Development Concepts Leadership
Who are we?
George R. Cooper III
George brings senior management experience in engineering, maintenance, operations and quality systems to his current practice. With more than 15 years at Development Concepts, he provides services to a wide variety of industries and across all organization levels.
His area of consulting practice spans the development of content-validated technical assessments used for selection, qualification and training needs assessment, and the development of customized training curricula and materials to assist clients in improving the skills of their incumbent workforce. He also serves as an advisor and coach to organization leaders in large-scale reorganization, process improvement, and restructuring projects.
George started out as an engineer with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. A number of years later, he obtained an EMBA while working as an executive and traveling around the world. In between, he’s learned more than a few things from his children and his clients that surpass the formal degrees. He is a true believer in making an Industrial Renaissance a reality.
Andria L. Yates, Ph.D.
Andria was an engineer for a short while after obtaining her hard earned bachelor's degree in mechanical and materials engineering from Vanderbilt University. After her years in manufacturing management, she left the manufacturing world and completed a doctoral program in psychology, adding a few formal letters to her name along with the concentration in industrial / organizational psychology.
She has worked in management and executive positions in manufacturing, human resources, and new media businesses in addition to her continued consulting practice for over twenty years. She also serves as adjunct faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she has created, among others, a senior seminar in Social Intelligence and course in Social Psychology led abroad in Greece.
Andria considers herself a systems thinker regardless of the focal point. Her areas of specialty cross the boundaries of organizational and individual services, with an overarching emphasis on the health and effectiveness of the system, whether the system is an organization, a group, or an individual. This includes work as quantitative as creating pre-employment assessments and analyzing the results of an employee survey (which greatly appeal to her left brain) to the qualitative efforts involved in coaching others and leading experiential retreats in self discovery (engaging more of her right brain).