About – Modern Training

About Modern Training

Your Learning Experience partner for services and content

Meet the Modern Training Team

Matt Nelson
CEO and Founder

Matt Nelson is the CEO and Founder of Modern Training, a team that creates premium learning content, builds custom training programs, and provides other LX services for restaurants, retail, breweries, and more. With over 30 years of experience, he has helped multi-unit operators of all sizes create and evolve their learning experiences.

Matt is also the author of The Renegade Cook, a skill-building book for the Back-of-the-House. Speaking directly to BOH team members, The Renegade Cook goes beyond culinary skills to share how to become a better teammate and develop into a future leader. It’s a great resource for restaurant leaders and trainers to elevate performance in the kitchen, develop a talent pipeline, and guide managers how to lead the BOH confidently.

Cassie Douglas
Vice President of Learning Experience

Cassie boasts over two decades of hands-on experience in the hospitality industry, consistently engineering remarkable turnarounds by transforming struggling restaurants into top-tier performers within their respective companies. Cassie’s passion for delivering results and nurturing talent seamlessly translated into an impactful career in learning and development. With a meticulous approach, Cassie has crafted comprehensive training programs spanning diverse hourly roles, MIT initiatives, NSO implementations, and large soft skill workshop facilitation. Fueled by an unyielding enthusiasm for training, advancing leadership capabilities, and ensuring operational excellence, Cassie relishes in creating dynamic leadership development pathways that foster robust pipelines of strong leaders for the future.

Angela Beemer
Senior LX Designer

From television to beer and everything in between, Angela’s passion is designing experiences that help people learn about what they love. She has dedicated the past ten years to developing and delivering effective and engaging sales and leadership training experiences for the television and broadcast industry. Angela has received several training industry awards including a silver Brandon C. Hall award for Best Sales Leadership Development Program as well as two gold Brandon C. Hall awards for Best Learning Program Supporting a Change Transformation Business Strategy and Best Use of Blended Learning.

Angela earned her Bachelor’s degree in Design, Marketing and Communications from Utah State University. On a warm evening, you will find her walking in Colorado’s natural beauty and looking at the stars with her telescope. When it’s time to head inside, she enjoys playing video and board games.

Shante Bryan
Senior LX Designer

Shante strives to build engaging content that promotes lasting behavioral change. She believes that impactful learning doesn’t happen by chance. For her, it happens from intentional planning and execution. How learners engage with the content is considered at each step of her design process. As a former educator and healthcare worker, Shante loves to create learner-centric solutions that combine best practices with innovative software. Her enthusiasm for technology has inspired her to dabble into responsive design and usability. When not focused on projects, Shante likes to spend her free time playing video games, browsing online artwork, and trying out new Instant Pot recipes.

Cristina Vazquez
Senior LX Designer + Language Specialist

Cristina has a passion for finding creative and engaging ways to teach new material to all types of learners. As a former hospitality and culinary arts educator, she has merged her vast knowledge of these two industries to make an impact in training and development. The experience of managing her own cafe and cake business has also been instrumental in giving her understanding of the hospitality industry.

Cristina has a culinary degree and Masters degree in Hospitality Management and Leadership. In her spare time, she loves to take hikes with her dog and continues to bake pastries for family and friends. You might even seen her competing on Food Network!

Patti Davis
LX Designer

Patti comes from a lineage of newspaper, business, and education professionals. Over the past two decades, she has adeptly merged these influences, channeling her expertise into crafting training programs for both print and digital mediums within the business sphere.

For the majority of the past 15 years, her focus has been within the realm of restaurant training, where she dedicated her efforts to assisting companies in elevating their operations and fostering growth.

Her credentials include certifications from DDI, Achieve Global, Franklin Covey, and Dale Carnegie. Additionally, she holds certification in food photography from Le Cordon Bleu. Her design skills span across a spectrum, encompassing e-learning design to proficient video production.

Alex Torres
Content Specialist

Since way back to her time of crayons and naps, Alex has been striving to find ways to help the people around her work better together. She is new to the L&D field, but Alex is eager to share her interpersonal skills with the team. Alex is confident that her years of experience in retail, food service, and manufacturing will provide helpful insight into building thoughtful, meaningful content for our clients. In her free time Alex enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and two daughters.

Sarah Brodsky
Client Success Specialist

From a young age, Sarah has harbored a love for engaging and forging meaningful connections with others. This led her naturally into the field of hospitality. Her enthusiasm led her to James Madison University, where she pursued a major in Hospitality Management. Her primary ambition lies in delivering an exceptional and memorable client experience, fostering a mutually rewarding collaboration. She constantly strives to nurture these relationships and looks for innovative methods to enhance her skills to provide the best service possible.
She likes to spend her free time working out, exploring the outdoors with her dog, trying out new restaurants, or binge-watching her favorite TV shows with her friends!

Leks Thoma
Account Executive

Leks brings a wealth of experience in food and beverage operations to our team. With her background, she collaborates closely with brands to uncover the ideal training solutions for their needs. She is dedicated to enhancing the frontline employee learning experience.

Outside of work, Leks enjoys immersing herself in outdoor activities such as paddle-boarding and fishing. She finds solace in gardening and loves to cultivate her green thumb. When she’s not exploring the great outdoors, you can find Leks whipping up delicious meals for her friends and family, showcasing her culinary skills and spreading joy through food.

The Modern Training Brand Family

We develop content from mobile courses to video to print materials and how they all fit together. We believe training should be fun, visually stunning, and easy to manage.

Online craft beer courses that teach your teams about craft beer and how to sell it.

The only book for the back-of-the-house, The Renegade Cook is a complete guide to becoming a leader in any professional kitchen.