In Person?Tamar Elkeles

Tamar Elkeles

Vice President of Learning, Qualcomm



Fresh out of graduate school, a master's degree in hand, Tamar Elkeles joined Qualcomm to create a training and employee development department for the then 7-year-old company. A daunting task, indeed, especially for a doctorate student intern making just $9 an hour.



The year was 1992, and Qualcomm's employee base was 700 and growing?adding upwards of 100 workers a week. Sustaining that growth, as well as the entrepreneurial spirit upon which the company was founded, demanded a multitasking, highly energetic individual capable of harnessing the current and future influx of human capital. And that's exactly what Qualcomm found in Elkeles, who is aptly described as an "espresso bean" by her employees and professional peers alike.



One need only speak with her for a few minutes or peruse her resume to fully understand that label. Rapidly firing off what sounds like hundreds of words a second in an almost lyrical tone, Elkeles exudes a definite passion for all things learning. And she has definitely accomplished a great deal in the last 10 years. The one-person employee development department she spearheaded as an intern is now the Learning Center, staffed with 30 "learning specialists," who, under her tutelage, serve more than 7,000 Qualcomm employees.



Unlike many companies that in recent years have jumped on the "learning, not training" bandwagon, Qualcomm's employee development initiatives have always been learner-centric, says Elkeles. "Throughout the early '90s, much of my initial time and energy was spent identifying, creating and implementing not only the skill-building and culture-maintaining programs needed, but also assessing the various learning styles and preferences of our employees."



What she learned in those assessments and climate surveys came as no surprise. Qualcomm has a highly educated employee base with a large concentration of engineers who don't like attending classroom sessions. Given the company's rapid growth, employees also don't like to take time away from their jobs to attend classes. Rather, they want to maximize their time by learning from true experts, and they want multiple options for learning the material.



Consequently, when most companies were embracing CD-ROMs and classrooms as preferred delivery methods, Elkeles entered the fledgling e-learning game in 1995 by building an "online training network," which, by today's standards, would be aptly described as a cross between a learning management system and a virtual