Jan Elster, M.A. has been an Organizational Development Consultant specializing in groups that work with animals for over 16 years. She provides communication workshops on subjects such as customer service, interpersonal styles and techniques, interview skills, team building, working with difficult people, the art of teaching people as well as an array of workshops on leadership skills. She strongly believes that people are harder to train than dogs, so she especially enjoys offering people-training skills for dog trainers and has done so for several years at many conferences and academies. Having been a repeat student in obedience level one many times, she has a good sense of how adults learn best in these situations. She offers a humorous point of view from a perspective of understanding the "mind" of the learner and the dilemmas of the trainer. She enjoys assisting groups that work with animals to design their strategic plans, to facilitate group work and to present workshops at their conferences.

photo courtesy of Sumner Fowler