Managing Director,
Ageless Learner
 

Marcia L. Conner facilitates individual and organizational change that helps people focus on what matters most. She is managing director of the Ageless Learner (www.agelesslearner.com), a think-tank and consultancy focused on learning and adapting across the life span, and contributing writer for Fast Company magazine's learning resource center (www.fastcompany.com/resources/learning/). She is also cofounder of the Learnativity Alliance (www.learnativity.com), which brings people together to work at the intersection of learning, productivity, activity, and creativity. She is a frequent speaker, writer, and provocateur in adult education, human capital development, innovative leadership, organizational change, and learning culture. She serves as senior counsel and executive coach to leaders around the globe. In addition, she is a fellow of the Batten Institute at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia (www.darden.edu/batten).

She was Editor in Chief of Learning in the New Economy Magazine (www.linezine.com), an editorially independent publication featuring the best thinking on performance, intellectual capital, and leadership in turbulent times. She built and directed two worldwide education organizations (for Microsoft and PeopleSoft), helped take a company public in 1995, and had the role of Information Futurist and Chief Experience Designer for PeopleSoft’s community-based initiatives. Also, she launched PeopleSoft University and founded PeopleSoft Press as well as the PeopleSoft User-Experience Lab (the first usability group in the ERP market). She sits on the boards of several organizations.

Conner has been quoted or written about in publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Knowledge Management, Personnel Journal, Training Magazine, Fastcompany.com, Means Business, Service News, and Online Learning Magazine. She has spoken at events for organizations such as The Conference Board, The Brookings Institution, Linkage, The Innovation Group, Learning Disabilities Association, Internet World, Library Directors’ Association, ASTD, ISPI, SHRM, Coach University, and the eLearning Forum. She has been interviewed on Business News Network and radio stations across the country.

She recently published Learn More Now (John Wiley & Sons, March 2004), Creating a Learning Culture (Cambridge University Press, July 2004) for which she is coeditor and contributing author, she contributed a chapter on informal learning for Leading Organizational Learning (Jossey-Bass/Leader to Leader Foundation, 2004), and wrote the forward to Clark Quinn's Engaging Learning (Pfeiffer, 2005).

She has lived and worked on three continents, is a whitewater kayaker, and volunteers her time to talk with teachers and parents about creative solutions for children who have learning disabilities. She lives with husband Karl, son Clarke, and Karl's parents on a 50-acre homestead in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.