Dr. Ervin is the founder and president of Catalyst Development. Throughout her 22-year career, she has established a reputation as a transformational leader driven by challenge, undeterred by obstacles, and committed to furthering standards of excellence. Dr. Ervin is a vision-driven, goal-focused senior leader with a proven history of innovation and achievement. Her expertise encompasses all aspects of organizational development, from creating efficiencies to controlling costs and maximizing results to harnessing team strengths to improve overall performance. In every organization, her goal is to build consensus to promote transparency and influence positive change. Her work in developing strong leaders and teams focuses on critical career skill building to develop strong cultures and grow organizations. Dr. Ervin has a unique portfolio of academic, government, corporate, and non-profit experience. With 12 years of both professional and management-level corporate human resources experiences and 11 years in higher education administration, she has focused attention on structuring or restructuring management resources to eliminate waste and repetition, saving organizations thousands of dollars. Through workforce planning, she develops strategies to effectively address recruitment and retention issues and leads efforts in developing and maintaining compensation/performance management systems to ensure companies are competitive locally and nationally. Coupled with her work experience, Dr. Ervin has shared her experience teaching Masters-Level Organizational Development and Human Resources courses for the past 15 years. Her writing is featured as a member of the Forbes Human Resources Council. Dr. Ervin holds the SHRM Senior Certified Professional and Senior Professional in Human Resources certifications. She is also a certified Working Genius facilitator. She received her Bachelor of Science in Sociology with a minor in Psychology from Pittsburg State University, a Master of Technology in Human Resources Development from Indiana State University, and a Doctorate in Education with an emphasis in Adult Education from Kansas State University. Dr. Ervin's area of research is workplace motivation based on self-determination theory and the impact of an employee's perception of their organization's support. She believes if we meet an employee's basic needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy, they will be more efficient, happier at work, highly engaged, and more likely to stay with the organization. Dr. Ervin currently volunteers with the Alzheimer's Association as board chair of the Heart of American Chapter and serves as an active volunteer for her sorority, Alpha Sigma Alpha. She and her husband, Rob, of 22 years, live in Parkville, MO, north of Kansas City, and have two children, Drew and Abby.