With shoulder length jet-black hair and large engaging eyes, Linda Hopper is one of the first people that Georgetown's new-hires meet. She walks into monthly New Employee Orientation meetings asking, "How are you all doin'?" with the type of thinly veiled drawl that makes one wonder how long it?s been since she lived in the South.

It has been nearly 30 years, she admits, since she left Memphis for Pittsburgh and ended up in Washington, D.C., and it's been seven years since she joined Georgetown's personnel office. But Hopper gives more to the community than a dash of hospitality; as director of the Office of Training and Organizational Development she helps individuals and departments reach their full potential through professional training courses, career counseling, and retreats on team-building and leadership.

Hopper is driven by a philosophy she shares with the administrators who established her office a year before she came to the Hilltop: an investment in your people is an investment in your organization.

"There is a great emphasis at Georgetown on professional development," she says, "and I think that employees have been so responsive because they know it helps them do their jobs better and prepares them better for jobs -- here or elsewhere -- in the future."

Breaking Down Barriers

When Hopper left the University of Memphis in the mid-1970s with a sociology degree in hand, she had no idea what direction her career path would take. If she stayed in Memphis, she felt pressure to become a teacher, nurse, secretary or social worker ? none of which appealed to her. "I'm from an era when women were right on the cusp of opportunities breaking wide open for them, but we were still just on the cusp," she says.

Since then, Hopper has volunteered with senior citizens, taught inmates at a maximum-security prison for men and coordinated training for women entering the workforce after welfare. The common thread in her work is that she helped people master technical and interpersonal skills for future success, she says. She then shared that expertise working with managers in various industries -- from the American Institute of Architects to Washington's metro transit system -- to elicit the best performance from their employees.

"I think these experiences have given her a wide knowledge of organizational issues," says George Reese, training coordinator in training and development. "She's a tremendous resource."

Hopper says her perspective has been molded by the people she's met over the years, particularly the men at the prison. By the 1970s, few prison education programs had been implemented and she admits that she underestimated how dedicated these men were to educating themselves. As it turns out, the inmates were some of the most eager students she's ever had, she says.

She once asked her students (convicted rapists and murderers) to describe in an essay how music, television and movies had affected their lives.

A paper cluttered with poor spelling and penmanship began, "This is similar to Plato's 'light in the cave' analogy," referring to the Greek philosopher's Allegory of the Cave from "The Republic."

The student later told Hopper that he enjoyed reading all of the great philosophers, and that he had already read everything in the prison's library. "It just goes to show that you cannot label people," she says. "Find a person's heart and soul and you can't help but see their possibility."

The lesson is one she relays to the Georgetown groups with whom she works.

"Linda is very good at helping people look at things differently," says Monica Gray, director of MBA admissions.

Hopper has planned several annual retreats for Gray's admissions staff and the experiences have been both "positive and effective."

"She has great skills in helping people see other perspectives and helping them manage through change," Gray says. "She is great to work with and has a great demeanor. She pulls people in rather than put them off."

Tough Audiences

In 1986, the United Nations invited Hopper to be a trainer in a 10-day management and leadership program in Amman, Jordan, designed for two-dozen city administrators from Arab nations such as Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

These were men of high status and high prestige, she says, but their willingness to open their minds to new possibilities showed her that good business practices can be translated and are universal.

"We asked them to do a Harvard [Business Review] case study on resolving issues that arise from heavy snowfall in metropolitan areas," she says. Despite their lack of experience with snowfall in the desert, "they did it and they came up with very interesting solutions," she adds.

An organization's variables may change, but the main principles of management are the same everywhere -- from the boardrooms in Jordan to orientation at Georgetown, she says.

"Everyone wants to be treated with respect and dignity, but respect and dignity can mean different things from culture to culture. Everyone wants to feel like they're doing something worthwhile," she says. "Everyone wants to be motivated."