BIO

Victoria Kathleen Cliche

Victoria Cliche has worked in human development for two decades. Since 2005, she has served as President and CEO of the Creative Education Foundation, an organization established in 1954 by the originator of Brainstorming and Creative Problem Solving. During her tenure, Victoria effected a turn-around, reinvigorating the annual conference, establishing a sustainable youth program and creating new streams of revenue through consulting, training and product sales.

Her company, Victory Consulting Inc. serves Wall Street firms, independent proprietors and not-for-profit organizations. Services include all phases of management consulting: assessment, program and communication strategy design, execution, evaluation and follow-up, as well as process redesign, executive coaching and staffing.

Victoria obtained both Series 7 & Series 63 licenses and is a certified Goldratt Institute Jonah & Myers-Briggs Instructor. While attending the Stern Business School at NYU, she was awarded the Management Consulting award for research on “Best Practices of Internal Management Consultants” by the Association of Internal Management Consultants. As an adjunct professor at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, she taught an undergraduate accredited course entitled “Designing Training for the Organization,” as part of the Technical Communications program.

Victoria began her corporate career at Smith Barney in 1986, after graduating from the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with a BS in Advertising. In her seven years at Smith Barney, Victoria’s focus was retail brokerage. Working in both front and back office management, she developed a solid understanding of all aspects of the retail business and created a number of internal training programs for front and back office staff. She was instrumental in the conversion of thirteen Drexel retail branch offices acquired by Smith Barney in 1989. She authored the Sales Assistant Reference Guide and was chief editor of the Branch Manager Compliance Manual and the Office Administrator Reference Guide. Reporting to the head of retail branch technology within Retail Sales Management, Victoria was responsible for the design, testing and training of the market data, account information and client management systems associated with a nation-wide conversion of over 10,000 retail brokers to a new broker workstation architecture.

Leveraging her expertise and keen attention to process, and appreciation of learning and teaching, Victoria joined Instinet in 1993 charged with creating a Technical Training Department. This endeavor resulted in 200 internal classes (26 topics) conducted for over 1200 attendees annually, which had a dramatic and direct impact on the support areas of the company. Based on this success, Victoria was promoted to Vice President of Corporate Development in 1996 responsible for providing corporate-wide training globally, internal consulting, executive coaching and team analysis. A formal course catalog was created offering 94 different programs in the United States covering company products and services, sales, technology, management and personal effectiveness; taught by senior and divisional management, subject matter experts and experienced trainers. A subset was offered in Europe and Asia. Formalized programs for senior management on business planning, process reengineering, interpersonal skills, career development and group dynamics were also established.

As Vice President of Strategy Communications at Instinet, she created and launched a Global Internal Communication Strategy including the creation of the first-ever corporate intranet, semi-annual town hall meetings conducted globally by the CEO, and facilitated management strategy discussions. Simultaneously she served on the Global Brand Design Team (an ad from the resulting campaign was the winner of two awards: The Wall Street Journal’s “Most Recognized Advertisement” in 1999 and an industry award for “Best Business to Business Award”) as well as a thirteen-member task force working with the Chairman of the Board to define the strategic vision of the company.