About – Modern Training

About Modern Training

Your Learning Experience partner for services and content

Who We Are

At Modern Training, we’re more than instructional designers—we’re operators, strategists, and true partners. Our roots are in the field, and our work is built around one goal: helping teams learn better and move faster. Whether it’s a multi-language rollout for a global brand or setting up an LMS for a small team, we bring clarity, care, and real-world experience to every project.

Why We Do It

We’ve seen what great training can do—how it empowers teams, strengthens operations, and drives real change. That’s why we build learning that doesn’t just check the box, it actually makes work better.

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 + Media Specialist

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 the days of crayons and nap time, Alex has always looked for ways to help people work better together. New to the L&D world but not new to fast-paced, team-driven environments, she brings a fresh perspective and a strong foundation in communication and collaboration.

With a background in retail, food service, and manufacturing, Alex understands how frontline teams think, move, and learn. She’s excited to bring that insight into building thoughtful, meaningful training content for our clients.

Outside of work, Alex loves spending time outdoors with her husband and two daughters, whether it’s a local hike or just soaking up sunshine together.

Sarah Brodsky
Client Success Specialist

Sarah’s background is in hospitality, which makes sense—she’s always been about creating great experiences and keeping things running smoothly. After earning her degree from James Madison University, she gravitated toward fast-paced, people-focused work, which eventually led her to the world of learning and development.

At Modern Training, Sarah does a bit of everything: client communication, LMS builds, course reviews, rollout support, and project management, with a side of making things fun and easy for the team. She’s all about keeping things clear, useful, and genuinely helpful for both clients and learners.

When she’s not working, you’ll probably find her at the gym, walking her dogs, trying a new restaurant, or binge-watching a show that everyone’s been talking about.

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.