Our Team

From our team to your team
When you see blue sky… go for it!

At ACHIEVEBLUE we’ve built a winning team to support your winning team. We are results oriented and free of pre-judgment. We approach each client as a new, exciting challenge, we learn your culture, your values, and your business, and then we apply our problem-solving skills, industry experience, and business expertise to your particular environment. We believe revaluation means renewal. We believe in fresh, forward-thinking perspectives. And we believe in the adage that, “It is truly a gift to see ourselves as others see us.”

We are experienced CEOs and industry professionals with a wealth of insight and experience to share. We know the pit-falls, we reject the short-cuts. We focus on making a straight line between changing leadership styles and organizational culture, and producing bottom-line results that are qualitative, measurable, and self-evident. We know it’s a complex job and we’re up for the challenge. Change in any context is not for the meek of heart.

What is the basis of our beliefs? To get to know our team a little better, review the short individual biographies below.


Mona Mitchell, Founding Partner, President and Chief Executive Officer

Mona Mitchell is a recognized corporate strategist and visionary with a focus on building sustainable global relationships in the learning and development industry. As Executive Vice President of Sales and Business Development with CDI Education for more than 13 years, Mona used her passion for excellence and sustainable growth to build the business from $1M to $38M in annual sales. More recently, Mona has established herself as a leader in the field of Professional Development working with IPSolutions, a partner of the Stanford Center for Professional Development out of San Mateo, California.
Mona’s greatest strength is her focus on excellence and a keen understanding of how to develop the best in employees. Using her wealth of experience, Mona has helped large organizations achieve success with partners and customers including Microsoft, Hatch, Bell Canada, and the Royal Bank of Canada. As a founding partner of ACHIEVEBLUE, Mona’s passion continues to help executives create high performing organizational cultures that allow employees to excel.

Myrna Ain, Founding Partner and Executive Vice President, Culture and Leadership Development

Myrna Ain’s specialty is large scale cultural change initiatives. She is internationally recognized as an expert in the field. As co-author of the book, “The Leader Within”, she strongly believes that “when wanting to create a culture of innovative thinking and collaboration, skills activation trumps skills acquisition.” Working with clients like IBM, Xerox, World Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Cossette Communications, Myrna also has become known for her thought provoking assertions. Myrna co–created a joint Canada⁄US research project, the first of its kind in Canada, called “The Best of the Best: the role of leadership and culture in creating Canada’s best organizations.” The research report was presented in November 2003, in Toronto, at The Conference Board of Canada’s event entitled, “Culture: the new benchmark for organizational excellence.”

Myrna graduated with a BA in Psychology from the University of Toronto, and a Masters in Adult Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Prior to launching her own consulting practice, Myrna was Senior Consultant with Xerox Learning Systems and Director of Sales Training at Syntex Pharmaceutical. Today, as co–founder of ACHEVEBLUE, Myrna assists in both the design and implementation of organizational alignment initiatives to support the strategic plan. By measuring and then examining the role that leadership and culture plays in organizational success, Myrna helps leaders to deliver on their financial, brand, quality, customer loyalty and the attraction and retention of key talent goals.

Jason Questor, Founding Partner and Executive Vice President, Learning Systems

Originally with Honeywell Information Systems, Jason is the author of dozens of courses, articles and presentations in business analysis, systems analysis, project management, data and process modeling, software development and system security. Jason provides business transformation consulting with client management and staff personnel to align organizational culture with strategy, codify business rules, identify opportunities and improve business practices. As a management coach and mentor, Jason works to leverage the interpersonal effectiveness, professional and technical skills of organizational leaders to create inspired teams and market leading client products and services.

Jason’s passion for effective business solutions, coupled with his consultative training style, have allowed him to deliver effective and transformational training for global private sector market leading organizations in North America and Europe, including AT&T, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Cisco Systems, CNH Global, Liberty Mutual Insurance and Royal Bank of Canada. His work with government agencies includes the Canada Revenue Agency, the BC Ministry of Government Services, the US Mint, The US Navy Air Command, the US Army Corps of Engineers and The US Department of Energy, Los Alamos Research Laboratory.

Jason is founding President of the Toronto Chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis®, and served as Editor, Contributor and Head of the Graphics team for the current release of the Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge®. Jason is Team Lead for the development of the next major IIBA® publication, A Guide to Enterprise Analysis, scheduled for publication in 2011.

Lynda Keating, Executive Vice President, Culture and Leadership Practice

Lynda Keating is a senior HR leader with extensive experience in Organizational Development and Effectiveness, Leadership Development, Learning Systems, Recruitment Strategy and International Consulting. Her experience has been gained in the retail, financial and telecommunications sectors with additional consulting experience in pharmaceuticals, mining and government.

Lynda has held Vice Presidential roles in two of Canada’s preeminent financial institutions, CIBC and Fidelity Investments, where she led multidisciplinary teams of professionals across Canada and North America. Her focus was the development and retention of key talent, working with senior leaders to translate strategy into practical and effective solutions. Her most recent role was as the Sr. Director of Leadership and Organizational Development at Loblaw. She has also held recruitment strategy roles in Bell Canada, Bank of Montreal and CIBC. As a consultant for Hay Group she has designed organizational effectiveness solutions for many Canadian and International clients.

Lynda holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from York University and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Toronto. She is currently in the midst of Certification as a Professional Coach and holds other certifications in learning and OD applications.

Derrick Fishwick, Executive Vice President, Sales and Business Development

As part of the executive team, Derrick Fishwick is responsible for ACHIEVEBLUE’s revenue generating efforts and strategic partnerships. Derrick received an Honours Bachelor of Science degree from University of Toronto and has recently received the designation of Stanford Certified Project Manager from Stanford University in California.

Derrick brings more than 15 years of experience in management and sales within the learning and development industry. Prior to joining us, Derrick held such key positions as Vice President for New Horizons Canada, Director of Sales and Business Development for Polar Bear Corporate Learning Solutions and more recently worked with IP Solutions, a partner of the Stanford Centre for Professional Development as Senior Consultant.

Derrick has worked with such global organizations as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, ING, Royal Bank of Canada, BMO Financial, Citigroup and Wal-Mart. With his focus on collaborative and innovative solutions, Derrick plays a key role helping organizations become more aligned with their strategic goals.

Susan Runcie, Program Manager

Susan Runcie is an integral part of the ACHIEVEBLUE team. She began her career in the marketing department of a national television station, holding a wide variety of positions and becoming familiar with everything from consumer and trade advertising campaign strategies to budget forecasting. Working closely with the sales department, Susan quickly learned about the importance of providing outstanding client service and ‘added value’ while developing targeted and easily executed promotions to increase brand awareness for her clients. The next stop on Susan’s professional development journey saw her joining a local training and development practice. It was there that Susan further developed her enthusiasm for enhancing the client experience, seeing first-hand the reactions and subsequent results of delivering just the right learning environment and the effect it had on the participants. From small scale strategy sessions for five participants to developing and executing large scale team-building events for more than 600 people, Susan took on each project with creativity, ingenuity and integrity.

Since arriving at ACHIEVEBLUE Susan has been charged with both office and program logistics management. With her well-honed client focus, support for both our internal and external partners is unwavering. Service is embedded in everything Susan does – she works with, thinks like, and then does right for the customer. With a passion for seeing people thrive in a nurturing and thought provoking environment, nothing excites Susan more than seeing people realize their full potential. With this philosophy in mind, Susan ensures each client experience is seamless and positive from start to finish.

Jeff Moore, Managing Partner - US Operations

Jeff has an extensive background in the training and development arena. Prior to joining ACHIEVEBLUE Jeff served as the Eastern Sales Director for a company providing a broad spectrum of safety and risk management programs. Prior to that Jeff worked for a major New England university in their Corporate Outreach program helping companies with succession planning and leadership development.

Jeff spent the early years of his professional career working for IBM and Raytheon Co. during which time he marketed systems related products to the US Federal Government. Jeff successfully founded and built a computer service firm which he eventually sold in 1991. Jeff also has experience in the development and management of a sales training school. Jeff is a retired military officer with 26 years in the Marines.

Walt Josephson, Managing Partner - US Operations

An Economics major in college, Walt cut his teeth at IBM, first as a programmer and Data Base Administrator and later as a Sales Representative. He did graduate work at Andover Newton Theological School earning an M.Div with a concentration in education and counseling and has spent the rest of his career helping people and organizations discover, define and maximize their personal and collective assets. Walt, having served as a parish minister for 15 years, went on to coach people in career transition at Manpower and Drake Beam Morin, develop leaders at CDI Education, enable talent assessment and deployment at Development Dimensions International and build leadership presence at the Arielgroup. 

Walt  has managed relationships with clients such as Hewlett Packard, Thomson-Reuters, GE, IBM, Columbia University and Raytheon, Walt is an active member of the Society of Human Resource Management and the American Society of Training and Development. He is the past president of the local SHRM chapter and has lectured in the graduate program of Industrial/Organizational Psychology at the University of New Haven. 

Bill Rasberry, Executive Consultant and Advisor

Bill Rasberry has done it all -- in sales management, marketing, general management, and executive leadership. Building upon the foundation of a degree in Chemical Engineering and an MBA, from the entrepreneurial world of small business, to the realm of senior leadership in Xerox, a corporate giant, and in the position of President of Canada’s leading post-secondary and corporate education company, CDI Education Corporation, Bill has consistently moved from one significant success to another.

In his 14 years at CDI, he developed a strategic model focused on intellectual property development and operational excellence which enabled growth and enhanced profitability, and attained outstanding results. The company achieved recognition as ‘One of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies’, as revenue grew from $30M to $130M. Bill shared co-leadership of the public offering of the company shares, and went on to lead seven acquisitions, adding both new services and new geography and, most notably, ensured these acquisitions resulted in extremely high retention of the personnel.

Bill brings all these skills to ACHIEVEBLUE. Over the years, one of the most critical lessons he has learned is that success is not a matter of ‘good times’ or ‘bad times’. In business, as in all human endeavours, key results grow out of what people bring to the equation. He believes that real and lasting success derives from relationships with colleagues, employees, partners, clients, and stakeholders, and from creating a culture of shared commitment.

Jill Hooper – Senior Associate

Jill is a senior facilitator with ACHIEVEBLUE Leadership Development Programs. Jill is an energetic and motivating business consultant, trainer, coach and speaker. Her practical approach to skills development is shaped by over 20 years in the corporate environment in a variety of functions including customer service, operations, sales and human resources.

Jill has facilitated with public and private sector, national and multinational companies. She delivers learning sessions and key note presentations for audiences from front line employees to the top of the house. Jill facilitates a full spectrum of business skills programs. She has facilitated to rave reviews across North America and at all organizational levels.

The special qualities Jill’s clients recognize and appreciate include her preparation, knowledge and spontaneity. Her professionalism, focus on business results and sense of humour engages learners in the moment and motivates them to apply the learning back on the job. As one of ACHIEVEBLUE’s senior facilitators, Jill has facilitated and consulted with clients like PWC, Canon, KPMG, NAV Canada, TELUS, Allergan Inc. and Royal Bank of Canada in the areas of leadership, innovation, sales and sales management, and communication skills.

Minna Graham, Strategic Consultant

Minna Graham’s years as a consultant fuel her passionate commitment to leadership development, team performance, and enhancing organizational effectiveness. She is recognized for designing and facilitating sessions that demonstrate her relentless focus on helping her clients build shared accountability and commitment to achieving outstanding and sustainable business results.

Her professional passion revolves around working closely with leaders and teams to enable and sustain high performance cultures. Her Bachelor of Arts in Interpersonal Communication and her Masters Degree in Environmental Studies with specific expertise in organizational effectiveness and conflict–resolution lay the foundations for her valuable contributions. In her work here at ACHIEVEBLUE, her passion, enthusiasm, and ability to engage with audiences are key personal attributes that resound the most with our clients.