Petco Comes to NVC

Petco Animal Supplies, Inc. is a national company with over 1,200 stores. To help with its growth, it moved part of its corporate offices to San Antonio area in 2011. NVC Corporate Solutions and Petco partnered to develop and implement a Leadership Certificate Program for their managers which began in August and ended last week.

Petco internally nominated 16 of their managers to attend this CE Leadership Certificate Program – a year in the making and led by Andy Scheri, corporate liaison in NVC’s Workforce Education & Training area. The NVC leadership co-facilitators were Anthony Andrade, Michelle Cox, Valarie Fluellen and Jennifer Webb.

According to Andy, this class was the pilot class and the participants had to complete 40 hours of training for the certification. The Petco managers came to NVC every Thursday for eight hours of training for five weeks and graduated last week.

Petco invited the vice presidents and directors of the participants to the graduation on Sept. 26. At the graduation, participants were able to tell their leaders how much they got out of the training, and how they are using what they learned in the workplace. 

Wendy Weinand, national grooming operations specialist stated “…what jumps out at me the most, was the passion that was evident with each instructor that taught the class, having a group of people that are truly engaged in what they are sharing makes learning not only fun, but easy to absorb. There wasn’t a night I went home or to work the next morning that I wasn’t pumped up to put to use what I received the day before. I, for one was sad to see the program end.”

“This course incited a lot of self-reflection, helped me identify my growth opportunity, and provided me the tools to improve my management skills and be a more effective leader,” said Dawn Burch, veterinary relations manager. “The professors were very engaging and kept the content relevant-every week I was able to utilize a new skill or techniques aimed at further developing myself and others on my team. I would strongly recommend this Leadership Certificate Program – the confidence, knowledge and skills learned in this course are invaluable and vital to a manager’s success!”

Andy added that the training was extremely successful; and Petco will be starting a second cohort in a couple of weeks on campus.

“I was told that the San Diego-headquarters office is asking when this training will be available for them – so obviously we are very pleased,” Andy said. “The goal is to continue to partner with Petco for all of their training needs.”