Our Founder – Dr Valeria Lo Iacono (Symonds)
Symonds Training and Research was founded and is run by our CEO, Dr Valeria (Lo Iacono) Symonds.
Valeria has a Phd (also see her Google Scholar Profile here) in the social sciences with Cardiff Metropolitan University and has taught and worked as a researcher with the University of Bath, University of Exeter and Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Before her PhD, Valeria’s experience included several years as a supervisor with Ofsted in Bristol, UK, and more than 5 years working as a manager for Cardiff University in an administration role.
Valeria has lived in the UK for over 15 years with her husbands, but she was brought up in Sicily, Italy.
Our Philosophy
Our goal from the beginning has been to provide high-quality training programmes that are easy for trainers to use, that are well designed and that will help the trainer to provide effective and high-value workshops. We continue to strive to meet these standards.
We also put emphasis on learning that is fun and enjoyable, particularly given that the courses are, for the most part, for adult learners.
Every training package is designed such that activities, group interaction, feedback and input from the participants are part of the training.
We, in other words, try to make the learning embodied in that the students learn by using their different senses.
We also understand that cost is important to many of you who are trainers and we have thus made the training packages very affordable whilst still providing what we feel is a
We do also provide a number of free resources and tools for trainers that you might find useful. Make sure also to consider our train the trainer course.
For example, check out our training day checklist template and our free eBook with 25 training activities (both downloadable as PDFs) and our 7-day email course on how to deliver effective training for adult learners.
Partners and Customers
We work with many government departments, universities, freelance trainers, HR departments, and many individual companies.
We have, for example, helped to organise training for the:
- Home Office in England
- Massachusetts Government (USA)
- Ball State University (USA)
- Yale University (USA)
- Arizona Western College (USA)
- Mid-Devon Government (England)
- Indiana Department of Transport (USA)
- and numerous other organisations large and small and trainers.
Our latest partnership is with Georgia Southern University, in Georgia, USA and the marketing release can be seen directly below:
We have worked with a number of clients, some more of whom you can see on the testimonials page and these individuals and businesses have included airports, councils, small 1 person businesses (i.e. self-employed trainers), bay authorities, and educational institutes.
As a team, we have many years of expertise in the educational sector and in business. Our staff includes qualified researchers and designers.