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Dennis is the president and chief operating officer of Udemy. He is responsible for directing all business-related activities and scaling Udemy's operations domestically and globally, overseeing its sales, marketing, business development and business operations functions. Prior to joining Udemy, Dennis was the senior vice president of operations at 4INFO, a leading mobile advertising technology company. Dennis has worked with multiple Silicon Valley technology companies since 1999. He completed his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University and received his MBA from Stanford University.

Dennis Yang

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Beyond the MOOC Hype: What It Really Means for Corporate Training

A More Sustainable Business Model for MOOCs

For 70 years, Denny’s has been an icon in the casual dining industry, building on its proud position as “America’s Diner.” To live up to its reputation of being a place where everyone is welcome, the company had to make diversity, equity, inclusion, and well-being a top priority.Beyond creating a safe and welcoming workplace, Denny’s leadership recognized that investing in DEI would improve employee engagement, reduce absenteeism, and improve overall financial performance. Additionally, prioritizing employee well-being can lower healthcare costs, increase productivity, and improve financial outcomes.Ultimately, the goal of these efforts is to establish a community where everyone feels valued, appreciated, and accepted as they are—and not just for guests but for team members as well. The challenge, as is often the case with large organizations, was finding a way to enact meaningful and sustainable change for all employees.The numbers don’t lie. Research shows that when employees feel a genuine sense of inclusion and belonging, their work performance increases by 56 percent, while sick days decrease by 75 percent, and the risk of turnover drops by half. Yet, just a single incident of micro-exclusion can lead to an immediate 25 percent decline in an individual’s performance.So, where to begin?Learning From the PastThe Denny’s brand has had its share of missteps over the years, culminating in a multi-million-dollar settlement payout in a 1994 racial bias lawsuit. Rather than bury or shy away from its past, however, the company has used this as an opportunity to learn and improve. The result: 58 percent of Denny’s restaurants are minority-owned. Likewise, among our board members, 56 percent come from underrepresented groups, and 44 percent are women. Yet, even with numbers trending in the right direction, Denny’s leadership recognized the need for ongoing and substantive DEI and well-being efforts.The fact is that most organizations approach DEI and well-being by providing a traditional one-day workshop. Unfortunately, this tactic fails to create awareness or generate an authentic change in the mindset or behaviors of many participants. Hence, the Denny’s Together initiative was born.Create a Place for AllThe Denny’s Together culture journey comprises several elements that support each other. The first is learning and embodying Denny’s “Rules to Live By,” which offers a set of foundational expectations that inform how team members treat Denny’s guests and one another. The L&D (leadership and development) team delivers interactive webinars and e-lessons to share these “rules” with restaurant team members.To boost awareness about DEI and well-being among Denny’s corporate team members, we offer the Go Beyond program. This collaborative program challenges participants to go on a journey of self-discovery as they take a deep dive into the advantages, barriers, and science of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Over 30 days, the program uses daily challenges to encourage team members to observe and explore their individual experiences and beliefs with compassion and curiosity.For example, Go Beyond kicks off with “reflection” activities, which include conversations led by other people leaders within the organization. In addition, there are community events where participants gather to share food and dialogue aided by conversation cards with specific reflection questions like, "What did you learn about bias and how it impacts your decision making?"What’s more, themed daily challenges and reflections, such as: “What Is Appearance Discrimination” and “How to Minimize the Bias Impact,” work to open participants’ minds about their own biases, attitudes, and relationships, while also coming together as one big Denny’s family. Example topics covered in these daily challenges include representation, appearance discrimination, implicit bias, inclusive language, empathy, bias blind spots, micro-affirmations, and allyship. Here’s an example of a daily challenge:Example of Daily ChallengeThe DEI Council and Business Resource Groups champion the theme. Team leaders discuss and reflect on challenge topics in meetings, and a weekly email supports exploring the challenges.To sweeten the pot and generate as much engagement as possible, raffles and giveaways for various challenges gamify the overall experience. For instance, all participants who complete challenges are entered to win a grand prize of two roundtrip airfare tickets to anywhere in the continental United States.Lasting ChangeThere were many lessons learned from the first two years of the Denny’s Together and Go Beyond programs. The four most powerful ones are:1. Get full buy-in from all key executives.2. Understand the culture you are starting with.3. Establish a sense of trust and safety for employees to freely participate.4. Set a high standard and invite employees to participate without a requirementIn addition to understanding that DEI efforts must be immersive to be effective, Denny’s leadership recognizes that achieving an entire cultural transformation that will affect the company from the top down and the bottom up requires an ongoing effort.But to measure the fruits of these efforts so far and guide future iterations, Denny’s leadership embarked on a comprehensive initiative to survey participants on how they felt about the Go Beyond program and the brand in general from a DEI perspective.Nearly all participants (94 percent) of team members felt that the Go Beyond program was an engaging experience, with 73 percent saying that it helped them grow as individuals. In fact, it was such a positive experience that 60 percent said they would be eager to participate again.More importantly, 82 percent of participants said they would recommend Denny’s as an employer, largely because of initiatives like this.Building on the success of Denny’s Together and the initial Go Beyond challenge, the company recently completed the second Go Beyond challenge, this time with the theme of Empowered Well-Being. Likewise, also in the works is the Championing Humanity challenge, a four-week reflection that will help participants discover what active allyship looks like, what shared power means, and most importantly, how to create a safe place for all.Moving forward, the L&D team is also working on rolling out a new leadership development program called Elevating the Power of We. This two-day, cohort-based program will have participants explore how to communicate in a supportive way, cultivate empathy and compassion, and genuinely listen to other people’s stories and perspectives.At Denny’s today, individuals are viewed as holistic beings. As such, their physical, emotional, and mental well-being must be prioritized. This is why Denny’s leadership is on a mission to create a brand that actively promotes mental fitness and overall empowered well-being. By creating a safe place to have candid conversations about real things that matter to real people, Denny’s is well on its way to creating a culture that embraces differences, welcomes personal stories, and celebrates all voices.

Denny’s Together

Fasika Melaku is the SVP, Chief Human Resources and Chief Learning Officer Denny’s Corporation. She is responsible for growing and nurturing the Denny’s culture and operationalizing its ethos—that clarify what is needed from employees to transform the company, ensuring our ability to provide a realiable guest experience and truly deliver for learners.Fasika has a cross-industry track record of successfully unlocking the potential of teams by tapping into the skills and passions of people and the leaders who guide them. Prior to joining Denny’s, Melaku held the position as Vice President of Restaurant Training and Recruiting for Taco Bueno Restaurants, a 161-unit company with annual revenues of $200 million based in Dallas, Texas. In that role Fasika Melaku focused on building a culture of people and operational excellence throughout the organization and building department credibility by establishing collaborative relationships with her peers and operations management.Before that, Fasika Melaku held a variety of roles in operations and HR leadership with Brinker International and Darden Restaurant Group. Within those roles, she worked on delivering learning solutions and driving long-range organizational initiatives including the implantation of broad-range of talent processes, including recruitment and on-boarding, performance management and succession planning, executive assessments, employee surveys, and leadership development programs. She is actively involved in the community and sits on the board of the Urban League of the Upstate.

Fasika Melaku

Prasad is the CEO of the Kaipa Group in California and a frequent speaker in conferences and retreats and co-author of critically acclaimed book “From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom” published by Jossey Bass in 2013. He works with companies and senior executives in the areas of innovation, leadership development and coaching. He has been a visiting professor at Indian School of Business (ISB) since 2003 and was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC) and raised multi-million dollar funding to initiate two research cells–SBI Cell for Public Leadership and Biocon Cell for Innovation Management in CLIC. He was a Smith Richardson Visiting Fellow at Center for Creative Leadership between 2010-2011 and was an advisor to Business FAC of Fetzer Institute (2011-2013). Prasad taught executive education programs organized by INSEAD, LBS, USC, Dartmouth and IIM Bangalore in addition to ISB. Prasad has been an advisor and coach focusing on innovation and leadership since 1990 for about 120 C-level executives in Global Fortune 500 companies. Clients included Adobe, Boeing, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Maxim and Oracle as well as global/entrepreneurial companies like Aztec, Advanta, BAE Systems, Lunar Design, Mastek, Olixir, Polaris, State Bank of India and Scintera Networks. The purpose of Prasad’s innovation/leadership coaching is to ignite the genius within individuals. Prasad’s unique competence is in helping his clients find their next significant step and take it. He found that unless he helps clients to examine their signature strengths that have turned into “core incompetence” and kept them stuck, it is difficult to ignite and channel their creativity to come up with innovative decisions, products, and services. He assists clients in becoming effective in managing people as well as oneself (personal mastery), getting reenergized and building new capacities, and taking more risks, in addition to innovative and strategic decisions. Prasad co-founded the Entrepreneur Institute for TiE in the Silicon Valley in 2002 to assist entrepreneurs develop soft skills and connect, engage and co-create effectively with others in the ecosystem. Over 13,000 entrepreneurs have gone through TiE Institute programs. He is a part-time faculty member at the Saybrook University and works with students in the areas of creativity and innovation, transformational learning and leadership. Prasad is/was on the board of directors/trustees for International Leadership Association (ILA), Marico Innovation Foundation, Samskrita Bharati USA, Integral Leadership Review, Lead India 2020, Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), Aankhen, Mentor Cloud, Intertec Communications, and Hindu University of North America. Prasad also worked as an educator/consultant with 100+ companies like Areva, AT&T, A.P. Moeller Maersk, Canara Bank, Exxon Mobil, Ford, Pepsi (Quaker Oats), Navteq, Sasken, Sun, Syngenta, and Union Bank in the areas of leadership, change management, innovation and management team development. Cisco and HP have worked with Prasad in developing innovative business models for creating a successful new business and in innovating unique, “brandable” product designs that are consistent with their culture. As a senior manager in Apple, Prasad was asked to create an educational menu for Apple engineers using innovative learning approaches. In 1999, as a research fellow in the Apple University, with a charter to help design ‘a learning processor that augments human intelligence,’ Prasad interviewed high achievers and exceptional people researching how they learn (and ‘unlearn’), create, communicate, relate and lead. Prasad got his doctorate in physics, and as a professor in the University of Utah helped build an international research laboratory with Dr. Ed Haskell. Athena Interactive released three award winning CD-ROMs for leaders based on his learning interface concepts and his pyramid building (thinking in three dimensions) methodology. In addition to ‘From Smart to Wise’ (http://www.fromsmarttowise.com) Prasad published an e-book ‘Discontinuous Learning: Igniting Genius Within by Aligning Self, Work, and Family’ and many of his writings and tools are available at http://www.kaipagroup.com. He writes a blog regularly on innovation and leadership in HBR.org and has published articles in Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and New York Times. He twitter handles are @pkaipa and @fromsmarttowise. Prasad is married to Dr. Vinoda and is father of Pravin (27) and Vidya (23). He enjoys exploring and reinterpreting ancient wisdom (and its application in developing highly effective and authentic leaders), photography (http://pkaipa.smugmug.com), listening to classical music, and playing tennis

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