporate position as a vice president of HR to open Beacon Quest Coaching based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Willer coaches senior and C-suite executives in leadership enhancement, performance improvement, and career renewal, helping her clients to thrive in life and careers. Additionally, she facilitates strategic planning sessions that stretch paradigms, align behaviors with goals, and hold groups accountable to produce results. She was among the first graduating classes from Stanford’s Executive HR Certification Program (Graduate School of Business 1994). Willer achieved the designation of SPHR more than 25 years ago. She holds a B.S. degree in behavioral science from the University of San Francisco and several advanced certifications in executive coaching.

William H. Truesdell is president of The Management Advantage, Inc., a personnel management consulting firm. He spent more than 20 years in management with American Telephone and Telegraph in HR and operations. Truesdell is an expert on the subjects of personnel practices, employee handbooks, equal opportunity, and performance management programs. He is past president of the Northern California Employment Round Table and former HR course instructor at the University of California – Berkeley extension program. Truesdell holds the SPHR certification and a B.S. in business administration from California State University – Fresno.

William D. Kelly is the owner of Kelly HR, an HR consulting services firm specializing in providing generalist HR consulting services and support for small business enterprises. Bill’s experience includes more than 40 years of professional-level HR responsibilities, including 22 years at Bechtel in San Francisco and, later, at Brown and Caldwell Environmental Engineers in Pleasant Hill, California. His credentials include experience in employee relations, state and federal legal compliance, staffing and recruitment, equal employment opportunity and affirmative action, compensation, benefits, training and development, health and safety, and government contract management. Bill also has 20 years of experience in HR consulting that includes providing HR services, support, and advice to a wide range of Northern California clients. He has 17 years of experience as an instructor for the University of California extension program teaching such courses as Management of Human Resources; Recruiting, Selection, and Placement; California Employment Law; and Professional HR Certification Preparation. Bill has taught the Professional PHR/SPHR Certification Preparation Course for more than 17 years, SHRM’s recently introduced SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP Certification Preparation Course, and the California HR Certification Preparation Course for 8 years for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Northern California HR Association (NCHRA). He played a key role in the development of California’s HR certification credential; he was also the project manager for the team of California HR professionals who developed SHRM’s first California Learning System in support of California certification. Bill’s professional leadership also includes roles on the board of directors and as national vice president for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the board of directors and president for the HR Certification Institute (HRCI), state director for the California State Council of SHRM, the board of directors and president for the Northern California HR Association (NCHRA), and commissioner and chair for the Marin County Personnel Commission. Bill received his B.S. in political science from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, and undertook post-graduate studies in organizational management at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and the University of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia. Prior to HR, Bill had a military career achieving the rank of major in the United States Army with tours of duty in the United States, Germany, Thailand, and Vietnam.