Laird D. McLean, M.Ed.
651-492-5217
laird.mclean@mcleanglobal.com

Laird D. McLean, Minneapolis, MN, was born and raised in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. He graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1993 (Honors B.A. in business administration), the University of Minnesota in 2001 (M.Ed. in Human Resource Development) and is completing his dissertation for his Ph.D. in Human Resource Development at the University of Minnesota from which he expects to graduate in Fall, 2008. Laird's dissertation is looking at the factors (individual, supervisor, organizational culture) that promote or inhibit creativity in R&D organizations. During his undergraduate work, he also spent a semester studying management at L'Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium where all courses were conducted in French.

Laird has worked in industry for the past twelve years prior to which he taught English in Japan for two and a half years. Prior to joining MGC, Laird was responsible, as director of Global Learning and Development, for leading training and development globally for the Research and Development, Clinical Sciences, and Regulatory Affairs functions at Boston Scientific, a maker of minimally invasive medical devices, where he worked for six years. During his time there, he played an integral role in implementing Boston Scientific's corporate-wide product and technology development processes, developing an award-winning project management capability in the organization, building the corporate training function from the ground up, bringing eLearning to the company, and providing guidance on the implementation of Six Sigma and Lean training across the company.

Prior to joining Boston Scientific, Laird served as a change management consultant at Andersen Consulting (currently known as Accenture) where he helped clients plan for and implement PeopleSoft applications. His work included business process mapping, organization design, procedure writing, training design, development, and delivery, and development of electronic performance support tools.

The following is a sample of some of his work for McLean Global Consulting:

• Led the training & development and organizational culture change effort to reduce the time and cost of product development by applying “Lean” manufacturing principles to the product development process
• Consulted with a large, multinational organization on the outsourcing of their transactional training processes to a third party, including implementing an Enterprise-wide Learning Management System (Plateau) and training staff at two international call centers
• Coached Learning and Development Director of a Fortune 100 organization in dealing with organizational change and thinking strategically about his department
• Co-led the effort to implement a system and processes to ensure a medical device company achieved compliance with regulatory requirements related to employee training
• Project managed the training design and development effort for a PeopleSoft Financials implementation at a large Tier 1 University