Victoria Helseth is an experienced and talented instructional designer and manager. She mentored and supported her team to help them advance their careers. Victoria set clear expectations, removed obstacles, and advocated for the resources needed to complete projects effectively. She also has strong team building skills and was able to successfully integrate different groups into a highly effective team. Additionally, Victoria is able to quickly understand technical information and identify learning objectives for different audiences. She offers new perspectives and solutions to instructional design problems. Victoria advocates for customers' needs and helped implement role-specific learning tracks.

1. February 2015
I have had the distinct pleasure of working with Victoria Helseth at Lawson Software from 1999 – 2011. I have worked both
alongside Victoria as a fellow instructional designer and have also reported to Victoria as my manager.
Manager skills:
Victoria is one of those special managers, who naturally leads by example and mentors her staff. As my manager, Victoria supported
and mentored myself and others on our team to achieve our career goals. She is one of the main reasons that I have stayed with the
organization for 14 years and have successfully advanced to principal instructional designer. Victoria mentored several technical
writers on the team that wanted to move into instructional design. Providing them a great foundation of adult learning principles
and ADDIE as their model, they successfully transitioned from technical writing into instructional design and went on to have
successful instructional design careers outside of Lawson.
Victoria was great at setting clear expectations and project goals, removing obstacles, and advocating for the team; providing us
with the time, resources, and tools we needed to effectively and efficiently complete our projects. Victoria never hesitated to
advocate and support us with upper management for additional training or tools that we requested to help us do our job better.
Victoria has strong team building skills and empowers her team to be the best they can be. Early in my career with Lawson,
reorganization in the training department put groups of trainers, technical writers, and instructional designers on the same team.
These groups had been were used to doing things their own way and had little understanding of what others did. Some members
where skeptical of the reorganization and were not onboard with the changes. Victoria was able to successfully pair team members
on projects that helped each person feel respected, valued, and motivated our team to become a highly successful and effective
team.
Instructional Design skills:
Victoria is one of the most talented instructional designers I have worked with and has really helped me become a better
instructional designer. She is able to quickly absorb very technical information, identify clear and effective learning objectives for
various audiences. Victoria effectively articulates technical information to all levels of audiences from the most technical
consultants, processing end-users, sales team, as well as executives, delivering the information needed at the level they need to be
able to successfully do their jobs and make decisions.
As an experienced instructional designer, IDs in the department often discussed with Victoria course and curriculum design issues.
Victoria could very quickly see the problem and offer up new ideas and new perspectives that others missed, providing successful
solutions. Victoria successfully facilitated audience and task analysis meetings, bringing disparate teams together to get a full and
complete picture of the needs of the learning audience that resulted in effective training solutions whether it was classroom
instructor-led, virtual instructor-led or online training solutions.
Victoria was also a tireless advocate of our customers and learners. Communicating and articulating the needs of our customers to
upper management. Victoria was instrumental in implementing role-specific learning tracks for our customers that provided the
training they needed specific for their job tasks, as well as making it easier for the customer to select the training courses they
needed from the thousands of courses offered.
I highly recommend Victoria and would be only too happy to work with her again.
Mary Jacobson
Principal Instructional Designer
Infor Education
Infor
Email: mary.jacobson@infor.com