Center for Professional and Continuing Education

Instructor Bios

Christine Bennett

Chris Bennett has eighteen years’ experience in training, writing, speaking and facilitation. She is Principal and co-founder of WorkVantage, Inc, a Dublin, California-based workplace training and consulting firm. She is also the author of Me, Myself and I, Inc: 10 Steps to Career Independence, and Strong Voices, Real Choices: Professional Women Speak Out About Their Decision To Work Less.

Past clients include major employers in a variety of private sector industries, such as AT&T, Ghirardelli and John Muir Medical Center, and public agencies such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and several city and county entities including the Cities of Oakland and Sacramento, California.

 Lee Bernstein

Lee Bernstein, CES, CPS is a trainer, consultant and speaker. Her company, PeoplePlus, founded in 1995, helps strengthen the way managers and employees work together. Lee has provided hundreds of businesses with leadership, management and supervisory training and development. Her clients include; ARF, Central Contra Costa Sanitary District, Chabot Las Positas Community College District, City of Concord, City of Pleasant Hill, City of San Leandro, Jenkins Athens Insurance, National Electrical Contractors Association, NUMMI, Regional Training Institute, San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Wells Fargo.

Lee has performed in comedy clubs and uses appropriate humor and entertainment principles to deliver trainings with a unique approach – “Edutainment”. Lee’s style is engaging and high-energy and participants in her classes not only stay awake and have fun; they also retain and use more of the information. Following her graduation from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) she worked for the UMass Division of Continuing Education. Lee also served as vice president of professional development for the East Bay Chapter of the American Society of Training and Development.

Kathy de Jong

 
Kathy de Jong, Principal of Performance Management has 15+ years experience in the formation, training and development of effective leaders and teams towards targeted results as a consultant, trainer and manager.

She has designed and delivered multiple leadership development programs for the University of the Pacific and San Jose State University and has successfully partnered with additional customers including:  American Cancer Society, Cisco, Genentech, Kaiser Permanente, The City of Oakland and Wells Fargo.  

She has served on the board of directors for the East Bay Chapter of American Society for Training and Development and is a current board member for DPIE, a non-profit organization that fosters business and education partnerships. 

Kathy holds a BA in Public Policy from Sacramento State University and a Certificate of  Training and Human Resources Development from UC Berkeley. She is an avid runner and  reader and volunteers as a Project Manager for a program benefiting dyslexic children.

Qingwen Dong

Qingwen Dong (Ph.D. Communication, Washington State University) is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication, University of the Pacific, where he teaches communication research methods, intercultural communication, organizational communication and introduction to graduate studies. He is author or coauthor of more than 40 research papers that have appeared in scholarly journals and communication publications. He has presented more than 70 communication research papers at international, national and regional communication conferences. In 2007, he was the recipient of University of Pacific Eberhardt Teacher/Scholar Award.