About the Authors

David Vance is the executive director of the Center for Talent Reporting, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation and implementation of best practices and standards for human capital measurement, reporting, and management. He is the former president of Caterpillar University, which he founded in 2001. Until his retirement in January 2007, he was responsible for ensuring that the right education, training, and leadership were provided to achieve corporate goals and efficiently meet the learning needs of Caterpillar and dealer employees. Prior to this position, Dave was chief economist and head of the business intelligence group at Caterpillar with responsibility for economic outlooks, sales forecasts, market research, competitive analysis, and business information systems.

He was named 2006 Chief Learning Officer (CLO) of the Year by Chief Learning Officer magazine. He also was named 2004 Corporate University Leader of the Year by the International Quality and Productivity Center in their annual CUBIC (Corporate University Best in Class) Awards. Caterpillar was ranked number one in the 2005 ASTD Best Awards and was named Best Overall Corporate University in 2004 by both Corporate University Xchange and the International Quality and Productivity Center. During his tenure, Caterpillar University was honored with numerous other awards including many in the measurement and alignment arenas.

Dave is a frequent speaker at conferences and association meetings, and conducts workshops on measurement and reporting and running learning like a business. He also organizes and hosts CTR’s annual conference. Dave teaches in the human capital PhD programs at Bellevue University and the University of Southern Mississippi, as well as in the executive education program at George Mason University for Chief Talent Officers. He is a member of Working Group 2 on Metrics for the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee on Human Capital. Dave is also a trustee and lead independent director for State Farm Mutual Funds, and an intermittent chief learning officer for Defense Acquisition University. He is the author of The Business of Learning: How to Manage Corporate Training to Improve Your Bottom Line, 2nd edition. Dave received a bachelor of science degree in political science from MIT in 1974, a master of science degree in business administration from Indiana University, South Bend, in 1983, and a PhD in economics from the University of Notre Dame in 1988.

Dave, his wife, Barbara, and their two dogs live in Windsor, Colorado, where they moved after retiring from Caterpillar.

Peggy Parskey is the assistant director of the Center for Talent Reporting, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation and implementation of best practices and standards for human capital measurement, reporting, and management.

Peggy owns her own consulting firm, Parskey Consulting, enabling her clients to successfully implement strategic change initiatives that improve organizational and individual performance. She has a deep background in performance measurement and leverages her expertise in management of change and organizational design to ensure sustainable capability. Peggy is certified in management of change methodologies both at the organizational and individual performer levels. She also holds a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from Simmons College and two master’s degrees from the University of Chicago in statistics and business administration.

Peggy is also a part-time principal consultant at Explorance, a firm focused on employee journey analytics. She provides business development support and delivers strategic consulting services to talent and learning organizations. In this role, Peggy consults with organizations to develop talent measurement strategies; integrate measurement into talent processes; develop action-oriented reports, scorecards, and dashboard for clients; and conduct impact studies to demonstrate the link between talent programs and business outcomes.

Prior to working with CTR and Explorance, Peggy was employed at Hewlett-Packard Company where she was responsible for global learning processes focused on creating best-in-class learning methodologies as well as enterprise-wide evaluation for the L&D function. During her tenure, training value, effectiveness, and utility measurably improved. Peggy and her team authored a paper for the Journal of Performance Improvement entitled “Looking in the Mirror, Performance Improvement for Performance Improvers.”

Peggy has spoken at a number of conferences including those for the International Society for Performance Improvement, American Evaluation Annual Conference, Explorance Impact Symposium, and chapters of the Association of Talent Development (ATD). She has published several articles on measurement, chapters in two books, and is the co-author of the second edition of Learning Analytics: Using Talent Data to Improve Business Outcomes.

Peggy and her husband, Kevin McEntee, moved to Connecticut from Los Angeles in 2018 to be closer to their two daughters who live in New York and Philadelphia.