Leadership Skills for New Managers: Mastering the Art of Supervision
In today’s fast-paced business world, transitioning from individual contributor to manager can be exciting and daunting. Effective leadership at all…
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Learning & Development Blog
Posts By: Leslie Ciborowski
How To Hire An Instructional Designer
Today’s Instructional Designer: Part Renaissance Thinker/ Part Curious George The Changing Landscape of Instructional Design In the world of instructional…
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TrainSMART Served As A Chief Learning Officer For A Texas Engineering Firm
Introduction Many ask about the various projects that TrainSmart is involved in outside of the services we provide. It’s important…
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How To Prevent Scope Creep In Project Management
10 STEPS TO HALT THE SPREAD OF SCOPE CREEP Let’s face it. Scope creep happens. And all the planning and…
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Balancing Communication Styles: The Key to Effective Training
The Clash of Training Styles: Andy vs. Steve It was the first day of a five-day training course. Andy had…
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Implementing an Onboarding Program for Manufacturing Employees
Successful onboarding is critical to the success of employees and the organizational goals. The new employee needs to understand “the…
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4 Leadership Styles – Adapting Your Leadership Style to Drive Results
Blog Post Summary: The post covers directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating leadership styles. It guides when to use each approach…
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How to Conduct a Training Needs Analysis in a Manufacturing Setting
In today’s competitive manufacturing landscape, ensuring your workforce has the right skills and knowledge is crucial for success. However, with…
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The Top 10 Fun Customer Service Training Games Your Team Will Love
Do you want to make your customer service training fun and engaging for your employees? Games are a great way…
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Why Email Etiquette Is Important & Matters More Than Ever
American workers receive 120 emails daily and write at least 40 on average. Regardless of their profession—whether they are scientists,…
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Best Practices For Developing Technical Training Programs for Manufacturing Employees
In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of manufacturing, ensuring that your employees have the technical skills to operate, maintain, and…
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Scaling Training Excellence in Manufacturing: The Power of Train-the-Trainer Programs
In today’s fast-paced manufacturing environment, effective training is more critical than ever for ensuring that employees have the skills and…
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Maximizing the Value of Your Operator Trainers: Building a Smarter, Safer Workforce
Have you maximized the Value of Your Operator Trainers? This article explores the importance of operator trainer development in manufacturing…
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5 Best Characteristics Of A Great Leader
What does it take to be a great leader? I often ask participants in leadership development programs to identify the…
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Bridging the Leadership Gap: Strategies for Developing Future Managers
Depending on the industry, up to 50% of America’s workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next five years….
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How To Prepare To Facilitate Training
The Importance of Previewing Training Venues It could have been a disaster. One of my best practices when training in…
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3 Reasons Why Face-to-Face Training Is Here To Stay
Training methods evolve over time as new technologies emerge. But one format has staying power – face-to-face training. While some…
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The Empathy Gap: Why Remote Work Makes it Harder for Leaders to Connect With Employees
In a recent video workshop on Work-Life Balance, several participants shared some of their struggles in maintaining their workplace professionalism…
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How to Take Care of Customers in a Pandemic: The 3 Keys to Excellent Service
Customer Service has long been the lynchpin for achieving customer loyalty. What many organizations are finding is that what worked…
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The Secret to Career Success? Learning How to Delegate Effectively – Here’s How
Ask most successful leaders to pinpoint an event that was pivotal to their career success, and they are likely to…
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Storytelling For Trainers: Making Business Training Stick with Storytelling
Why has storytelling become such a valuable asset for trainers? The answer lies in the words of Maya Angelou: “People…
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What Are The Differences Between Trainers & Facilitators? Trainer vs. Facilitator
4 Reasons Why You Should Never Use “Facilitator and Trainer” Interchangeably “Facilitator” and “trainer” are often used interchangeably in corporate…
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Avoiding the Pitfalls: 7 Common Mistakes Trainers Make and How to Avoid Them
As a training professional, one of the most important aspects of your job is to ensure that your trainees can…
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The Power of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: How to Build Strong Relationships, Communicate Effectively, and Inspire Your Team
The concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has been around since the 1990s, and it has become increasingly recognized as an…
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5 Tips for Improving Workplace Communication with Your Team
As a manager, it’s important to ensure that you communicate effectively with your team members to foster a positive work…
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Best Practices for Effective E-Learning Course Development
A guide to designing and implementing effective e-learning programs, including common mistakes to avoid. Introduction: E-learning continues to grow in…
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How to Use Nonverbal Cues to Enhance Your Training Delivery
Use Body Language to Enhance Training Delivery Some say that two-thirds of our communication is nonverbal. That means every head…
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Mastering the Art of Engagement: How to Make Training More Engaging
As a training professional, one of the most important skills you can develop is the ability to engage your audience….
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How to Use Humor to Boost Learning and Retention
Using humor in training can be a powerful tool for boosting learning and retention. In this blog post, we will…
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Budgeting for Training: How to Create a Training Budget That Works
Creating a budget for training is crucial for ensuring that the training program is financially feasible and that you allocate…
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Cater to All Adult Learning Styles for Maximum Training Engagement
The Myth Of Adult Learning Styles It’s been called a neuromyth – the belief that students learn better when training…
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Adapting Training to Fit the Needs of Your Audience
It’s important to understand the needs of your audience when facilitating a training workshop to ensure that the material is…
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Unlocking Remote Training Success: Lessons Learned from 3 Years of Pandemic-Driven Education
Before March 2020, requests for virtual training were few and far between. Moreover, it was rarely the preferred platform, with…
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Delivering Cutting Edge Training: How to Upgrade your Training Skills by Attending a Train-the-Trainer Course
You are a trainer and you want to keep on top of the latest training techniques and methods. Enroll in…
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5 Steps to Designing a Corporate Learning Strategy that Aligns with Organizational Goals and Employee Needs
Designing a corporate learning strategy for an entire organization is a complex task that requires careful planning and execution. It…
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Could PowerPoint Be Ruining Your Virtual Training Sessions?
When facilitators/trainers started transitioning their workshops to the virtual space, they knew they had to give up many of their…
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What Is Train-the-Trainer Model: Essentials for Designing, Developing, and Delivering Effective Training
What Is The Train-the-Trainer Model? The Training the Trainer model is a comprehensive approach to developing effective corporate trainers, focusing…
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Part II – What TrainSmart’s Team of Learning And Development Professionals Learned in 2020
Learning and Development professionals are not essential workers. When organizations, businesses, and state governments issued stay-at-home orders last year, the…
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2020: The Year Learning Professionals Went Back To School: A Lessons Learned Series
Never has the expression “Hindsight is 20/20” felt more appropriate. Not only was 2020 a meteoric year of disruption, for…
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Virtual Training Best Practices – Four Mistakes To Avoid When Transitioning to Virtual Instructor-Led Training
During the era of silent movies, there wasn’t a bigger star than Norma Talmadge. She was the “IT” girl for…
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3 Key Skills Every Skilled Facilitator Needs To Have
What Skills Do Facilitators Need To Have To Be Successful? – It’s not unusual for someone to contact our offices…
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How To Improve Your Virtual Meetings – 5 Best Practices To Improve Virtual Meetings
Are Virtual Meetings The New Business Activity You Love to Hate? In 1969, a television program debuted with an OPENING…
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Training in the Time of COVID: How L&D Can Lead the Way in Adaptability
If life had occurred according to plan, the budgets for corporate training in 2020, would have increased over 2019 spending….
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How To Design Successful Virtual Training To Avoid Zoom Fatigue
In 2014, we wrote an article about the status of virtual training. Did we call it: Will Virtual Training Always…
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Tools of the Trade: What To Include In Your Training Room
Walking into a training room for the first time always reminds me of a new home or condo before the…
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How To Compose A Professional Email – 5 Tips For Writing Better Business Emails
Do You Have Poor Business Email Etiquette? Here Are 5 Tips On How To Write A Professional Email Emails are…
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Transforming Dry Content into Engaging Training Experiences
Imagine the most remarkable training session you’ve ever attended. Reflect on one or two key lessons you took away from…
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6 Ways to Convert Lurking Online Participants into Active Participants During An Virtual Training
Ask a seasoned trainer what’s their least favorite venue and there’s a 90% chance they’ll say: virtual. It doesn’t matter…
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How To Survive A Technical Disaster When Conducting A Training Session
Worst Case Scenario #1: How To Survive A Technical Disaster Technical disasters include equipment failure, equipment that doesn’t talk to each…
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Is Texting To Blame for Poorly Written Emails?
Whenever you’re in an elevator, in a lunch line, standing at the checkout at the grocery store or waiting for…
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Surviving A Mistake As A Corporate Trainer
Mistakes are peculiar. One trainer can make a mistake, and it’s just a hiccup that no one remembers, and most…
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Challenges Of Getting Adults To Learn New Skills & How To Overcome Them
Under the category of “All I need to know I learned in Kindergarten,’ many people would include learning how to…
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How To Open A Training Session With A Bang!
Why settle for breaking the ice when you can open your training session with a BANG! What do you see…
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How To Handle Disruption In The Corporate Classroom
The disruptive participant can sink your training faster than you can say, “Please Don’t Do That.” Whether it’s someone who…
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How to Survive The Worst Case Scenarios As A Trainer
When my daughter was ten years old, someone gave her a copy of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. She decided…
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How To Assess Yourself & Your Training Delivery Skills
When we hold a Train-the-Trainer Course, participants have multiple opportunities to practice their training/facilitation skills in a variety of assignments….
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The Trainer’s Tool Everyone Loves to Hate: The Facilitator Guide
You wouldn’t think that facilitator guides would be a particularly controversial topic. Maybe controversial is too strong a word. Let’s…
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Generational Learning Styles At Work
Tailoring Training For Generational Learning Styles: Does it matter? Ever since the Millennials started making their mark in the workplace…
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How To Survive Disruptive Training Participants Who Think They Are Hostages
Dealing With the 4 Training Participant Archetypes Every time a trainer walks into a new training session, they know they…
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Questioning Skills For Corporate Trainers: Do You Agree: There’s No Such Thing As A Dumb Question?
In the 2007 Ms. Teen USA pageant, South Carolina Teen Caitlin Upton, who was a finalist for the title, was…
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How to Prevent Your Behavioral Style and Learning Preferences from Sabotaging Your Training
The young advertising employee asked the seasoned executive for advice. She was struggling with negative feedback on her creative effort….
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3 Trends That Will Impact Corporate Training Budgets in 2017
This is not a financial story. Depending on the source, training budgets are either shrinking or expanding. The fact is,…
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Develop Storyboards For Training Like You’ve Been Doing It For Years
To fully appreciate the role that a storyboard plays in creating an eLearning module, you just have to think back…
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How to Design Training That Sticks
Even if you haven’t ridden a bike for a couple of decades, once you know how to ride one, the…
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How To Engage Participants In A Training Workshop
In May 2015, the headlines shouted, “You now have an attention span shorter than a Goldfish.” It turns out that…
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5 Trends That Can Define Your Customer Service Reputation
In a recent study,* business executives were asked to rate the quality of their customer service. 80% of the executives…
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How To Select An New Training Vendor – Training Vendor Selection Criteria
Finding, vetting, evaluating, and hiring a training and development company can be both stressful and arduous. But, it doesn’t have…
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How To Use Icebreakers Effectively in Train-the-Trainer Sessions
Icebreakers are often used to kick off training sessions and workshops. But are they really necessary? The answer depends on…
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How To Become A Corporate Trainer
Interested in learning how to become a corporate trainer? While many career paths are either shrinking or have too many…
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Boost Employee Retention and Engagement: The Power of Effective Onboarding Programs
Depending on your perspective, the stories employees tell about their onboarding experiences can either be considered a comedy or horror…
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Body Language Tips For Giving A Presentation
Your Body Language Can Make Or Break Your Next Presentation! You can have fabulous information and dynamic PowerPoint slides but…
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What Are Flipped Classrooms? Socrates Would Be So Proud
From high schools to Stanford Medical School to corporate training departments, “the flipped classroom” seems to be on everyone’s mind….
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TrainSmart Debuts Train-the-Trainer In The Twin Cities
Since TrainSmart launched the original Train-the-Trainer more than 20 years ago, TrainSmart trainers have taught the workshop everywhere from Russia…
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Does The Rapid e-Learning Development Model Exist?
Chances are when a client indicates they want you to follow a “Rapid Development Model” for their project, and they…
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TrainSmart Receives Ruby Award Sales Honor
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wiley, the leading developer of Everything DiSC® and The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™-based corporate training…
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Handling Reluctant Participants: Turning Challenges into Opportunities in Training
The participants went around the room sharing a 30-second introduction of themselves. About halfway through, it was “Jim’s* turn.” With…
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A Beginner’s Guide to Planning the Design and Development of an eModule
Distance learning is not a new phenomenon — the first modern distance learning class took place in the 1840s in…
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The Dead AA Battery Could Sink Your Training Session
(Every Facilitator Needs A Toolkit) You’ve planned and prepared the content, information, and activities that you are going to facilitate….
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Why Managers and Leaders Are Not One In The Same
Discussing why being a manager is not the same thing as being a leader often feels as futile as having…
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5 Ways To Engage Subject Matter Experts On A Training Design Project
Walk into a room of e-learning instructional designers and chances are you’ll quickly overhear them sharing war stories of working…
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Is iBeacon Technology a Game Changer for Learning and Development
Not so long ago, QR codes were the darlings of everyone from retailers to educators. They held the promise increasing…
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How Your Personal Learning Style Affects Your Facilitation
As part of a module on the DiSC profile assessment that I was teaching, I needed to hand out DiSC…
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Forget The Pencil & Paper When Teaching Millennials
Step into a typical room where training is being held and you’re most likely to find round tables, flip charts,…
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Powerpoint Presentation Tips: How To Use PowerPoint As A Storytelling Tool
Just as the guest speakers were ready to do their 90-minute presentation, the projector crashed. Two technicians and 15 minutes…
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Leading Change A Training Trend For 2014 Pt 2
In Part one of Leading Change – A Training Trend for 2014,we looked at some of the reasons why change…
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Leading Organizational Change A Training Trend For 2014 – Part 1
If you Google Organization Change, you’re likely to come up with over 26 million results. If you type in Organizational…
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Why Not Try A Gamification Strategy For Your New Learning Initiative
If the experts have it right, by 2014 Millennials will make up 36% of the corporate workplace. With this cultural…
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The Essential Leadership Skill Millennials Need To Learn
Of the many things that a typical person does at work each day, “talking” is something that most Baby Boomers…
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Millennials May Be Too Candid In Their Conversations
Sadly, this is not uncommon. American businesses are not known for cultivating open and inclusive environments. That’s one of the…
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Millennials Shaking Up Corporate Training
By 2015, Millennials are expected to represent nearly 39% of the U.S. workforce. By 2020, that number jumps to nearly…
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Preparing Executive Leaders For Teaching Leaders Programs
During the next two decades, 10,000 baby boomers will reach retirement age every single day. That means every single day…
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Will Virtual Training Always Be The Ugly Stepsister?
Several years ago, one of my clients made a blanket decision that all of their contract facilitators needed to start…
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How To Handle The Difficult Participant In Training
The participants were going around the room sharing a 30-second introduction of themselves. About half way through, it was “Jim’s…
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Ice Breakers For Training Delivery: Think Of Them As Your First Impression
Icebreakers are one of the most misused and misunderstood elements of a workshop. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes complicated. Sometimes…
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TrainSmart Conducts “Handling Interpersonal Conflict” Workshop for Giordano’s
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TrainSmart Conducts “Handling Interpersonal Conflict” Workshop for Giordano’s Chicago, IL- April 18th, 2013- Giordano’s Pizza selected TrainSmart…
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Supported The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Technology Rollout
United States- August, 2013- TrainSmart Inc. designed, assisted with, and facilitated rollout training and training assistance for The Leukemia &…
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