About Us

Dennis Mankin is the Founder and Principal Performance Consultant at Platinum Performance Partners.  Previously, he was a co-founder of Platinum Performance Group (founded in 2003).

• Dennis attended Western Michigan University, where he graduated with honors with a double major in behavioral psychology and interpersonal communications. Later, he had the fortunate opportunity of mentoring under Dr. Joseph Harless, and other early leaders in the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT).
• He became one of the first Certified Performance Technologists (CPT) in the United States in 2003 through the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) and his sponsor was Dr. Joe Harless, the co-founder of ISPI.
• He is also the co-author and publisher of Performance DNA™ with the Association for Talent Development (ATD), taught to over 10,300 HPI analysts worldwide, and the author of ATD’s HPI Model, the gold standard in applying HPI. 

Dennis delivers public and corporate workshops for PPP worldwide and coaches leaders in the transfer of HPI capabilities to others. He has authored over 20 articles in the field of HPI and his work in HPI has been cited in other authors books worldwide. He also is the co-author (with Dr. Karen McGraw) of the book Breaking Tape – 7 Steps to Winning at Work and Life. 

Dennis lives in the mountains of North Carolina with his wife and dogs, where in his spare time he enjoys reading, biking, tinkering on car,s and playing with his grandchildren.

Dr. Karen McGraw is a Senior Performance Consultant with Platinum Performance Partners. She is an experienced  consultant in organizational development and performance improvement. For over 30 years she has applied her wisdom about how people think, learn and work to help organizations improve performance at the individual, team, and organizational levels.  Karen delivers online workshops for PPP and coaches performance consultants and leaders to improve their HPI capability.  

• Prior to starting her first consulting business, Karen worked in Texas Instrument's AI lab, where she conducted research and developed a knowledge acquisition/knowledge engineering methodology for government projects. 
• She served as a research professor at the University of Texas Arlington's AI lab, where she conducted leading-edge research projects. She also was a professor at the University of Maryland (University College), where she taught masters-level courses on AI and knowledge engineering.
• Karen is a co-author of ATD’s Performance DNA methodology and the author of ATD’s Performance Consulting Framework, the Scenario-based Engineering Methodology, and the EASE Change Management Toolkit. 
• She has published 7 books (including co-authoring Breaking Tape with Dennis) and over 50 articles in topics ranging from knowledge acquisition/engineering and human performance analysis, to change management. 

Karen holds a doctorate from Texas Tech University (Cognitive and Educational Psychology and Curriculum and Instruction). She and her husband and pets live in Denton, TX.