Chief Learning Officer’s “Learning Insights” series is dedicated to showcasing the thoughts and career journeys of chief learning officers and learning executives—the tireless trailblazers who are transforming the landscape of corporate learning and workforce development. In this Q&A series, we garner strategic insights, innovative approaches and challenges overcome from visionary leaders worldwide.
What initially drew you to a career in learning and development, and how have your experiences evolved over the years?
I was originally trained to teach high school English. Shortly thereafter, I realized adult learning was more energizing and I began working in that space. I started as a trainer and instructional designer and expanded from there. Like so many, the evolution of my L&D leadership has many twists and turns. I spent 10 years as an entrepreneur using talent development to empower widespread teams in ultra-fast-paced environments. I’ve also honed my L&D experience working in a Fortune 100 organization leading large and local L&D teams through ongoing business transformation.
Today, I serve at a midsize financial institution. Each day I work to bring the best of my large and small business L&D experience to an organization that’s going through its own unique business transformation. Each stop along my journey has been challenging and valuable. That’s the through-line of my career: I look for opportunities that are going to push the limits of what I can do well and force me to learn new skills and capabilities. Never stop growing.
What key initiatives have you implemented as a learning leader to drive employee development and foster a learning culture?
Four initiatives that I’m particularly proud of in my 25-year career stand out.
First is the work I did in grad school to support my doctorate. From 2002 to 2003, I led a national, controlled experiment to help U.S. Figure Skating Association judges (yes, the ones you see on ABC TV on Saturday afternoons) rate figure skaters more accurately. I built an e-learning system that provided just-in-time rating simulations to prime the judges before a live event. Those who used the tool judged 24 percent more accurately than those in the control group. A statistically significant difference in performance. That system helped high-stakes competitors—competing for big earnings and Olympic contention—be judged more fairly than ever before.
Second is a scrappy sales and service training system that helped a disruptive retailer dominate its market category quickly. In 2003, I cofounded a home theater retail business called TheaterXtreme. We had a vision of putting a real movie theater (like the ones you see on MTV Cribs) in middle-income homes across the country. No existing retailer had cracked the code on how to do it. We figured it out. From a talent development perspective, I led the creation of a comprehensive sales, service and leadership training strategy that could scale quickly. Once the retail concept took off (with the help of venture capital and eventually taking the company public), we opened new stores rapidly. Each store had its own team and the L&D strategy held up. Stores were performing well and TheaterXtreme was acquired by Circuit City in early 2008 only to quickly sink when the housing market imploded. Circuit City shortly thereafter filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. TheaterXtreme crashed and burned along with it.
Third is a virtual training and coaching program I built that helps job seekers get back to work two-times faster when displaced by their employer. In 2008, I cofounded Careerminds, then a fledgling startup in the outplacement space. Our vision was to create the first 100 percent virtual outplacement program on planet Earth—we were a bit crazy back then. The impact of such a program, we thought, would be high utilization rates because it’s more convenient for the participant. Higher utilization meant more commitment to the learning, development and coaching required to be re-employed faster. It worked. It proved to put job-seekers back to work twice as fast (and it cost less, too) compared to the big brick-and-mortar competitors. Careerminds has since become a top five global outplacement provider. It was acquired by Talent.com in 2023.
Fourth is a work in progress. I joined Citadel Credit Union as the head of talent development in 2013 after being displaced due to a reorganization at Capital One. Citadel is an 87-year-old bank with a healthy balance sheet and an esteemed heritage in the greater Philadelphia area. That’s not why I joined Citadel. Quite the opposite. Citadel is in the process of transforming itself into a leading community bank with a distinctive value proposition—not just for the marketplace but for its employees too.
Much of the business transformation centers on how our people, processes, products, and technologies function together to create new, distinctive value. This is where I’m pushing the limits of what I can do well and, at the same time, forcing me to learn new skills and capabilities. I’ve had the privilege to lead our L&D team into uncharted waters where we’re literally changing how people learn and develop at Citadel. We’ve embraced practices and technologies that support learning the flow of work, developmental coaching and transformational leadership, and elevated our strategic influence at the C-suite level. Such influence, for example, allows us to move toward becoming a skills-based organization. We’ve developed an entirely new approach to sales skills development (that’s human-centered) which contributed to one of our most successful revenue years in operating history. We’ve created a culture of daily learning (using Axonify) to help frontline teams sell and service more effectively. These are just a few examples of how we’re reimagining the role of talent development. At Citadel, L&D, now more than ever, is seen as essential to value creation and our competitive advantage. I’m proud of how far we have come and eager to keep challenging us to grow.
What is the most impactful learning program you’ve introduced in your organization, and how has it contributed to employee growth and business success?
How we sell. Citadel was beginning to plateau in sales several years ago. After conducting a root cause analysis, we determined it was a symptom of employee sales ability. For decades prior, sales ability was second fiddle to Citadel’s service-first mindset. Sales, in many ways, was a four-letter word and employee proficiency with it widely varied. That needed to change. We contracted with Korn Ferry to build a connection-based sales methodology that paired well with our service excellence. It took two years to onboard all our frontline Retail associates. However, as each team learned the method, their sales production went up in lockstep. Our customer service score also continued to climb. Shortly thereafter, Citadel went on to have its best year in its operating history, generating nearly $1 billion in balances over the previous year. Many factors contributed to this growth, though sales capability was a key ingredient. Today, Citadel has a complete sales training and reinforcement ecosystem. Daily microlearning to keep sales skills sharp, coaching kits and even an in-house video series that celebrates employees who are making an impact with sales.
What is a common misconception people might have about the L&D function, and how do you address it?
Sadly, L&D is often seen as a cost center that serves a one-dimensional purpose: To teach employees what they need to know so that can do their job. Yes, L&D does have that mandate, but there’s much more to the value proposition. Teaching the basics is table stakes. The real value is helping employees grow and develop into more effective individual contributors and leaders. That’s where it’s important to distinguish “training” from “development.” Training is what you get when you’re required to know something for your job. Development is what you seek when you want to get better at what you already do well. L&D serves both needs. When done well, L&D transforms itself from a cost center to a value center that helps the organization’s competitive advantage.
What excites you the most about the future of workplace learning, and how are you preparing your organization to adapt to the changing landscape?
Two areas I see as being game-changing for talent development. One: The march toward a skill-based organizational design (as opposed to role-based). Two: Artificial intelligence.
Transforming to a skills-based organization is a monumental shift. The benefits are numerous, from better innovation to stronger employee engagement, to an elevated employee value proposition. It may be the single most important shift for L&D professionals because it puts the future of the organization at the center of their world. This will undoubtedly create more value for L&D professionals and drive the strategic importance of talent development. Citadel is making this shift—and it’ll take time.
However, we’re already seeing its impact in terms of having a strong voice at the org strategy level, greater investments in coaching and development, and a keen interest from the C-suite in the present supply, demand, and resulting gap in skills needed for us to win in the marketplace. In 2023 we created a three-year skills-based organization strategic roadmap in anticipation of it starting in 2024. It’s real.
AI is still elusive in the ultimate value it’ll bring to L&D. We’re not waiting to play catch up. We’re planning small but important bets on AI tech that can help us understand its impact on skills and performance. We’re launching a gen-AI tool to support Citadel’s knowledge base. The goal is to reduce the time it takes to find and learn critical information (from minutes of searching to seconds). The pilot showed promising results. If it works as intended, we’ll see a positive impact on NPS and employee confidence, which can reduce turnover. Another AI tool we’re exploring is synthetic video production (Synthesia). The goal is to increase short-format video production without sacrificing quality. Our first area of interest is in sales skills reinforcement. We’ll be piloting in Q2-2024.
What essential qualities or skills make a successful L&D leader, and how do you cultivate these traits in yourself and among your team?
A growth mindset is all you need. Stay curious, challenge yourself to learn something new, try it and potentially fail. Get back up, course correct and keep going. Repeat.
We make available many upskilling resources for our L&D team and for the organization. I challenge my team to challenge the status quo and to think differently. We share takeaways from articles, resources, books, webinars, events and other professional development resources often. We encourage involvement (and leadership) in professional associations. We expect you to network and get to know the best minds in the area.
What game-changing advice would you offer if you could go back in time and mentor your younger self?
Speak truth to power. Never hold back on feedback or an idea that you think has teeth. Stay open to criticism. Lead with empathy: Seek to understand first, then to be understood. This is the greatest lesson I’ve learned in life so far.
What do you feel is currently the single biggest challenge facing L&D professionals and the industry as a whole?
Empowering L&D professionals with a business mindset. We need current and future L&D professionals to be equally invested in the technical work of talent development and the business acumen needed to influence the business’ strategic choices.
We’re always looking to showcase innovative tools and technologies. Can you share one work or learning tech product or platform that has significantly improved your work processes and why you find it valuable?
The microlearning platform Axonify has been a winning investment for Citadel. Our employees mostly love it and it’s built on hard core learning science. Its business impact has been solid. In one controlled study we found that employees who used Axonify regularly sold 25 percent more credit cards than those who did not. We’ve also positively correlated Axonify’s use to better NPS. Employees tout that it’s a fun platform and they enjoy the daily questions, competitions and prizes. Many employees give their prize dollars to charities like Food Bank and others.
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