Devon Scheef

Devon is President of Scheef Organizational Development & Training Inc. and Co-Founder of The Learning Café.  Her goal is to help organizations translate business strategy into practical actions that empower and enrich employee stakeholders.

Devon’s personal passion for developing leaders and mentoring is a consistent thread throughout her 17 years as a business owner, and her previous 17 years inside three Fortune 100 corporations (Bausch & Lomb, Xerox and TRW). Her corporate experience includes careers in market research, sales training and organizational development. In Devon’s last corporate role she led Leadership Development for TRW Information Systems.

Areas of Practice

Devon and The Learning Café collaborate with clients to create and implement leadership development, mentoring, succession planning, and talent engagement/retention strategies.

• Develop Emerging Talent – develop new and future leaders to fill the talent pipeline
• Mentor for Success – craft mentoring initiatives that get results; launch mentoring initiatives that accelerate high potential developmen
• Transfer Critical Knowledge – strategies to identify and protect critical organizational “know how”
• Engage a Changing Workforce – hire, engage and retain a four generation workforce
• Build Professional Brands – empower individuals and teams to identify, market and manage their brands both inside and outside their organizations
• Create Teams that Get Results – design and facilitate onsite or offsite meetings that create collaboration and boost group productivity

Conference Speaking & Presentations

Devon is a frequent and popular speaker at conferences. Her energizing style and thought-provoking content consistently receive high ratings from conference participants.

A brief sample of past and upcoming presentations includes:

• Diversity Best Practices / U.S. Steel – Here Come the Millennials! Find, Get & Keep the Workforce of the Future
• The Eisenhower Institute for Excellence in Public Service – Youthquake! 4 Generations in American Politics
• Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Passports to Leadership – Engaging Four Generations in Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing

Media, Publications & Awards

The Learning Café was tapped for the May 2010 PBS Special “The Brain Drain” based on their work in creating learning environments. This special, sponsored by AARP, highlights the critical need to connect the Millennial generation to organizational legacy.

Devon’s work has been published in the National Business Employment Weekly and Training & Development Journal.  The Learning Café’s leadership development work and expertise on the changing workforce has been cited in over 60 publications and a college textbook, Communication for Management.

Mentoring & On-the-Job Learning - Devon is the co-author of Mentoring: A How-To Guide published by the American Society for Training & Development.  She is the author of The Personal Learning Model, a unique approach to bolstering on-the-job learning capacity.

Leadership Development – A Learning Café client won an ASTD Award of Merit for a management development program in 2007.  Devon’s leadership development work has been showcased in Borrowing from the Best: Best Practices Resource Guide for Training and Continuous Learning.

Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay by Beverly Kaye & Sharon Jordan-Evans – This Wall Street Journal best-seller showcases 26 strategies A-Z for retaining and motivating organizational talent.  Devon is a subject matter expert for the chapter on retention strategies for the four workplace generations.

Human Resources in the 21^st Century – Devon and Diane are co-authors of the chapter on generational issues in this book showcasing fifty academics and thought leaders on the issues that businesses must successfully manage in the 21^st century.

Research / Publications from The Learning Café

From Backpacks to Briefcases, The Millennial Workforce Study by Diane Thielfoldt & Devon Scheef, 2009. The study showcases the new young workforce, and what every organization needs to know and do to keep pace with their future employees.

Engaging a Changing Workforce Study, by Diane Thielfoldt & Devon Scheef 2008, Comprehensive, groundbreaking research about the four generations in the workplace – and the engagement and dissatisfaction drivers for each.  The report provides invaluable information for anyone who needs to hire, lead, engage, or retain multiple workplace generations.

Education

Devon holds an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California, and undergraduate degrees in psychology, religious studies and business.  She is qualified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and a wide variety of testing and assessment tools, including 360 degree feedback.