2022 ATD Nashville Board Members
 | Craig Vining President Craig Vining is a highly accomplished and results driven learning and organizational development leader who promotes continuous improvement to drive company, employee, and client success. He has worked in a variety of industries including healthcare, retail, and hospitality and has over 20 years of experience as a subject matter expert in managing the entire life cycle of training including the design, implementation, and evaluation of enterprise learning projects and initiatives. |
| Drew Smith President-Elect Drew Smith is the training director at Quore, a hotel operations software company in Franklin. As one of the first employees, Drew championed the self-guided learning strategy for Quore customers by creating, and now maintaining, the online knowledge base and e-learning courses. He is also passionate about the new hire onboarding experience—he launched “Quorientation” and since has successfully onboarded 13 cohorts. Over the years Drew has worked in various customer service and training roles. He holds a degree in journalism from East Tennessee State University. |
| Luke Benfield Past President Luke is a senior manager of learning and development for Accredo Health. He has worked in a variety of sectors including higher education, non-profit, and corporate with backgrounds in educational conference planning and execution, assessment, competency model development, LMS management, learning experience design, and group facilitation. Luke has a masters in Educational Leadership, and has a passion for discovering innovative ways to solve business problems with educational technology. |
Vice President - Finance |
| Ty Wheeler Vice President - Marketing & Communications Ty Wheeler joined TrainingPros in 2017 as a field account manager and is based in the Nashville metro area. She utilizes expertise in marketing, graphic design, consultative sales, instructional design, creative problem solving, and relationship selling to serve TrainingPros clients in the Southeast market. She earned a bachelor’s degree in management and organizational leadership at Bethel University and a master’s degree in instructional design and technology from Trevecca Nazarene University. |
| Amee Macaluso Vice President - Member Experience Amee Macaluso, a Senior Director of Organization Development at Somatus, is known for many things, but perhaps none more than her unmatched ability to engage. She has a unique talent to partner with leaders across businesses to achieve performance goals while leading organizational change and transformation—all while achieving top-notch results and prioritizing colleague involvement. Amee’s years of experience across multiple industries, including marketing, education, health care, and more, enable her to approach all types of learning with a growth mindset and apply lessons learned to best tap into colleague engagement on a personal level. She develops programs and learning methodologies colleagues can truly believe in, whether they’re around organizational development, talent and succession planning, diversity, equity, and inclusion, or leadership development. |
| Anthony Gerstner Vice President - Programming Anthony is currently a Training Manager with Veho, a rapidly expanding shipping and logistics startup. With nearly 15 years of experience in Talent Development, Anthony has worked with many well-known brands including Microsoft, Nestle, SodaStream, and Beats by Dr. Dre. He also has experience as an on-camera and virtual training specialist. As a Facilitator, Anthony has presented to groups as small as three and to rooms of over six-hundred. As an Instructional Designer, he has created a facilitator’s guide for Facebook, improved the training slides for Garmin, and helped create an interactive eLearning scenario for Google Fiber. |
| David Nimmo Vice President - Sponsorships David Nimmo is a learning and development professional with over 20 years’ experience in learning and development. He has worked for the Metro Government of Nashville, Bridgestone Corporation, Hospital Corporation of America, and Vanderbilt University. David has a love of helping learners reach their potential and meet their personal and professional goals. He also enjoys team facilitation to help teams become stronger and more cohesive. In addition, he is always ready to improve any process he works with using process improvement methods such as Lean Six Sigma. In his spare time he enjoys backpacking, kayaking, and any time he can spend with his family. |
Chance Ryon Chance Ryon serves as an Employee Learning & Engagement Consultant for for Vanderbilt University's Department of Human Resources. As an internal consultant, Chance partners with university departments and stakeholders to provide Vanderbilt employees with professional development opportunities, engagement and appreciation events, and enhanced organizational effectiveness. |
 | DeAnne Priddis Member-At-Large DeAnne (Dee) is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. She has a PhD in Communication (UW Milwaukee) and a MS in Human Resources Training & Development. Her research includes interpersonal and group conflict in families and organizations. Priddis has over 15 years of corporate and nonprofit professional experience primarily in human resources and training prior to her career in academics. She specialized in onboarding programs and safety training. She is also a Tennessee Supreme Court (TSC) Rule 31 Mediator. |
Lei Comerford Member-At-Large Lei is a highly effective Leadership Coach, Facilitator and Learning & Development Consultant experienced helping organizations improve productivity, effectiveness, and engagement. Lei has over 14 years of strategic and operational experience in healthcare specifically the bio-pharmaceutical and pharmacy benefit management (PBM) industries as well as over 5 years in hospitality. Lei has dedicated years delivering best practices in customer service, coaching, mentoring, project management and facilitation to individuals, businesses, and organizations.Lei is master facilitator certified in a variety of assessment tools and holds the ACC accreditation through the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She has held many internal leader roles in corporate settings as well as is the founder of her own consulting firm. She has delivered leadership development programs, implemented internal coaching and mentoring programs, coached 1:1 with leaders at varying levels and has designed annual learning portfolios, team journeys, and onboarding programs. Lei has a passion for helping others reach beyond their goals through increased self-awareness with an objective to empower effectiveness and engagement with each client! Lei gives back to the local and global community through volunteer efforts with the International Coaching Federation “ICF Coaches for Good”, The Association for Talent Development (ATD) Nashville chapter and Humanitarian Coaches Network (HCN). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Resort and Commercial Recreation from Georgia Southern University. |
 | Amanda Bramlett Director - Website and Virtual Engagement Amanda received a BA in Foreign Languages from The University of Memphis in 2007. The language concentrations were Latin and Italian. In 2011 she received an MAT in Instruction and Curriculum Leadership with a concentration in Secondary Education also from The University of Memphis. She taught High School Latin for two years. Amanda then worked in Information Technology for two years. After that, she joined the Learning and Development team of a local Nashville business to become an Instructional Designer. Currently Amanda works in the IT field. Amanda is very interested in technology of all types, languages and linguistics, and kitty cats. |
 | Kim Vance Legal Advisor Kim is a shareholder in the Labor & Employment Department at Baker Donelson's Nashville office. She has more than 25 years of experience representing management in every aspect of labor and employment law. |
