Chief Learning Officer recently sat down with Kimo Kippen, founder of Aloha Learning Advisors. Kippen is the former CLO of Hilton and the former vice president of learning at Marriott International. In 2015, he was recognized as CLO of the Year.
Chief Learning Officer: Where is your hometown?
It’s an interesting question. If you were to ask me where my heart is, where I identify, where I am from as a person, it would be Hawaii. I am lucky now in that my hometown is here on the island of Oahu, an area called Kaneohe, which is on the North side of the island. Absolutely beautiful. I live now, in this stage of my life, between Hawaii, where I am right now, and also Warsaw, Poland. I toggle between winters here, summers there. And I do quite a bit of work in Europe, so I need to have my feet in both parts of the world. I like it, because it helps keep me really relevant. I’m working, really, across 12 time zones, and I’m actually having a perspective from being in the Pacific all the way to spending a lot of time in Europe.
CLO: What was your official job in learning and development?
I worked my whole career in the hospitality industry. I started as a busboy, and then as a very young manager at Marriott, I had to go to a training program, and I was like, “Oh, that looks like a fun job.” I worked my way all the way up to being the head of learning for Marriott. I then left Marriott, and went to work for Hilton as the chief learning officer. I was part of the IPO for Hilton, really helping take Hilton to the next level. The thing about hospitality is, everywhere needs it. The world needs a lot of hospitality, in more ways than one. It’s a great industry to be in, and people are very respectful of great brands and great systems, great leaders and great companies.
CLO: What lessons did you learn in 2020 that you’re taking with you into 2021?
Lots of good lessons. A great shift for me is just to be more appreciative of slowing it down, being very much more appreciative of the here and now, and a greater appreciation of the sheer beauty of the world. I swim at the beach every day, and prior to COVID, this beach that I swim at would be packed, and then when COVID hit, we were the only people on the beach. I see turtles every day, and about a month ago, I was swimming, and I saw a Hawaiian monk seal on our beach. A Hawaiian monk seal is endangered, indigenous, and there’s only about 1,300 of them in the world. He was sun-bathing right in front of us.
When I was really young I moved out of the islands, so when I came back for a vacation, I see tons of family, tons of friends. I have breakfast, lunch and dinner appointments set up, and coffees in between just to catch up and reconnect with people. But, on the other side, you don’t really see a lot. You don’t really play tourist. But now that we’ve been back for a much longer time, and because there’s so little tourists, you can actually get access to a lot of places. So, about a month ago, we went to Haleakala, which is 11,000 feet high. It’s the house of the sun. We were the only people at the observatory. When we went to Kilauea, which is on the Big Island, we were there on Thursday, and the volcano erupted on Sunday. When we were walking around Kilauea crater, we were the only people walking around the crater. It’s just beautiful. It’s like rediscovering.
CLO: Tell us about L&D Cares?
In partnership with other learning professionals, we have come together to help practitioners, both there on the consulting side, as well as those who are in full-time gigs, who have been displaced as a result of COVID, to help them find their next gig and opportunity. And as you know, the way one gets a job is through networking. What we’re trying to do is help people to network. So, we set up this L&D Cares site, and we have 400 people who are already on it, and what we’ve done is we set up these cohorts. They’re groups of 10 — we have about nine of them right now — people who want to come together, and we have volunteer coaches to coach those cohorts. They meet probably every other week. Having done a job search, I am very cognizant of having a buddy or buddies to help you in that process.
We’re doing this very much on-the-fly, but it has quite a bit of structure. We’re doing a lot of career summits. We did one back in September, and … another one in February. It’s a [virtual] forum of people and 40 speakers to help people, again, to network, and learn skills to help them to get a better and greater job.
CLO: How do you enjoy spending your time outside of work?
So, I’m pretty fortunate that I’m working, shall I say on my own terms? I have quite a bit of flexibility in what I do, and I’m loving it because it’s allowed me to do other things that are important to me. Again, around family and health, well-being and travel, so that’s been very good. I serve on a lot of boards. I’ve been able to devote more time to [causes that I care deeply about] to help advance their mission, and then personally, we’re now living what we’ve strategized to do, and that is to be able to live between two places that we care and love very much, Poland and Hawaii. To be able to spend time in both places has been wonderful.
CLO: What book, audio or physical, or podcast, has gotten you through 2020 and the pandemic?
One that was interesting, a colleague wrote, it’s called “Curiosity,” written by Simon Brown. He’s done a nice job in talking about the power of curiosity, the importance of curiosity, what that means to organizations. That was good. The other one is around racism, “How to Be an Anti-Racist.”
CLO: In your opinion, what are some components of a robust L&D program?
Always start with the learner. Everything is about the learner. What is the objective, and what does the learner experience look like during that learning process? How would we measure the effectiveness, the impact, of that learning, both for the individual, as well as for the organization for which we’re doing it with and in?
CLO: What advice do you have for fellow CLOs, and learning leaders as they take on 2021?
It’s a marathon and not a sprint. And always take care of yourself first. Focus on resilience, and really keep in mind that it is the longer play that we’re talking about. There’s going to be sprints that are going to be meted in between that, but it’s really important these days that we keep in focus what’s really important, which is your health, yourself, your health, your family, your loved ones and staying focused on that. In this new world in which we’re working, which is primarily remote and at home, that and now for people that have kids, they’re having to do all that remote. It’s a whole new day. So, I also just need to express, we need to be grateful, gratitude, kindness, appreciation, resilience, empathy. These are some of the words that I would like to see the world have more of, and acceptance, toleration, celebration, inclusion, belonging, those, a lot again, those words, adjectives and adverbs that I’d like to see more in the world.
This article has been edited for brevity.
