THOMAS H. PIERCE MBA
Tom Pierce has decades of experience leading, managing, and training people in corporate and non-profit organizations. At Pierce Management Development, Tom coaches executives, executive teams, and board members. He is certified by TalentSmart to administer and evaluate the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal™ and to present Discovering Emotional Intelligence™.
Tom’s coaching clients include executives in associations, chambers of commerce, nonprofit and business organizations from Washington, D.C. to Ohio to Colorado to California. He has coached teams and facilitated board retreats in organizations whose missions range from accreditation to accounting, from hospitality to horses, from chocolate production to skiing history preservation.
PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP
After a successful twenty-five year career in broadcast management with CBS Radio in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, and with Boston’s Knight Broadcasting Group, where he served as executive vice president and chief operating officer, Tom founded his first management consulting venture, StayTuned.
In 1997, the multi-state financial services holding company Banknorth Group (now TD Bank), recruited Tom to become the company’s senior vice president and managing director, marketing. In 2001, Tom formed Pierce Communications Group to share his expertise in marketing, motivating, and mentoring with businesses and nonprofits.
In 2002, Tom was named to the faculty of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Organization Development, where he developed and taught management and communication courses for five years.
From 2007 through 2012, ASAE, the American Society of Association Executives, selected Tom to be one of five executive career coaches serving members attending the Annual Meetings in Chicago, San Diego, Toronto, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Dallas. He served as Chair of ASAE’s Consultants Section Council in Washington, D.C.
From 2006 through the present, Tom has partnered with Lu Ann Dillon at Pierce Management Development to help executives and organizations move forward.
VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP
Shelburne Farms, Shelburne, Vermont Board Chair, 4 years Executive Committee, 7 years Trustee, 9 years
This former private estate was transformed into a nonprofit organization that inspires and cultivates learning for a sustainable future on a 1,400-acre working farm, forest, and National Historic Landmark site.
Champlain College, Burlington, VT Board Chair, 2 years Executive Committee,15 years Trustee, 17 years
Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, nonprofit, private college. During Tom’s service as trustee, the two-year institution evolved into a dynamic four-year college with campuses in Vermont, Montreal, and Dublin, Ireland. In its earliest 19th Century years, Champlain College taught clerks, bookkeepers and secretaries arithmetic, penmanship, typing, stenography and telegraph operation For the past five years, U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of “America’s Best Colleges” named Champlain College one of the nation’s “Most Innovative Schools.”
Champlain Valley CrimeStoppers, Burlington, VT Founding Board Chair, 1 year Board Member, 8 years
Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, Burlington, VT Board President, 1 year Board Member, 7 years
Vermont Association of Broadcasters Board President, 2 years Board Member, 10 years
Comity, San Francisco
This nonprofit organization was dedicated to bringing live music to people in institutions such as prisons, hospitals, and drug rehabilitation centers. Founding Board President, 1 year Board member, 3 years
Vermont State Olympic Committee, Stowe, Vermont
Board Member, 7 years Co-founder,The U.S. Olympic Ski Challenge at Stowe
During its seven-year run, this world-class race event for corporate teams and Olympic celebrities raised more than one million dollars for the U.S. Olympic Team.
EDUCATION
Tom received a B.A. from Williams College, graduating with highest honors in English. He earned an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, focusing on marketing and finance.
LU ANN DILLON M.A.
Lu Ann Dillon is an executive-level consultant, educator, entrepreneur, and speaker. Lu Ann has led project teams in the defense, healthcare, utilities, government, and education sectors. She has served in state government in the executive branch and as adjunct faculty to three New England higher-education institutions.
As a partner at Pierce Management Development, Lu Ann’s executive coaching focuses on improving operational effectiveness by guiding her clients to solve organizational, structural and workflow challenges. She has a special interest in helping women deal effectively with the unique issues they continue to face as leaders in the workplace.
PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP
Lu Ann began her career as a teacher, teaching graduate-level courses sparked by the newly mandated health education requirements for public school teachers. She expanded that experience into a foray of graduate school studies, consulting on the design of statewide curricula, and a University-level adjunct teaching position.
After teaching on the secondary and university levels, she began a career in management consulting and rose to the executive level. As senior vice president of the Maryland-based consulting firm Bell & Company, Lu Ann led project teams of as many as thirty professionals. Her teams specialized in complex operational planning and analysis, project strategy and design, fact-finding, and the strategic execution of performance-improvement measures.
Working collaboratively with clients' management, Lu Ann and her consultant teams helped to solve operational challenges for such clients as Tenet Healthcare, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin Aerospace, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, IMC Global, Florida Power & Light, and American Greetings Corp.
Lu Ann has served a faculty member at the University of Vermont, Champlain College, and Northeastern University. In 2004, Vermont Governor Jim Douglas appointed her Deputy Secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development.
VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP
Lu Ann has served as a mentor at NFTE, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship NFTE. She has chaired the University of Vermont’s Vermont Regional Board and served on UVM's Alumni Council.
EDUCATION
Lu Ann received her Bachelor of Science from University of Vermont, where she majored in education, physical and biological sciences, and psychology. She earned her Master of Arts from Boston University, majoring in health sciences and education.