TopVet: Richard Whiteley, Corporate Trainer

Richard C. Whiteley, who spent three years in the Navy, is vice chairman and co-founder of The Forum Corporation, an international training and consulting firm specializing in helping organizations become customer-centered.

Under Mr. Whiteley’s direction, The Forum Corporation has introduced leadership, sales, and customer focus training programs that are among the most widely used in business today. Past clients include 3M, Du Pont, GE, Thomas Cook, Morgan Guaranty, Renault, Fidelity Investments, Ford, Motorola, Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, Marriott, Goldman Sachs, Standard Life, and Price Waterhouse.

A leader on the subject of customer-centered quality, Mr. Whiteley has been a keynote speaker for such organizations as the International Customer Service Association, the Japan Management Association, the Roundtable on Quality, the Conference Board, the National Productivity Board of Singapore, and the European Foundation for Quality Management Associations.

Mr. Whiteley is the author of The Customer Driven Company, published by Addison-Wesley and translated into nine languages, which was cited as a top business book by Fortune magazine. Mr. Whiteley’s video seminar, "Customer-Driven Quality," has helped companies bring key concepts to fruition in their own organizations. Mr. Whiteley and Diane Hessan, executive vice president at The Forum Corporation, have written Customer Centered Growth: Five Proven Strategies for Building Competitive Advantage, also published by Addison-Wesley. Mr. Whiteley is a contributing author to Enhancing Workforce Effectiveness: Gaining Competitive Advantage for the 21st Century, published by Jossey-Bass, and has been a columnist for Sales & Marketing magazine. In addition, he created a video on leadership in conjunction with the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League, entitled "Solving the Leadership Puzzle," produced by Video Publishing House.

Mr. Whiteley has appeared on national television and has been widely quoted in such business publications as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The Chicago Tribune, and The Sekai Nippo.

In 1978 Mr. Whiteley founded the Instructional Systems Association, an industry association comprised of training companies. He has served as the association’s president and on its executive committee and has been acknowledged as recipient of its distinguished service award.

Mr. Whiteley has been an instructor for Northeastern University’s M.B.A. program and has been a guest lecturer at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, the University of Southern California, Babson College, and Boston University.

Mr. Whiteley graduated from Wesleyan University and, after spending three years in the United States Navy, received an M.B.A. in marketing and organizational behavior from the Harvard Business School.