Renée J. O’Brien, JD/MSFS, MS, LSSGB

Renée O’Brien is a specialist in leveraging technology to deliver training and learning solutions. She has over 20 years of experience in instructional systems design, electronic performance support systems (EPSS) design, and intelligent systems design. She is adept at working with clients to understand desired organizational outcomes, conducting analyses of target audience performance requirements, recommending arrays of potential solutions to meet those requirements, and leading teams in implementing the adopted solutions.She is an exceptionally quick learner and rapidly develops expertise on project content. She develops strong working relationships with Atlas clients, who trust her to resolve their problems and request her participation on new projects. She is a strong collaborator in identifying innovative, cost-effective solutions. Ms. O'Brien can manage large teams and handle multiple projects to meet strict deadlines and budgets while ensuring that clients receive high-quality, award-winning results. 

At Atlas, Ms. O’Brien leads a multi-year engagement with the Defense Security Service (DSS) Center for Development of Security Excellence (CDSE). She serves as key personnel on a contract to providea broad array of solutions, including training needs analysis, design and development of web-based and instructor-led training and performance support solutions, and providing strategic solutions on agency-wide design and development standards.

For Georgetown University, Ms. O’Brien led a team in a four-year effort to design the program of study and provide program support for a new, online, two-year Executive Master of Science Program in Health Systems Administration (EMHSA) to provide mid-career health care professionals the strategic perspectives, knowledge, and capabilities required to assume executive leadership roles across the health care sector. The program provides a unique, engaging, highly interactive and dynamic two-year learning program led by a faculty of accomplished, successful health care practitioner-leaders who challenge and stretch EMHSA students’ understanding and views while building executive leadership abilities and high levels of proficiency in key health systems administration competencies. Under Ms. O’Brien’s leadership Atlas provided a broad range of services, including curriculum development; strategic communications, marketing, and admissions support; program/event planning, coordination, and logistics support; and learning program evaluation. The EMHSA launched in August 2015 and has graduated two cohorts—one in May 2017 and the other in May 2018.

For the VA Learning University (VALU), Ms. O’Brien led Atlas efforts to design and develop: 1) an interactive web-based tutorial to familiarize VA employees with virtual instructor-led training, share best practices, and offer solutions to common challenges; 2) aone-hour web-based course for VBA employees to help them acclimate to change, learn critical feedback skills, and understand cause-and-effect relationships that apply to telework and virtual environments; 3) a highly interactive three-hour VILT for supervisors about how to lead telework employees as part of a teleworking team

Ms. O’Brien previously worked at Carney Inc. as a Performance Solutions Architect for a wide variety of Federal government clients including the Defense Security Service (DSS), the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. In that role, she conducted analyses, developed instructional and performance support solutions to maximize target audience performance, and oversaw projects to assure appropriate use of media and technologies. 

A key client, with whom Ms. O’Brien established a seven-year relationship, was the DSS Center for Development of Security Excellence (CDSE). Over the course of that engagement, she analyzed existing content and curricula to craft blended learning solutions including instructor-led training, web-based courseware, performance support tools, short format learning, and their associated assessments and exams, and oversaw alignment of these efforts with professional certification requirements. 

For the DSS CDSE Education Division, Ms. O’Brien led the design and development in 2012 of 14 new semester-long, graduate-level courses as part of an eventual Master’s Degree program. Activities included obtaining buy-in from key stakeholders, facilitating technical solutions to enable distance-learning portions, establishing standards for materials, and developing assessment and evaluation schema. This program has been operating since 2013; since that time all 14 courses have received credit recommendations from the American Council of Education for three credit hours at the graduate level. 

Prior to Carney, Ms. O’Brien worked as an associate attorney in Washington, DC, specializing in international trade and taxation law. Much of her work was for clients in Central and South America. Ms. O’Brien is also an accomplished technical and legal translator. She served as a translator for the Secretariat for Central American Economic Integration (SIECA) during the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement (US-CAFTA) negotiations in 2003. 

Ms. O’Brien holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University in Theoretical Linguistics, along with a Master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center through its Joint Degree Program in Law and International Affairs.