Jon Tota is a pioneer in online education for corporate training. Jon began his career on Wall Street in sales and technology at PaineWebber and UBS. After several years as a business analyst and consultant to some of the largest financial services firms, Jon co-founded Edulence to deliver the industry's best digital knowledge to a global audience of financial advisors. Edulence’s platform Knowledgelink has become a leader in cloud-based content distribution, powering many of the largest online universities in the insurance and banking industries. These days, Jon helps the next generation of thought leaders build businesses around their online courses and digital expertise.
What you'll learn about in this episode:
- How Jon's online education business has grown and responded to market and technology changes since he launched it in 2002
- Why online education experiences such as those provided through his firm offer opportunities for employees to gain skills and knowledge that will benefit the work environment in ways not possible through academic courses available from traditional brick-and-mortar institutions
- How the knowledge platform Jon's company uses allows for businesses to upload content easily for employee training, while also guiding them in developing effective learning tools that will benefit from increased market share
- The experience of working with corporate educators and running their online universities that gives Jon's company the ability to collaborate with high-quality content providers and attract the interest of a growing number of firms
- How Jon's company cultivates new talent by finding experts in different areas and creating an environment where they can produce knowledge products for corporate training that have a broad exposure
- How distance education for corporations has changed since the days when content resided on VHS tapes, CD-ROMs, and DVDs
- Why content providers must keep up with the technology to remain relevant as the pace of change for corporate education continues to increase at a mind-bending pace
- How successful online content providers “tweak it and pivot” since three or four 'generations' sometimes occur in three or four years
- Why Jon's firm pivots in new directions without letting emotions get in the way about what worked yesterday when the current inventory of online products no longer is exceptional
- How Jon measures his company's success by evaluating their talents of working with content experts, building the knowledge base, and marketing their offerings successfully to companies
Ways to contact Jon: