Action Pact, Inc. is a coalition of trainers, consultants and educators who focus their efforts towards helping people work better for themselves and their organizations. We do this by working with you to redesign the way the organization itself functions, restructuring more traditional top-down management into a collaborative effort of self-governing teams. This allows people to shed the confining role of a traditional employee, giving them opportunities to be leaders in their own right. While most of Action Pact's clients are in long-term care and other health-related fields, the concepts and practices we teach are equally applicable to a variety of industries. To contact us, you can email lavrene@actionpact.com or call us at (414)258-3649.

Action Pact, Inc. Executive Leader LaVrene Norton

LaVrene has worked both as an internal and an external consultant in a variety of service settings, from small single-facility companies to major corporations of 40,000 employees. She has extensive experience assisting organizations in designing ways to think through needed changes in strategy and then actively engaging their employees in the needed changes. She has also had over fifteen years of experience in the not-for-profit sector, providing her with a solid background in adult education, group facilitation and program administration. This background has served her well in her work in healthcare.

She has designed and participated in unique solutions for creating meaningful daily living for our elders in nursing homes and other residential care environments. She created a High Involvement model in 1991 that engages everyone - elders, families, physicians, the community and all staff in deciding on and moving toward the desired living environment. She works with organizations to foster culture change and help them move from a medical model of treatment to a social model of care. She has often been involved as a consultant from the initial study and visioning phases through the design and implementation of these dramatic changes. She assists in implementing the organizational design through the training and development of leadership and all levels of staff. This often involves restructuring the organization into neighborhoods or communities that utilize universal workers.

LaVrene worked as Vice President of Executive Development for a national healthcare company that grew from less than $100 million to 1 billion dollar company in six years via more than 150 mergers and acquisitions. Reporting directly to the CEO, she directed the design of change events, the ongoing development planning for a continuously growing leadership, and had oversight of numerous assessing, auditing and orientation processes appropriate to human resources. Her responsibilities included administrative leadership of internal communications, as well as co-director of the human resources department.

Training areas include:

• Creating a Learning Climate workshops that develop leaders to train others.
• Vision and leadership training.
• Real-time strategic change events that can engage dozens, hundreds, or tens of thousands of employees in educational and planning sessions at the same moment in time.
• Development sessions for participants in 360 degree feedback programs.
• Various performance management topics, including hiring and selection, communication, education, coaching, supervision, conflict resolution, goal-setting and performance reviews.

1. Experiential learning - learning by doing.
2. Self-directed learning.
3. Recursive learning - Training designed to speed up learning by conveying multiple concepts simultaneously.
4. Creative utilization of the students as trainers, which further reinforces the concepts and techniques they have learned.

LaVrene has over twelve years of experience in designing and administering Assessment Centers for both selection and development purposes. She has designed Assessment Centers for Administrators and Directors of Nursing which have been statistically validated. Along with Dr. Sara Murray Thompson of Trinity College in Washington, DC, she has presented the results at two international conferences. LaVrene originally received her assessment training from Development Dimensions International in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

LaVrene's education includes a Bachelor's Degree from Marquette University, and a Master's Degree from St. Louis University, and she has served as a faculty associate at Johns Hopkins University, teaching courses on team and leadership. She has presented at national and international forums for the past sixteen years in her areas of expertise, including program development, innovative training methods, high involvement practices and Assessment Centers.

Action Pact, Inc. Senior Change Leader Megan Hannan

Megan has spent her work life focusing on Quality of Life issues for residents, families and staff in long term care. She began to work with the Eden Alternative in 1993, and Action Pact, Inc. in 1996, and specializes in Person First dementia care. She has a master's degree in Therapeutic Recreation from the University of Missouri. Megan is currently involved with more than ten organizations actively working on deep culture change.

Megan provides strategic planning services to guide organizations in implementing the principles of the Eden Alternative as well as other models of cultural change. She involves elders, staff, families and advocates in creating an environment that ensures person-centered care, and helps organizations to alleviate loneliness, helplessness and boredom through companionship, variety and spontaneity, and the opportunity to care for other living things.

This process can be one part of a larger plan, including training and consultation services to improve communication between all levels of staff, residents and families in long-term care facilities. We can assist you in accessing resources to solve problems or to develop new programs to help your facility be a leader in the competitive long-term care market. And we can help you build a strong team of staff members that work together to identify challenges, implement change and create healthy, vibrant environments.

Megan specializes in training staff and developing programs that address the special needs of elders living with Alzheimer's. We provide experiential training that focuses on person-centered care. We can provide basic Alzheimer's care training as well as guidance in adapting services to meet unique behavioral needs. We also provide presentation on updated research and innovative ideas in the field of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders.