SCANNER FREEMONT / Data Analyst
Freemont is responsible for the digital conversion of survey responses while adhering to strict quality standards set forth by its managers. Freemont began its career at TruScore in 1996 as a Data Analyst and quickly became pivotal to TruScore's success. As the years passed, Freemont has slowly matured into part-time Data Analyst while also holding many positions in the work environment including On The Floor, On The Empty Desk, and Hold The Door (AKA Hodor).
RON SACCHI / Master Coach
A former Operations Manager in the High Tech Industry, Ron Sacchi brings decades of leadership and management experience to the organizational development and the executive coaching arena. An energetic thought-leader with a track record of success in all areas of Human Capital development, he has consulted and coached managers in start-ups, joint-ventures, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and media. Because of his business acumen and creative approaches to behavioral change, he is respected in the HR community specifically for the ability to direct, motivate, influence and inspire leaders to improve performance.
Holding an MBA from Saint Mary’s College, Mr. Sacchi is also licensed in various management, leadership and psychological profiling tools.
CARLANN FERGUSSON / Master Coach
Carlann inspires leaders to reconnect to their individual purpose and lead with contagious energy. She ensures leaders gain deep self-awareness and eliminate self-sabotaging behaviors. Her guidance is based on coaching, training and selecting hundreds of executives across diverse companies as well as her own journey into the executive ranks.
Carlann is the author of the highly acclaimed book The Insightful Leader: Find Your Superpowers, Crush Limiting Beliefs and Abolish Self-Sabotaging Behaviors (Praeger, June 2018). She holds a master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Her thirty years of experience include leadership roles in Fortune 500s, the private sector, and the U.S. Government. Carlann has been a featured guest on ABC News Radio, Wharton Business Radio and has been cited in CBS MoneyWatch, International Business Times, Newsday and Workday.
DR CHUCH MELTZER / Master Coach
Dr. Chuck Meltzer is a Master Coach and President of the SynTECGroup, an organizational development consulting firm. As an executive coach, he draws on his training at a doctoral level in psychology, direct senior management experience and management consulting with a wide cross section of industries. He has developed an extensive series of strategies to assist leaders in creating organizational wide and personal change. Dr. Meltzer has a decade of direct senior management experience and 20 years’ experience functioning within his consulting and coaching practice. His coaching approach is solution focused and time framed. Based on determined goals, a personally customized approach to the process has enabled his clients to realize sustainable change in a manner that allows them to enhance their effectiveness and success as leaders within their organization.
Dr. Meltzer is certified and a master trainer in several coaching assessment tools that he employs within his practice.
ERIN HIRSCHLAND / Master Coach
Erin is an organization development expert with nearly two decades experience serving organizations of all sizes across industries on a broad range of issues. Working with leadership teams, she helps articulate an actionable vision and corresponding values, connecting these to organizational strategy, execution and results. Her tools of choice include senior team retreats, one-on-one executive coaching and proven survey and related instruments.
Erin’s additional expertise includes designing employee selection systems, developing performance management tools that increase performance across the organization over time and employee and customer experience metrics. An effective facilitator and coach, Erin works with leaders and their teams to build trust, commitment and results.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master of Arts degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Colorado.
SONYA D HAMILTON / Senior Assessment Consultant
Sonya is a Senior Assessment Consultant at TruScore with over 24 years of experience designing and delivering 360 feedback solutions and providing 360-based coaching, training and interpretation.
Sonya has extensive experience working with Managers and Leaders, guiding them through the feedback and development journey and providing insights and direction to help maximize their impact within the organization. Sonya’s areas of expertise include 360-based coaching, 360 data analysis and interpretation, Train-the-Trainer certifications, facilitation, survey & questionnaire design, and the design and delivery of assessment programs.
Sonya has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Master’s of Science degree in Industrial & Organization Psychology from Springfield College with a specialty in Counseling and Psychological Services. She is a Master Trainer for TruScore and the Clark Wilson Task Cycle surveys receiving a Certificate of Achievement in “How to Train a Trainer”. In addition, Sonya is certified to administer a variety of other psychometric instruments including employee engagement and organizational instruments as well as the line of Hogan Personality Assessments.
KAYLEY MOTZ / Assessment Advisor
Kayley draws on her extensive customer service background to provide clients with prompt, quality support. In her role as Assessment Advisor, Kayley works to ensure clients’ needs are being met. She assists in project set up and management, as well as processing and quality checking feedback reports. Kayley also aids in the execution of the day-to-day responsibilities of the production team, such as coaching session scheduling and tech support.
CRYSTAL HUGHES / Assessment Advisor
Crystal leverages her extensive background in Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology as she manages the day-to-day operational and tactical aspects of multiple and large scale projects for TruScore.
Crystal assists clients with setting up and managing feedback projects, and serves as the point of contact throughout the entire process. She quality checks feedback reports, and provides tech support when needed.
ELLIE SOLOMON / Assessment Advisor
Ellie manages project implementation for the entire 360 assessment feedback process and ensures that each client’s unique needs are met on time and in an efficient manner. Ellie consults with clients who use TruScore’s off-the-shelf Task Cycle® instruments as well as providing hosting solutions for clients using their own survey content, including custom processes and reports. She helps clients navigate through the TruScore® survey hosting software, having literally written the handbook that several clients are using.
She coordinates and implements all translation efforts, including soliciting bids, managing timelines, providing files to the translation companies, implementing translations for the web pages, and testing.
ULLA WESTERMANN / Software Engineer
Ulla uses her years of experience as a software engineer to maintain and add new features to TruScore's applications. She also helps with customizing feedback reports based on client needs.
HANK CURTIS / Business Development Manager
Hank manages and assists in the analyzing, planning, research, and development of TruScore’s objectives and strategic plans in order to achieve business opportunities, growth, and financial profitability.
Hank drives the expansion of TruScore’s direct sales, establishes relationships with TruScore’s clients, identifies clients, and keeps up-to-date on industry trends and client developments.
TAYLOR BRANTON / Bookkeeper
Taylor is responsible for managing payroll and employee fringe benefits programs, in addition to organizing company gatherings and outings. Taylor oversees day to day accounting needs as it relates to client invoicing, accounts payable, and general compliance requirements. She also has a hand in month, quarter, and year end reports and works closely with the CEO and CTO to furnish details necessary to make accurate business projections and decisions.
KURT BLAZEK / Design Director
Kurt uses a unique blend of strategic thinking with dynamic executions to create TruScore’s visual and interactive design. He is responsible for creating, evolving, and sustaining the company’s brand to internal and external stakeholders through multiple mediums. He oversees all of TruScore’s digital strategies, along with the implementation of social media tools and techniques.
Kurt leverages TruScore’s marketing and messaging information to identify, evaluate, and apply methods to maximize the effectiveness of the search campaigns across all of the major search engines. He tracks and measures the ROI of search engine rankings, direct print, and marketing websites.
JOSH SHEETS / Chief Operations Officer
Josh is responsible for all day-to-day aspects of managing the operations and various functional areas including business development, sales and marketing, client delivery, vendor relations, human resources, and IT.
Josh helps to ensure outstanding customer service, and the administration of long-term and day-to-day business processes that complement the delivery of high quality, innovative customer-focused survey tools, assessments and hosted survey offerings.
TOM KUHNE / Managing Partner and CTO
Tom joined TruScore in 1995 and has served in a number of roles, including Data Analyst, IS Manager, and VP & CIO. In his current role as Managing Partner and CTO, Tom is the driving force behind TruScore's technology vision for the present and the future. He manages all aspects of TruScore’s information systems, ensuring all systems meet the highest functionality and security standards.
Tom enjoys working hand in hand with clients and partners to make sure TruScore® delivers the technology and advancement that has become expected of it as a leader in the online assessment marketplace.
DEREK MURPHY / Chief Executive Officer
Derek joined TruScore in 1996 and has served in a number of roles, including Data Analyst, Operations Manager, and President & COO. In his current role as CEO, he is responsible for planning and implementing the strategic direction of the company. In addition, Derek is involved in product development and overseeing the day-to-day business operations for TruScore.
TruScore founder Dr. Daniel Booth, a pioneer in the field of assessment of leadership and management skills, served as a mentor to Derek for more than a decade. During this time, Derek became certified on TruScore’s full line of management and leadership assessments. He currently uses these skills to lead content debriefings with customers and partners on a regular basis.
Need to talk?
Are you a client?
If you’ve been in the 360 degree feedback, or broader leadership assessment space, for long enough you’ve likely managed your own 360 platform at some point. And if so, you’ve surely grappled with this decision, how long should you continue managing and maintaining your own 360 software and when does it make sense to finally outsource. In this day and age, many are already past this crossroads, but for those who continue to question whether or not outsourcing their assessment platform is right for them, this article may prove helpful.
Look, we get it, after years of managing and maintaining your systems, chasing down issues and scrambling just to keep up with the latest trends, you end up spending too much time and money on the tech side of the business, and not enough time and focus on your core business, which is surely where your real expertise and passions lie. And yet, many firms seem stuck in this very scenario. For those who are trying to be both a software company and a leadership development company this article explores 3 reasons why it’s more critical than ever to re-think your firm’s identity.
While terms like “hosting” and “in the cloud” are used in nearly all aspects of business technology today, they simply didn’t exist back when many assessment companies were looking to move assessments online. This was near the end of the golden era of paper surveys and Scantron machines; it was a time when Software as a Service (SaaS) or even Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) just weren’t a thing. So, when assessments began migrating away from paper and towards the web, assessment companies (at least those who wanted to survive) took the logical step of building out their own platforms. These weren’t companies carefully weighing the options of build vs. outsource; there was only one option. If you wanted to move to the web, then you needed to find a way to build your own platform, manage your own servers, hire software developers, etc. And even when outsourcing options initially did become available, they were cost prohibitive. Simply put, the landscape has changed and there are options that exist today that just didn’t exist when L&D and assessment firms were transitioning their business to the web.
Think about it, if today’s options existed during that pivotal time, would these assessment companies still have made the costly decision to hire IT teams and developers just to build something entirely from scratch and then pay to manage it themselves? Would you have made the same decision? Probably not. Many organizations are now taking a good hard look in the mirror to determine what type of company they want to be. Are we a content company? A training or coaching company? Or a technology company? Don’t get caught playing in the wrong space; one that doesn’t cater to your strengths. Chess or Checkers? It’s an important distinction.
For years, the act of taking out a pencil and manually completing a paper survey was just how it was done; it was accepted as the standard. Until it wasn’t. As soon as an easier, faster and cheaper option became available, (i.e. clicking through a survey online) paper surveys quickly became antiquated. There came a point in time where proposing paper surveys was a sales pitch killer and not having an online option meant losing to your competitors. This same evolution is happening again, but this time with the online User Experience itself. Just as paper surveys became obsolete so too have previous generations of technology and web design. UI and UX trends are evolving at such a rate, that presenting an even slightly outdated system becomes a highly visible blemish to what otherwise might be an excellent assessment solution.
As technology becomes more advanced and more integrated in all aspects of our lives, user expectations are higher than ever. Keeping ahead of the curve is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement – at least if you want to remain relevant and competitive. However, doing so requires immense financial investment. It also requires time, focus, and advanced technological expertise. If you’re not going “all in” on your 360 feedback software, then you risk falling behind and from there, it’s a slow march towards irrelevance. Like the evolutionary leap from paper to online, we’re now in an era where not having tools like interactive dashboards, talent analytics, or fully automated integrations is becoming an albatross. And this is not to mention the ever-increasing security and data privacy hoops you must jump through (don’t worry, we cover that in a separate blog).
Over the years, we’ve heard from several leaders in our industry who maintain their own platform, while also fully understanding the benefits of a hosting provider. They can clearly see that outsourcing would be cheaper and yield better outcomes, and they understand the massive time and resource drain involved in maintaining their current system. They can visualize the end-state of freeing up resources and having pure focus on their core business, all while saving money and getting a better user experience. These are folks who know where to go, they just aren’t quite sure how to get there. After all, the idea of forklifting an entire ecosystem of surveys, scoring, normative data, report templates, etc. can seem daunting. And we’ve found that most make assumptions about what that might cost and what else might they lose in the migration. We’re often asked, will I have to adopt a generic report, will I be able to keep my branding, my norms, my historical data, my methodology? We answer those questions in three words: Fully Customized Hosting. The goal is to leverage the technology, the security and performance that a hosting solution provides, but while keeping all the elements of your existing and proprietary content that makes you, “you.”
In closing, the core question here is about identity. Are you a technology company or are you an L&D company? While doing both may have worked in the past, it just doesn’t cut it in today’s environment. The tech game has fundamentally changed, the stakes of not keeping up have never been higher, and migrating isn’t as daunting (or expensive) as you may think. The bottom line: The costs of outsourcing has dropped over the years, while the cost of maintaining the status quo are growing every day.
