About Us

Deborah Laurel

Founder and CEO

Deborah Spring Laurel has been a teacher and a consultant in the areas of workplace learning and performance improvement for over fifty years. She has thirty-eight years of experience as the President of Laurel and Associates, Ltd., a certified woman-owned small business that specializes in participatory classroom and virtual training.

Deborah has designed and delivered hundreds of highly effective participatory classroom and virtual learning programs on various topics, all of which have been tailored to meet her clients’ needs. She also has a specific area of expertise in technical curriculum design for the manufacturing, energy, banking and transportation industries.

Since studying with Dr. Madeline Hunter of UCLA to become proficient in the Mastery Teaching Model, Deborah has provided train-the-trainer seminars and certification programs on a national basis for over ten years and on an international basis since 1998.

Deborah taught management and supervisory topics for the Executive Management Institute and the Small Business Development Center in the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin- Madison for over thirty years.

She also taught management, supervision and organizational development programs for the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs for adult education at Cardinal Stritch University and the Associate degree programs at the Madison Area Technical College.

She facilitated the three-day national Trainer Certificate Program for the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD).

Deborah is also a Certified Professional Consultant to Management, with over twenty-five years of experience in human resource management, organizational development, executive coaching, and performance consulting. She has her Masters Degree from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

She has been published frequently. “User Friendly Performance Evaluation” is a chapter in a monograph published by the University of Minnesota and National ASTD. She is published in both the Learning and the Consulting issues of the 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 Pfeiffer Annuals. She authored two Info-Lines: Conducting a Classroom Learning Audit and Jump-Start Your Learning Objectives. She is also a contributing author for The Leadership Challenge Activities Book and 101 More Ways to Make Training Active.

Deborah has published a free weekly Laurel Learning Tips newsletter since 2004 and is an expert author at ezines.com.

She is a 2014 winner of the Wisconsin Governor’s Trailblazer Award.