McDonald’s announced Wednesday the hiring of Bethany Tate Cornell as its new senior vice president, chief learning and development officer. The hire is effective November 2.
Cornell was most recently the Vice President of Leadership, Learning & Organizational Capability for the Boeing Company. In that role, she led a global team that was responsible for developing the enterprise Learning, Culture Transformation and Workforce Development strategy in support of business imperatives for 150,000 employees in 65 countries.
During that time, Cornell led and was operating general manager of the Boeing Leadership Center Campus in St. Louis, led the global expansion of learning offerings and global learning campuses, and the launch of Boeing’s Digital Campus, which made digitally learning accessible for all employees with over 51,000 active users/learners. She also launched critical programs for early career leadership development, mid-career talent development, as well as upskilling and capability building for essential functional roles, such as Digital Literacy.
“I feel fortunate to be joining the McDonald’s brand at this pivotal time,” Tate says. “As learning and development trends continue to evolve to serve global employees in a holistic way, I look forward leveraging the brand’s scale, training, and education programs to support the careers and goals of everyone in our System.”
Prior to her time with Boeing, Cornell led Talent Development and Learning Innovations for major companies spanning several industries including General Electric, Gap, Ethan Allen, IBM, and Interlock Group. While at General Electric, Cornell held roles that included leading culture and learning strategy for a $9 billion renewable energy startup, launching the company’s first shared learning service for design and technology; and led culture evolution and employee engagement for the company’s largest industrial acquisition.
“Bethany is joining our McFamily at an important and exciting time for our People team,” says Global Chief People Officer Heidi Capozzi in a note to employees. “The work we are driving is helping to support the business in such heightened ways this year—and as we look ahead to next year and beyond, we have tremendous opportunity to bring new and innovative ways of supporting our learning, development and leadership capabilities throughout the System. We will have a very strong focus moving forward on digital acumen for our teams as our System wide focus on technology advancements will continue to evolve and elevate. I am very confident that Bethany is the right leader to help lead the Learning and Development efforts to support those very important priorities.”
