The 2008 Learning In Practice Awards

Landry said winning the Gold Vanguard award can only enhance her team’s work in the future.

“For a young learning organization like ours, receiving this award has boosted our credibility in-house and helped to validate the sizable investment our executive team has made in learning programs,” she said. “It was a leap of faith for our execs, but Nuance University has quickly become our global learning hub. Winning this award has helped to validate our approach and will make it easier for us to keep building on our successes into the future.”

Perhaps it also makes those sleepless nights worth it, too. “All the heavy lifting over the previous year was considered important and worthy of recognition by my peers — professionally, it doesn’t get any better than that,” she said.

– Agatha Gilmore

VANGUARD AWARD • GOLD • DIVISION 2

Ed Cohen
Chief Learning Officer, Satyam Computer Services Ltd.

This year’s Division 2 Gold Award winner in the Vanguard category is Ed Cohen, chief learning officer for Satyam Computer Services Ltd., based in Hyderabad, India.

Cohen has more than 25 years’ experience in corporate learning and organization development under his belt. He is an international speaker and author of numerous articles on learning, as well as a book on leadership. Prior to his current role, Cohen served as senior director of strategic leader learning and development at Booz Allen Hamilton, a global consulting firm.

“Learning and innovation is embedded into the DNA at Satyam,” Cohen said. “Each time we transform from here to there, having the external recognition validates our efforts and impact.”

When Cohen joined Satyam in 2005, he was faced with myriad challenges. The company was growing both rapidly — doubling roughly every 18 months — and broadly, with Satyam’s 55,000 associates scattered across 62 countries.

Perhaps as a result, there was a high reliance on external talent for leadership positions, and a corresponding high level of leader turnover. In addition, the growth meant Satyam was gaining an increasingly global focus, and leaders had to be effective in this new context.

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