Frank T. Wydra, distracted by the messy necessity of earning his keep, came late to the writing-for-pay game. Work took him down many paths from helping to launch the aborted invasion of Cuba to managing a grocery store to becoming a vice-president of a NYSE company at age thirty-two to becoming Chief Executive Officer of a large health care concern and then his own national consulting company. Yet, in the adolescence of his career, he managed to write a classic textbook on learning and published fifty or so professional articles.
His genre of choice is the mystery/thriller. The Cure, his first novel, was published by Dell in 1992 to critical acclaim. Then, the vagaries of business stole his attention for more than a decade. Returning to the writing life in the early years of this millennium, he has produced three new novels now searching for a home and a fistful of short stories.
He and his wife, Karen, live in a nature preserve in Southeast Michigan and have become the primary—if inadvertent and unwilling--suppliers of sustenance to the deer, chipmunks, raccoons, groundhogs, voles, rabbits, turtles, snakes, wild turkeys, coyotes, and hot-pink, plastic flamingoes with whom they share the land.
Prior to devoting full time to writing, Frank Wydra was a business executive who understood the bottom line. He spent 35 years as a corporate officer dealing with both business and human resource issues.
He was the managing partner of IRI, Consultants To Management, Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in human performance issues, and has served as Executive Vice-President, The Chi Group, Inc., President, Radius Health Care, Inc., Senior Vice-President, HGH Health System and Vice-President Personnel and Training, Allied Supermarkets, Inc. He has served on the boards of a dozen corporations and professional organizations.
His areas of specialization include human resource strategic planning, financial analysis, change management, organizational development, reward and performance systems, training and labor relations. Frank Wydra is the developer of the concept of Human Resource Architectureâ , an aid to understanding the forces influencing organizational change and has performed numerous assignments in assisting organizations in their change effort. In addition, Frank Wydra has developed IRI’s proprietary Issue Identification and Improvement (I3Ò) process which is touted as the successor to employee surveys.
Frank Wydra has a BS degree in Management from the University of Illinois and is author of Learner Controlled Instruction, Performulations (a management game) and Power and Authority, numerous articles on management and human resource issues as well as his literary work. Among his many professional awards is The American Society for Training and Development's National Torch Award. He is also a Marquis Who’s Who in America and The World biographee.