Testimonials

What they are saying about “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc.

“Over a two year period, Florida Blood Serves (FBS) engaged the firm of “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc. to conduct an organizational assessment of FBS which led to a three year strategic business plan. “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc. led by “Bernie” Young, helped us to restructure our employees into functional teams who shared a common vision and commitment toward achieving FBS goals. As part of this process, “Bernie” helped FBS create a new culture of empowerment and enhanced communications to help us carry out the new vision and strategies.”  “Lastly, “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc. helped FBS establish a “Leadership University” to provide a framework for leadership development programs. I was very pleased with the professional and hands on approach that “Bernie” and her team used to help FBS achieve its’ goals.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                            Don D. Doddridge, CEO Florida Blood Services

 

“As a new Executive Director for a non-profit organization we really needed to re-focus the board of directors and the staff to a new strategic growth plan. “Bernie” and  “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc. was able to rally the group around an action plan that helped us to achieve our goals.”

                                                                                                                      Susan Ralston, Executive Director, Big Brothers Big Sisters

 

“Exhilarating! “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc.‘s leadership and team development training programs were a catalyst to significantly increase our team’s performance.”

                                                                                                                                                                                          Rick Parsons, Regional Vice-President, Marriott, Int’l

 

“I have worked with Bernie since 1997 when she provided customer service training for our hospital leadership team and employees. When I moved to Brackenridge Hospital (TX), I engaged “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc. to provide design and training leadership for our customer service initiatives. Our goal was to bring our hospital’s scores up in a sustainable method with our employees and physicians. She and her partners were excellent and well received by all our team leaders and staff. She created a sustainable program that could be managed internally. Bernie is incredible to work with, smart and “down to earth” in her approach. She is perceptive of the real needs and gets to the “heart of the matters” she is working with. I highly recommend her for any of your company’s business and training needs, especially around patient and customer satisfaction redesign and improvement efforts. She is able to deal masterfully in the complex world of healthcare, which can be and is difficult. If you want to contact me for any reference information, I would be happy and available to answer questions. I highly recommend Bernie and her team. 

                                      Sue McClernon, Former CEO, Brackenridge Hospital, Austin, TX

“We discovered important information about our team that would never have come to light any other way! Thanks to “Bernie” and her team, it was an incredible, fun way to  build our team”.

                                                                                                                                                               Andrew Skean, Regional Business Director, Genzyme Therapeutics

 

“Thanks so much ‘Bernie’ for teaching, “Making the Connection…the Softer Side of Sales.” Your dynamic approach and ability to gather information from the audience and restructure and reword this information into a highly motivated and effective closing was terrific! Your personal reflections also gave the attendees a positive insight into how to overcome challenges associated with doing business with a variety of customers.”

                                                                                                                                                                            Nena Gang, Executive V.P., Bay Area Apartment Association

 

“Bernie”, “It is finally happening. In St. Louis at the Goodwill Delegate Assembly we will finally install the new Advisory Council of Goodwill International. On your advice of dividing the country up and seeking representation from each area for the Council we set out to do this and it has been successful. We are known as GVSAC – Goodwill Volunteer Services Advisory Council. This is just to keep you informed of what your efforts 2 years ago created for us. How lucky for us to have you involved when we need direction and advice. Thanks again.”

                                                                                                                                                                               Dottie Farkas,  Past President GIVS, Goodwill International

 

“Having hired many facilitators in over 20 years of local government work, “Bernie” Young stands in the top 5%. She is creative, dynamic, and resourceful and has an innate ability to draw diverse individuals into the discussion, thereby addressing the issues without being confrontational. Versatile and energetic, Bernie quickly molds individuals into cohesive issue-addressing-groups thereby achieving remarkable results without a lot of downtime. She is a number 1 draft choice in any league.” (Year first hired: 2008 – hired more than once)    

                                                                                                      Al Grieshaber Jr., General Manager, Sun ‘n Lake of Sebring Improvement District, Sebring, FL

 

“Bernie” Young helped unite my team at a time of great transition. We were suffering from extreme growing pains and individual “super stars” were eroding the team dynamic. Bernie helped us all see how our actions with each other on a daily basis can make us stronger as a team and how that strength benefits everyone, not just a select few. The message was much more powerful and effective coming from someone “outside” the company. Her techniques add grease to your machine and keep it running the most efficient way possible.”   

                                                                                   Marci Wilhelm,  CCO, Chief Compliance Officer at MedPartners HIM Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida Area

 

”Good Morning “Bernie”, We were pleased to again have you as our sales training speaker on the ABC’s of Closing. When I started looking for a speaker for our first training I was worried-I never did anything like it before. I am so glad I found you and that my supervisors like it. You are GREAT at what you do. I couldn’t find anyone better. Once again, thank you very much, and we look forward to our next training class.”

                                                                                             Leticia A. Sosa, Assistant Community Manager, Newport Property Ventures, Ltd, Tampa Bay Area

 

When the Board of Directors of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA) were looking for a consultant to help with some board development and to lead us through the creation  of a long-term (2-5 year) strategic plan for CMA we chose to use “Bernie” Young, President of “Bernie” Young & Associates, Inc.  In our search for a consultant we looked for someone who was not only highly qualified and professional but who had a personality that would work well with our diverse board.  We found that Bernie Young easily met all of these criteria. From the moment we accepted Bernie’s proposal she tirelessly worked to fulfill our goals and make sure that our Board received everything from her that we anticipated.  Through the approach that she used with us she was able to quickly grasp, evaluate and understand the issues our Board was facing that was preventing us from attaining the higher quality level of interaction and decision-making that we were trying to attain.  This allowed her to be extremely useful to us in helping our Board to significantly improve our operations. Bernie seemingly has an endless amount of items in her bag of tricks that she uses in helping her clients achieve the objectives for which she was hired.  Starting with our own well-defined mission for CMA, she led us through exercises that resulted in our formulating a mission for our Board as well as a vision and a set of core values for CMA.  Starting with these basics, she was able to easily follow-up and led us through an approach that resulted in our identifying a number of priorities that formed the basic elements of our strategic plan.  We are now in the process of identifying the various steps needed to implement this plan which will become the working guide to help us carry it all out. We are extremely happy with the results we attained from working with Bernie and highly recommend her as a valuable resource for carrying out board development and strategic planning.

                                                                                            John L. Draheim, Board Chairman, Clearwater FL  Marine Aquarium (Home of Winter, the Dolphin)

Your ever-so-successful training was EXTREMELY WELL RECEIVED and ENJOYED on January 10 & 11, 2013 by Carlos and Ambient. All of the managers and staff talked about it for three days non-stop. We all got together at night and you were the topic. I was able to attend the half-day session Saturday and you were still the topic. Everyone loved it – thanks so much.

Anne Lemos, Corporate Manager , AMBIENT TECHNOLOGIES Inc., and Subsidiaries, GeoView, ATI Companies, ATI Energia, ATI Panamericana S.A. (affiliate)