About Talent Champions
Talent Champions with Diana Thomas brings you relevant and engaging discussion focused on issues facing the world of HR and talent development. Your host, Diana Thomas, is a prominent leader in the talent development space, not only as a seasoned talent VP for McDonald’s Corporation, but also as an executive coach and advisor to high-potential leaders.
Each episode of Talent Champions features a diverse, relevant, and engaging array of guests in lively discussions, sharing best practices and promoting new approaches to old problems. Through discussions of important issues facing leaders in learning, HR, and talent development, the audience finds new ways to succeed and grow in their roles. Talent Champions is sponsored by FranklinCovey.
Host Diana Thomas
Executive Coach, Advisor, and Author
As an executive coach, Diana partners with great people and helps them be better leaders and find more happiness in their lives. As a proven successful executive, Diana brings decades of experience, expertise and education to her coaching with business executives, teams and learning/talent leaders to increase their impact, inspire committed followership and engagement, and build strong diverse teams that pull together to achieve Winning Results.
Diana is the co-author of the 2018 strategic leadership book, Be More Strategic in Business: How to win through Stronger Leadership and Smarter Decisions.
Diana began her career as a McDonald’s restaurant crew member in 1979, and rose to become Vice President of Training, Learning & Development for McDonald’s USA. In this role, she led all aspects of training and development including the restaurant training curriculum at Hamburger University, McDonald’s global training center of excellence. Her mission was helping to build the pride, culture and business results of McDonald’s USA by focusing on successful, consistent operations training systems and standards for all restaurant managers and crew employees.
Diana is an Editorial Advisory Board member for Chief Learning Officer magazine, a faculty member for Media Tech’s CLO Accelerator Class, a Board Member for the National Diversity Council, and a past member of Tri-City Family Services’ Board of Directors and an Advisory Board Member for the American Council on Education. She is a Certified Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder Executive & Team Coach and an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation (ICF). She holds an MBA, a master’s degree in Human Resources Development and Business Management, and a BA in Education and Economics.
Diana is married with two daughters, and enjoys spending time with family, focusing on health and wellness, teaching yoga, and lifelong learning.
Why Podcasting?
Diana has always been passionate about giving back, and the Talent Champions podcast has given her a platform to create content that supports leaders in learning, HR, and talent development. As a lifelong lover of learning, Diana embraced the idea of podcasting as an opportunity to try something new and stretch her skills into a new medium. When she began researching topics and creating a guest list, she was excited to realize that the podcast would bring together these two values.
We hope you will enjoy listening and find the content relevant. Please reach out, share your feedback, and submit your ideas for future guests and episodes.
Credits
Talent Champions is the product of a team of collaborators who bring each episode to life. Special thanks to:
Creative Direction and Scripting: Sara Jensen
Editing and Technical Support: Travis Rust