Gus Prestera Email & Phone Number

I own and operate Prestera FX (www.presterafx.com), a consulting firm that helps HR, L&D, and business leaders improve the way they manage, engage, and develop their people. I lead a team of passionate consultants who represent different disciplines, including organization development, leadership development, instructional design, multimedia production, and people analytics. Much of my own work involves analyzing organizational needs, strategizing how to bring about positive change, designing solutions, leading project teams in building out and implementing those solutions, facilitating workshops and webinars, and coaching.

Washington, Dc, Us

Am teaching SPEX-615 Decision Making and Change Management, an online, graduate-level course that I helped to design in 2018. More than 80% of organizational change initiatives end in failure, so my students are learning how to beat the odds by leveraging the psychology of change research and change management best practices that we practitioners have learned the hard way.

Malvern, Pennsylvania, Us

As a partner and head of Client Services, I had the privilege of leading a team of 80+ full-time consultants, instructional designers, creative designers, multimedia developers, recruiters, and supervisors as well as a large network of freelance contractors and on-shore and off-shore vendor-partners. I worked closely with my team of Senior Directors and Directors to implement our business strategy, support sales growth, improve service lines, ensure client satisfaction, manage costs, and develop new capabilities. I'm proud of the talented team we assembled, the great work our consultants did under trying conditions, and the talent development and OD initiatives we supported for our clients.PDG is a full-service L&D consulting firm that helps its corporate clients develop workforce transformation strategies; design and develop training and performance support solutions; and then implement those strategies and solutions. Its activities range from strategy consulting and curriculum design to developing e-learning, ILT, simulation, and mobile learning solutions; to training implementation and LMS administration; to establishing long-term staffing, managed services, and business process outsourcing (BPO) engagements.

University Park, Pa, Us

I designed and taught two graduate-level courses at Penn State Great Valley within the Instructional Systems (INSYS) Program: an elearning design course and an instructional design strategy course. Students could take these courses as part of their MED program or as part of their Elearning Design Certificate program.

My wife, Mae, and I owned and operated an instructional design firm that specialized in building custom, blended training programs. Our team of 15+ included instructional designers, graphic designers, multimedia developers, and project managers. We worked primarily with mid- and large-sized organizations, such as Morgan Stanley, Merck, HP, and Comcast. We designed job-specific training programs that typically included a blend of elearning tutorials, quizzes, games, and/or simulations along with instructor-led workshops and/or webinars, as well as print-based materials. The team leveraged an extensive collection of documented best practices, tools, and technologies that we created in-house. Mae and I sold effectPerformance in 2009 to join forces with PDG.

Salt Lake City, Utah, Us

What a wonderful experience this was for me! I got to work with some of the brightest, most creative minds in the multimedia industry. I was a senior instructional designer, which meant that I was often managing my own projects and working other IDs, graphic artists, and programmers as well as coordinating with the client and sales team. I had to transition quickly from classroom training to online training, but it was a great learning experience for me.

Markham, On, Ca

I joined Pet Valu as a store manager, shortly after this Canadian company began its US expansion. I was soon asked to join the start-up training department as an instructor, training new managers and franchisees. I worked under the late Mike Harfman, who introduced me to instructional design. He got me hooked. After he passed away, I was promoted to supervisor and spent most of my time designing new training programs. This was a transitional time for me, as I began to take Instructional Systems classes at Penn State, where I was already working on my MBA. It's when I decided to go for my PhD in Instructional Systems. By the end of my tenure at Pet Valu, I had decided that I wanted to round out my skill set by immersing myself in the growing field of multimedia design (e-learning), so I lobbied hard for a position with Allen Communication, at the time a giant in this small but facinating field.

Phd, Education: Instructional Systems

Mba, Management

Bs, Marketing