Ree Howard

About

Ree’s unique and varied experience/background makes her a perfect ‘chief happiness officer’ for Eligon. She brings her strong academic qualifications, her experience teaching, her continuous involvement in leadership and team building related areas, and her worldwide experience with IBM.

She taught at Texas A&M University prior to accepting a position with IBM in Houston, TX. During her 27 years with IBM, she held a variety of positions, with the last 15 years being spent in various worldwide and Americas marketing positions. During her IBM tenure she also spent time teaching and working with learning programs. She was chosen to work on an elite team to determine technology’s impact on the future of learning. She was program coordinator for the premier program in IBM’s internal sales training curriculum in which she also taught and trained over 500 new IBM field sales personnel over a two-year period.And as part of an IBM Services customer project, she designed and developed a two-day, nationwide training course for 3000 managers in 216 Dillard’s stores.

As a high-level coach, manager, and trainer at IBM, she participated in numerous leadership training programs. One of which was a 12-month IBM Leadership Enablement and Development program designed to prepare individuals to assume significant leadership responsibilities inside or outside of IBM.

After a successful business career, Ree returned to academia to pursue her first love and passion, teaching. She joined the faculty at Kennesaw State University and taught business leadership and ethics classes as well as served as Director of the Integrative Studies Program.

Long before there was such a thing as a ‘Chief Happiness Officer’, Ree worked to create a positive work environment and improve employee morale and satisfaction in each of her past positions, whether in a corporate setting or an academic environment. She would take on the role of a team building project leader to help her department become more effective in working with each other as well as across departments. Ree knew that the more engaged and satisfied employees were with their jobs, the happier they would be, and in turn, the more successful the work group would be.

Ree is looking forward to working with the elite group of employees at Eligon to create a positive work environment that will nurture an engaged, motivated, and happy work force as they service their clients.