Shari Barth is the founder and president of Optimal Training Solutions, a full-service training, brokering, and consulting company, focused on providing practical training, consulting, assessments, and tools to improve on-the-job performance and business effectiveness.  Shari has more than sixteen years experience in training (assessment, design, development, and delivery), consulting (internal and external), coaching (individuals, teams, and departments), and project management (large and small scale).

Before founding Optimal Training Solutions (a fully certified woman-owned business) in 2001, Shari was a Performance Improvement Consultant for JCPenney Direct Marketing Services, where she managed the design, development and delivery of customer loyalty training that helped retain 1.4 million customers.  Prior to her work at JCPenney, Shari was a Senior Change Management Consultant for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), where she helped develop the firm’s Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award training materials, and helped clients prepare for and successfully adapt to change.

Over the years, Shari has received numerous training certifications and honors.  One of those is the prestigious Million Dollar Award, given to Problem Solving and Decision Making instructors whose workshop participants have collectively saved their organizations over a million dollars.  Participants in Shari’s workshops have tracked savings currently in excess of $15,000,000.

Listed below is some additional information about Shari’s background:

• Shari’s stand-up training experience includes meeting facilitation and train-the-trainer certifications, as well as soft-skill, professional development workshops and functional job training classes.
• Shari is a seasoned consultant and coach, having served this role as both an internal employee and as an external resource.  She has worked in the insurance, direct marketing, customer service, mortgage, telemarketing, retail, consumer products, utilities, healthcare, and banking industries.
• Shari’s instructional design experience includes developing workshops from scratch, as well as customizing and re-designing existing workshops.  Course content has included everything from soft-skill, professional development curriculums to functional job training subject matter. 

Shari holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from The University of Michigan.  She enjoys living in Plano, Texas with her husband and two young daughters.