Speaker Bios

Mary Jo Romeo

Certified Executive Coach

MJR Coaching + Consulting

At MJR Coaching+Consulting, Mary Jo brings decades of valuable experience to her individual, team, and corporate clients. She is known for her positive energy, passion for connection, and ability to see what can be. Partnering with Mary Jo enables coaching clients to turn their ambitions into action. Clients find her engaging style a breath of fresh air.

Mary Jo is a Columbia University Certified Executive Coach and certified by the International Coaching Federation at the PCC level. Executives and emerging leaders rely on her experience leading national sales teams and growing businesses. Her laser focus on agreed-upon outcomes for clients in a new role or changing careers fuels their success. A communications expert, she weaves in tools and techniques to elevate executive presence, storytelling, communication, and presentation skills. During a coaching relationship, various assessments such as the EQi-2.0 are used to delve into thinking preferences, strengths, emotional intelligence, and how clients are seen by their colleagues, managers, and clients. Clients change in ways they never thought possible.

In addition to executive, communication, business growth, and career transition coaching, Mary Jo facilitates virtual and in-person workshops and consults with companies. A highly regarded senior executive leading national sales, advertising, and marketing teams, Mary Jo has worked for top companies like Johnson & Johnson and The Weather Channel.

Dedicated to giving back and being active in nonprofit women’s groups, Mary Jo has led workshops and been recognized for her many contributions by the YWCA of Greater Charleston, Trident Literacy, SC Business News, and She Runs It in New York. A Charleston, South Carolina resident, Mary Jo donates her time to Charleston Leaders, the College of Charleston MBA program, MICHA, Rotary Club of Daniel Island, Lowcountry Food Bank, and other area non-profits.

Dan Black
Chief Learning Strategist
Learning Innovations

Dan is the Chief Learning Strategist of The Learning Innovation Group. He provides non-profit, government organizations, and small businesses with strategic consulting and learning development services that leverage the power of their people. He leverages over two decades of talent development and training experience to help the client develop and deliver relevant, provocative, and impactful training solutions.

Dan brings his diverse experience as a business owner and in corporate America to every engagement. As a sought after speaker, trainer, and facilitator, Dan has delivered programs to over 10,000 people nationally and has given numerous keynote talks with a unique delivery style that both engages and entertains audiences with his energy and expertise.

Dan has developed training programs, facilitated ideation sessions and curriculum design sprints. He is often consulted for training strategy, technology, management, and performance sustainability programs nationwide.

Dan is based out of Charlotte, NC, and lives there with his wife Blair and children Mason and Sophia.

Evaluating Impact

Nathan Strong
Principal Consultant
Strong Performance-Based Solutions

Nathan Strong served as the Director of Organizational and Professional Development at the University of South Carolina from 2011 until 2023. He has over 35 years of experience in the fields of organizational development and performance improvement. His primary areas of focus were organizational assessment, supervisory and management development, process improvement, and individual and group performance enhancement.

Nathan led efforts to identify work climate and employee engagement issues and develop strategies to enhance both employee performance and satisfaction. He designed organizational planning and problem-solving sessions and provided leadership, conflict resolution, team development training and executive coaching. He also facilitated strategic planning, team development, goal setting and metric development sessions.

At USC, he created and facilitated the Pipeline for Academy Leadership (PAL) program, oversaw the university's staff professional development and training operations, and led organizational development activities across the Columbia campus. In addition, Nathan has consulted with over 70 public, private, and non-profit organizations on organizational performance issues since 2008 through his company Strong Performance-Based Solutions.

His favorite saying is: “Ideas compete, people collaborate.”