RICHARD A. BENAK

PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
  • Diversely skilled, innovative and creative e-learning professional with nearly 12 years of problem-solving, progressive leadership, mentoring, project management and technology expertise in a variety of industries including: health care, pharmacy, travel, interactive learning and transportation.
  • Unique and highly functional skill set: Instructional Design, Information Architecture, Graphic Design and Web Design/Development.
  • Consistent success in process improvement, training, supervision and mentoring.
  • Highly skilled in technology and implementation of technology based solutions for process improvement and project specific outcome success.
  • Earned reputation as someone who: effectively integrates increased responsibility, assimilates new skills and successfully implements new methodologies.
  • Team player/Team builder utilizes exceptional interpersonal skills and consistently recognizes and correctly employs team members’ strengths and skills to maximize project success.
  • Enthusiastic and self-motivated with an established track record of significantly exceeding expectations, setting and attaining goals, re-prioritizing projects on the fly while being vigorously cognizant of opportunities for improvement and growth.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Advocate Health Care
Oak Brook, IL
2005 to Present
Learning Technology – Organizational Development

Principal eLearning Authority, LMS Administrator and Learning Technology Specialist for Advocate Health Care and its 30,000+ associates, nurses & 6000 physicians. Manage, develop and support all system-wide eLearning for initiatives including: clinical, leadership development, associate development, corporate policy, regulatory and system process changes. Direct and collaborate with subject matter experts such as: Clinical Educators, OD Consultants, Clinical Education Council, and Executive Management to successfully design and implement eLearning initiatives. Design and develop all training associated with LMS processes, procedures and best-practices. Primary instructor for traditional classroom training of all site based administrators. Adaptively troubleshoot, test and resolve complex hardware, software and database issues. Actively engage, support and advise all sites in the strategic and functional goals of Advocate Health Care, as it relates to eLearning. SumTotal Learning Management System implementation Project Manager. Successfully integrated the responsibilities of a vacant full-time Instructional Design position into existing job responsibilities for over two years.

Thomson NETg Learning, Inc.
Naperville, IL
2005 to 2005
Senior eLearning Contractor

Develop high quality learning activities and 2D and 3D graphic elements for interactive training courseware. Collaborate and consult with departments and executives on the content, design and implementation of interactive training courseware. Lead graphics team in researching new technologies to help streamline the graphic creation process.

TravelCLICK, Inc.
Schaumburg, IL
2004 to 2005
Creative Director/Senior Graphic Designer/Senior Web Development Contractor

  • Managed the Creative Department as well as designed and developed internet served ads for travel industry clientele.
  • Responsible for 4-6 direct reports. Setting goals and utilizing metrics to indicate the progress and completion of goals.
  • Coordinate with leisure property owners and executives from conception to completion of hotel property websites. Implementation of Flash based “one-screen” technology.
  • Design and Implementation of Creative Department process improvement plan.
  • Design and Deployment of Sales Tools regarding the new Creative Department process and procedures, as well as changes in product offering.
  • Design and Implementation of tiered product offering for Internet Media Advertising products e.g. differentiating between the cost of purchase for animated gifs and interactive media (Flash-based) advertising.

SXC Health Solutions/ComCoTec
Lombard, IL
2000 to 2004
Senior Internet/Multimedia Specialist/Senior Coordinator of Web Services

  • Design, management and development of corporate intranet, customer support portal, as well as the database driven sections of the company’s primary website.
  • Design and development of computer/web-based-training, marketing & sales collateral.
  • Primary Information Architect, implementing creative user interface design for the Windows based application to better accommodate pharmacy retail work-flow environment.
EDUCATION
B.A., Advertising/Communications 1997
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Adobe Flash ActionScript professional training 2008
ADDIE Model/Adult Learning Theory course completion 2001
Web Development Certification (ASP, SQL, CSS) 2000
HIPAA Certification for Software Development 1998
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP
Member, eLearning Guild
Member, ASTD – American Society of Training & Development
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE
Adobe eLearning Suite Adobe Captivate Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Flash Professional Adobe Dreamweaver Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Fireworks Adobe Illustrator Adobe Contribute
Trivantis Lectora Techsmith Camtasia/Snag-It Adobe/Macromedia Authorware
CorelDraw Graphics Suite Lawson Learning Accelerator HTML CSS ASP JS
Microsoft Sharepoint TS Microsoft Sharepoint Designer SQL MSSQL/MySQL
Microsoft IIS Apache/Linux Webserver SumTotal Enterprise
Moodle Pathlore Adobe Soundbooth/Audacity