Harald’s Curious Corner

Customer education fails when teams rush to buy technology before looking at the problem they’re trying to solve. In this episode, I sit down with Vicky Kennedy , Founder and Chief Education Architect of Echtus , to explore why so many customer education programmes look impressive on the surface but fail to drive meaningful business outcomes. Vicky brings a rare blend of experience across higher e...

Customer education is a growth engine. If you can’t tie education to retention, revenue, and product adoption, you’re leaving real impact on the table. In this episode, I sit down with our Customer Educational Panel, Kristine Kukich , Dan Braithwaite , Melissa Kruminas , and Clea Mahoney , for a deep dive into what’s actually happening in customer education today. From reducing support tickets by...

Customer education is the key to long-term growth. If you can't connect education to customer success, you're missing out. In this episode, I sit down with Courtney Sembler , former Senior Director at HubSpot Academy , and now Managing Partner and COO at AlignedCX , to explore how customer education has become a core driver of business success. We dive into the evolution of HubSpot Academy, how th...

Customer education can’t just focus on clicks. It has to focus on the jobs to be done. That is the big question at the heart of this episode. What is customer education really for, and how do you prove it matters? To explore that, I spoke with Debbie Smith , a long-time customer education leader and current President of TSIA’s Customer Education Management Association (CEdMA) . Debbie has spent ye...

Data is power. If you can’t tie learning to revenue, you’re guessing. Customer education has moved from a support function to a growth strategy. In this episode, I sit down with John Leh , CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning , to explore how external learning is evolving into a true revenue driver. We unpack what maturity really looks like in customer education, why integration is the only w...

Customer education shouldn’t stop at “You’re trained.” It’s just the start. What truly matters is whether a scientific approach to learning drives real outcomes, transforming how customers engage with your product and the results they achieve. In this episode, I get curious with Dave Derington , former scientist turned expert in customer education and Co-founder and Co-host of CELab . Dave’s journ...

Customer education is evolving. But is it driving real business impact or just more training? In Arc 3 of Harald’s Curious Corner, I explore the connection between skills, customer education, and performance. Through conversations with leaders across L&D and customer learning, one theme keeps surfacing: training alone isn’t enough. What matters is whether learning moves the needle on adoption,...

This is a special episode of Harald’s Curious Corner, recorded right as the L&D Global Sentiment Survey 2026 is released and the conversation across our field starts to shift. Instead of a typical interview arc, this one is more of a pulse check from the survey’s results: what’s rising, what’s fading, and what it tells us about where L&D is heading next. To make sense of it, I sat down wit...

Over the past few episodes, I’ve been chasing one big question with Koreen Pagano , Dr. Sandra Loughlin , Eran Vaisfailr , Matthew J. Daniel , and Samantha Murray : What does it actually take to build a skills-based organisation that works in the real world? In this wrap-up, I’m connecting the dots. “Skills-based” can mean a lot of things, and it’s easy to get stuck in frameworks, taxonomies, and...

Too often, skills-based initiatives are implemented without clear use cases or business impact in mind. In this episode, we challenge that approach. Many skills programs fail because they are disconnected from business needs and are difficult to implement. It’s not the technology, it’s the approach. Skills programs must be integrated into the daily workflow where learning happens. To explore what...

“How do you design learning and skills experiences people actually want to use?” A lot of skills and learning programs don’t fail because the content is bad. They fail because the experience feels like extra work: hard to find and navigate and disconnected from what people are trying to get done. To explore what actually changes that, I spoke with Samantha Murray , founder of AlignedCX . Sam has l...

Imagine if learning wasn't just about courses, but about unlocking real career opportunities through the right skills. In our previous conversation, we explored the overwhelming number of systems that impact employees' ability to learn and grow. In this episode, I’m diving deeper with Matthew J. Daniel , Senior Principal, Talent Strategy & Mobility at Guild Education , on a crucial topic: how...

“How do we drive real skills transformation within a company?” That’s the question we explore in this episode with Eran Vaisfailr , former Product Owner of Learning and Development at Booking.com, now Co-founder and CEO of Plynn , a learning startup focused on turning informal learning into measurable skills. In his time at Booking.com, Eran was at the forefront of building a skills-based organisa...

“Skills only matter if they solve a real business problem.”  In the last episode, we explored why skills require a deeper understanding of the work being done and why HR and L&D cannot build this alone. This conversation picks up that thread and moves it into the real world.  Sandra Loughlin, PhD , Chief Learning Scientist at EPAM , joins me to show what a skills-based organisation looks like...

How do you actually build a skills-based organisation in practice, and why does it matter now? L&D has been mainly about designing learning content and delivering training. Now, we’re moving towards reimagining the very foundation of how we work, especially with the rise of AI. I chatted with Koreen Pagano , co-founder of Rising Tide Cooperative and author of Building the Skills-Based Organiza...

Over the past few episodes, I’ve gone down a lot of rabbit holes with Lori Niles-Hofmann , Laura Overton , Michelle Ockers , Dr. Ashwin Mehta, Nicki Finnigan , Hannah Frame , and Erica Farmer , trying to answer one big question: What does it mean to be an L&D leader in the age of AI? In this wrap-up, I’m connecting the dots. While AI can absolutely accelerate your impact, it can just as easily...

“How do L&D leaders stay grounded, strategic, and human while leading through the age of AI?” In this episode, we’re exploring how leadership adapts when AI accelerates change faster than traditional models can keep up. I’m joined by Hannah Frame and  Nicki Finnigan of Every Day's a School Day Podcast and Erica Farmer of EricaFarmer.a , three of the best L&D consultants and practitioners I...

“How can L&D leaders stay strategic in the age of AI?” Previously, we were shifting our perspective from technology to leadership. For this episode, we’re shifting the focus to leadership and strategy.  I chat with Dr. Ashwin Mehta , founder and CEO of Mehtadology, an AI researcher, and someone who runs a company with more agents than people. He brings sharp technical and practical insight to...

“How do we keep the human touch as L&D leaders in the AI era?” In our last episode, we explored how AI is transforming L&D from reactive to strategic, helping leaders prove business value beyond completion rates. This time, we’re shifting our perspective from technology to leadership. Laura Overton and Michelle Ockers , co-authors of the book The L&D Leader: Principles and Practice for...

“What’s the real role of L&D in the age of AI?” This is the first big question we hope to answer in Harald’s Curious Corner.  To get some perspective, I spoke with Lori Niles-Hofmann , strategist and author of Eight Levers of EdTech Transformation . She has spent years helping organizations navigate big shifts in learning technology and knows what works and what doesn’t. We discussed where L&a...

Harald’s Curious Corner is where curiosity meets connection.  Harald chases that question with a guest, gathers perspectives from voices across the industry, and then steps back to reflect on what it all means. The show unfolds like a story arc, part exploration, part roundtable, part reflection,  blending imagination with analysis.  The result: trusted insights, meaningful conversations, and forw...