SureSkills Learn to Grow Podcast

My guest this week is Dr. Keith Keating , CLO at BDO Canada and an influential author whose latest book, Hidden Value , reveals how learning can drive tangible business outcomes that traditional metrics often miss—turning capability building into a true competitive advantage. (Sidenote: for anyone attending Devlearn in the coming weeks, Keith will be the keynote speaker there, which is super excit...

What does it take to build a learning culture for 180,000 people? My guest today is Brian Murphy, Global Head of Learning & Development at NTT DATA. Before this role, Brian led transformational learning at Citi, AstraZeneca, and Microsoft, and he’s known for turning big ideas into practical programs that drive performance. We get into the real questions L&D teams are wrestling with right n...

Learn to Grow Shorts – Learnership and the Power of Interdisciplinarity Welcome to another Learn to Grow Shorts, where I reflect on a topic of particular interest from my most recent conversation—and today I’m looking back on my discussion with Ed Monk, CEO of the Learning and Performance Institute. Ed shared a concept he’s been thinking deeply about: learnership. It’s not just a skillset—it’s a m...

On the latest episode of the Learn to Grow Podcast, I welcome back Ed Monk , one of my favorite past guests on the show. Ed is the CEO of the Learning and Performance Institute—a leader who doesn’t just talk about change, he lives it. Ed is known for pushing the boundaries of how we learn, how we lead, and how we make learning truly accessible in a world that’s evolving fast. He’s outspoken, insig...

Welcome to another episode of Learn to Grow shorts, where I reflect on a topic of particular interest from our most recent episode. Last time, I chatted with Ruth Gotian, who’s hard at work on her latest book after the wonderful “Success Factor” made such a splash a couple of years back. In our conversation we discussed Ruth’s article on Olympian Inbar Lanir who, after being cut from the National...

Welcome to the SureSkills Learn to Grow Podcast where we discuss the learning landscape with leaders in learning. My guest today is Dr. Ruth Gotian. Dr. Gotian is the Chief Learning Officer at Weill Cornell Medicine and a highly sought after executive coach and mentor – in fact she’s been named one the Thinkers50 top 50 executive coaches in the world. Dr. Gotian studies and works with elite high a...

On the latest episode of the podcast, Microsoft's Karen Kocher implores learners to try something new every day – she cites studies that have shown that even eleven minutes a day over period of eleven weeks was enough to have a significant impact not just on skill development but on learning how to learn more effectively. In this episode of Learn to Grow Shorts, some thoughts on how we can redisco...

Thrilled to kick off a new wave of episodes of the Learn to Grow Podcast with a very special guest - Karen Kocher , Microsoft’s Global General Manager for the Future of Work, Workforce of the Future, and Employee Experiences. In this episode, we explore a mindset that is becoming increasingly essential in today’s dynamic work environment—the transition from being a 'know-it-all' to a 'learn-it-all...

My latest guest on the Learn to Grow Podcast is Erika Ullmann, Learning and Development Director at Virgin Media Ireland. Erika is one of the most conscientious L&D leaders I have met, and she is doing incredible work not just providing learning opportunities, but opening peoples eyes to their identities as learners. In our conversation, we discuss: How to align learning with a strategic visio...

Christopher is the dynamic and engaging host of Learning Tech Talks and founder of Learning Sharks, both projects that feature as part of his mission to shape the future of workforce development. He is the Chief Learning Officer at ChenMed and a vastly experienced learning professional with a passion for exploring not just how we do things, but why we do them. Let me quickly explain the premise of...

In this episode, I am delighted welcome Todd Moran , Chief Learning Strategist at NovoEd . Todd is one of the industry’s great thinkers, a learning professional deeply attuned to what’s happening right now in the world of workplace learning and development. The conversation is filled with insights and practical tools, and includes an invitation to learn with NovoEd. In our conversation, we discuss...

This week’s episode comes in the form of a reading recommendation! In our most recent episode we discussed the fact that learning can’t simply take place at the beginning of our “careers” it has to happen throughout. That is exactly the point Michelle Weise makes in her excellent book “Long Life Learning ”. Weise highlights the fact that our careers now span 60 years or more and that our systems o...

My guest this week is content guru Kirk Werner who is the VP of content at Udacity. Kirk played a major role as Lynda.com revolutionized online learning and continues to push the envelope at Udacity helping learners build future-focused skills. If you are at all interested in where the future of learning is going, this is the podcast for you. Kirk is so knowledgeable when it comes to learning tren...

Today I am following up on the conversation with Ruth Gotian, Chief Learning Officer at Weill Cornell Medicine and author of The Success Factor: Developing the Mindset and Skillset for Peak Business Performance – I will add a link to the pre-order Ruth’s book in the show notes. ( pre-order here 😊) My favorite aspect of this conversation was the focus on the practical aspects of learning. As I hav...

My latest guest on the Learn to Grow Podcast is Dr. Ruth Gotian who is the Chief Learning Officer at Weill Cornell Medicine and Assistant professor of education anesthesiology, former assistant dean of mentoring and executive director of the mentoring academy at Weill Cornell. Ruth is a frequent contributor to Forbes and Psychology today. Ruth interviews Nobel laureates, professional athletes, and...

Reflecting on my conversation with Joe, there are so many things I love about his approach to labs . The first is that his story about how a training session inadvertently turned into a lab demonstrates some really cool aspects of learning – from both the mentor/educator perspective and from the student perspective. Joe explained a situation where software for training stopped working, just broke....

My guest this week is our very own Joe Mansfield, who heads up our Virtual Labs team as the lead technical content developer here at SureSkills. Joe and his team are building virtual lab training for some of the world’s leading organizations, and I thought it would be cool to have him on to discuss what has become a highly sought-after service. Joe and his team, and virtualized labs generally, hav...

I have talked a lot about culture of late, so here are some reading recommendations if you'd like to dive deeper! The Culture Code, by Daniel Coyle Mindset, by Carol Dweck Start with Why, by Simon Sinek

My guest this week is Michael Anaya, Head of Attack Surface Analysis at Cortex by Palo Alto Networks. Michael and I connected a while back and I was fascinated by both his background as an FBI special agent and the challenge facing him in his current role as he implements a vision for his team. I proposed an idea. Michael is looking to build a successful learning culture, provide dynamic learning...

Atomization is the breaking down of jobs into projects and tasks, individual pieces that can be completed and tracked. This means organizations are looking to match talent to task so they can use the highest quality, lowest cost actor to complete the work. Why is atomization happening and why does it matter? 1.      Agility amidst uncertainty – easier to scale up and...

I am proud to kick off the second season of the Learn to Grow Podcast with special guest Heather McGowan , co-author (with Chris Shipley) of The Adaptation Advantage . Heather is renowned internationally as a keynote speaker, a regular Forbes contributor , and a futurist outlining how learning and adaptation are crucial to our personal and professional lives . In our conversation we discuss: Why t...

This week I welcomed Shelley Osborne to the podcast , and we talked through some of the core concepts of her book The Upskilling Imperative . The thing that stood out to me this week was the importance of mentors, and in particular of feedback. Shelley and the crew at Udemy are big on feedback and are heavily invested in the idea that feedback is fuel. This made me think about the reason we need f...

My guest this week is Shelley Osborne who is the VP of Learning at Udemy and author of “The Upskilling Imperative”, a wonderfully insightful book centered on how to make learning core to the way we work. I was so happy Shelley agreed to be on the podcast and she certainly didn’t disappoint. I love the way Shelley thinks about learning and its role in the workplace, and so much of what she say...

I Loved Anna’s question because one of the things we have to do is to reconcile our short and long term goals – in the short term, how do we make sure we get through a really challenging time when so much is unpredictable, when it comes to the demand for our services, the economy, etc. Balancing the short and long term is tricky. There is the initial survival mode, making sure everyone is safe and...

This week my guest is Joe Moriarty, CEO of Raven360, a corporate Learning Management System for Training-led Growth. They deliver personalized training experiences for customers, partners and employees in a single platform. In our conversation we discuss how pandemic pivots have revealed new opportunities, using training-led growth to create client evangelists, and special guest Anna Bolton asks J...