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Positioning L&D to the Business
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What does learning look like through a CFO’s lens? In this candid conversation, a business leader interviews a CFO to unpack how investments in learning and development show up—or fail to show up—in the P&L. Attendees will hear what financial leaders actually care about, how they connect capability-building to productivity and results, and what L&D can do to become a more credible, value-driving partner to the business. This session challenges learning professionals to move beyond activity metrics and speak the language of impact.
Robert Wagner MCLO™
Robert Wagner is the Co-Founder of CLO100, the Professional Body for Learning Leaders, supporting senior L&D professionals with recognition, benchmarking, professional membership, and insight into learning leadership excellence.
Having founded CLO100 and the Learning Leaders Programme with Cathy Hoy, he's seen first-hand the impact of connecting ambitious professionals with the right insights has on strategically driving organisational success.
He has recently launched the CLO Impact Index, a global benchmarking and diagnostic framework for L&D Leaders. It evaluates how well you are currently performing across 5 critical 'impact' categories.
CLO100 membership is exclusively for senior L&D professionals seeking professional recognition, industry credibility, and membership of the professional body for learning leaders.
Marko Horvat
Marko Horvat, CPA, is a passionate financial executive with more than two decades of experience transforming finance functions and guiding organizations through complex business and digital transformations. With a career spanning CFO, controller, and advisory leadership roles, Marko has consistently driven performance through the integration of efficient processes, top-tier talent, and innovative technology. He has advised Fortune 500 companies, private equity sponsors, healthcare institutions, and nonprofits, helping them achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence, and financial resilience. Currently serving as SVP of Business Transformation at ELB Learning, he partners with business leaders to shape strategies for sustainable evolution and organizational success.
Marko’s career highlights include leading finance transformation strategies as Vice President at Gartner, directing financial modernization efforts at Clinica Sierra Vista and Kern Medical, and advancing private equity–backed finance maturity as Managing Director at E78. A sought-after speaker and thought leader, he has contributed to conferences, podcasts, and advisory boards—including serving on the Strategic AI Advisory Board at the University of San Francisco and the Forbes Finance Council. His areas of expertise span business and digital transformation, AI in finance, strategic planning, revenue cycle, treasury, and compliance. Marko’s work reflects his commitment to helping organizations unlock their full potential through innovation, insight, and execution.
You did the research. You talked to managers. You analyzed the data. You built something thoughtful. But the business still said no.
Positioning L&D as a true partner to the business is rarely a straight line. Dr. Tekeisha Zimmerman shares the story of building a leadership development function from the ground up, using human-centered design and data to identify the right starting point, and still missing something critical.
Through that experience, she introduces BUILD, a practitioner framework for designing programs the business will actually champion. You will leave with an honest look at what it actually takes to earn a seat at the table, including what worked, what did not, and why positioning L&D as a business partner requires you to speak the language and bring the right people along.
Dr. Tekeisha Zimmerman
Dr. Tekeisha Zimmerman has spent more than fifteen years leading learning functions at some of the world's most recognizable organizations, including Affirm, Amazon, and Expedia. As the Founder of Masterpiece in Progress Learning, she specializes in leadership development that connects to the real conditions organizations are navigating. Her expertise spans instructional design, facilitation, and building L&D functions that earn genuine partnership with the business.
Tekeisha is a frequent speaker at the ATD International Conference, and her forthcoming book,Check the VERSE, is under contract with ATD Press.
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Partnering with the Business for Impact
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"Do we even have a strategy?" This is a common question within organizations nowadays. After weeks and sometimes months of strategy planning, C-Level Boards share the final result in an email, a leadership call, or, if you're lucky, a company meeting as well. And then, they wonder why nobody knows what the strategy is or why team and individual goals aren't aligned to a larger scope.
As L&Ds, we're well-positioned to support the communication of a company strategy, as well as to help everyone make sense of it and translate it to their own reality. Join me to explore the why and how of this particular way of partnering with the business.
Lavinia Mehedințu
Lavinia is a dreamer, recovered workaholic, learning nerd, and former Learning & Development Manager of a wonderful team. She's taking everything she's learned in the past years about learning, business development, community management, and team management, and building Offbeat as the go-to learning space for any learning professional.
This session explores how L&D creates real impact by building solutions around genuine capability needs — and why not partnering with the business simply isn’t an option. We know learning; business knows the reality, the context, and the facts. Only together can we design learning that shifts behaviors, supports strategy, and enables innovation through co‑creation and experimentation.
Using examples from post‑pandemic reskilling, future leadership development, and an ongoing initiative with a Sales Academy, the session shows how working closely with the business leads to learning that is relevant, innovative, contextual — and brings direct value to the business.
Martina Ekbom
With a background in behavioral science, Martina has spent the past 15 years developing organizational learning in large‑scale transformation initiatives. Coming from the tech world and fueled by a strong passion for human development, she focuses on how organizations can be shaped at the intersection of people, learning, and new technology. Martina is dedicated to building true partnerships with the business — translating strategic needs into learning that drives real impact, supports change, and enables innovation.
Frida Klingström
With a background in marketing and production, Frida she brings a unique perspective to learning design — combining creativity, customer‑centric thinking, and operational insight. Her work is driven by a strong focus on innovation and exploring how AI can support the creation of new learning experiences, streamline solutions, and unlock smarter ways of building capability. Frida is passionate about pushing boundaries, she partners closely with the business to test, refine, and scale learning approaches that are both impactful and future‑ready.
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Designing for Performance, Not Just Learning
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Training Transfer Effectiveness doesn’t begin when the trainer enters the room it begins long before. It starts with clarity, commitment, and collaboration.
In this thought-provoking session, Melanie, globally renowned Learning Transfer expert and CEO of the Institute for Transfer Effectiveness, will challenge one of the industry’s deepest misconceptions that transfer begins only after the training has taken place. She will shine a spotlight on the often-neglected Pre-Training Phase, the true battleground where training impact is either cemented or sabotaged. Drawing from global research, case studies, and her own extensive experience, Melanie will reveal why the biggest mistakes organizations make occur before training even begins from unclear performance expectations to weak sponsor engagement and how these early oversights lead to costly training scrap. Using insights from her collaboration with Dr. Ina Weinbauer-Heidel’s 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness, Melanie will unpack the science behind successful transfer, showing that great facilitation alone is never enough. She will demonstrate how intentional design and stakeholder involvement before Day 1 of training determine whether learning becomes a short-term event or a long-term transformation.
Melanie Martinelli
Melanie Martinelli combines her entrepreneurial spirit with her 20 years of experience in L&D to help build memorable & results-based learning experiences. In her roles as CEO of the Institute for Transfer Effectiveness and Founder of Going Beyond Training, she applies strong business acumen, rich practical experience across cultures & a deep understanding of what makes transfer happen to support her clients in being more strategic in their L&D initiatives.
Most new managers are left to sink or swim. Grant Thornton took a different approach — building a year-long journey that combines quick-start onboarding, hands-on bootcamps, and peer learning triads to develop leaders who are ready from day one.
The program kicks off with onboarding to help new managers get up and running, followed by guidance through annual people processes and practical bootcamps where they can practice, experiment, and deepen their leadership skills.
Alongside these components, each new manager is part of a learning triad — a small group of peers who follow each other throughout their first year, sharing experiences and supporting one another. This way, they gain not only knowledge and tools but also a network that strengthens their leadership from the start.
Sandra Andrén
Sandra Andrén is the Director ofLearning & Leadership Development at Grant Thornton and heads a team focused on strengthening learning and development across the company.
In addition to her role as a manager, Sandra focuses on developing and reinforcing leadership through Grant Thornton's leadership model, ensuring that leaders have the tools and guidance they need to succeed. She further holds responsibility for the company’s leadership training programs, talent initiatives as well as the design of kickoffs with the aim of strengthening our shared culture through networking, strong execution, and a clear direction grounded in our strategy and business plan.
Michel Westher
Michel Westher is the CEO and Co-Founder of Knowly, where he and his team have helped hundreds of organizations worldwide create innovative learning journeys that drive real behavior change.
In addition to his role leading Knowly, Michel runs a certification program in Transfer of Training, with over 200 learning professionals certified to date. He is a sought-after speaker on corporate learning and manager involvement in learning initiatives.
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Measuring What Matters
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Dashboards are full, but leaders are still guessing. In this session, Vanessa Alzate challenges the use of vanity metrics—data that looks impressive but fails to inform action. She introduces Enterprise Performance Intelligence as a smarter approach to measurement, using the new Kirkpatrick Model to connect learning, behavior, and results. Attendees will learn how to move from reporting activity to generating insight, and from collecting data to making better decisions.
Vanessa Milara Alzate
Vanessa Milara Alzate is the Owner and CEO of Kirkpatrick Partners and Founder of Anchored Training. With more than fifteen years of experience, she has guided organizations across industries including life sciences, federal government, and the Department of Defense. She is the author of Building a Culture of Evaluation (May 2026) and the steward of the globally recognized Kirkpatrick Model®. Vanessa helps leaders position evaluation as the foundation for organizational performance, innovation, and measurable results.
Most training teams can tell you how many people completed a course. What they can't tell you is whether anything actually changed. In this session, Laura and Ryan share an honest look at an ongoing evaluation project focused on RIMOWA's retail store onboarding.They'll share a practical framework for evaluating onboarding beyond Level 1 happy sheets. Together, they'll also reflect honestly on what gets in the way and how smart design and automation can remove the friction. And you'll walk away with fresh inspiration for making your impact story more convincing to the people who hold the budget.
Whether you're just starting to think about measurement or looking to upgrade a process that's become too manual to sustain, this session offers real, practical insights and a live look at what it takes to move from gut feeling to real evidence.
Laura Kapstein
Laura is the Global Retail Training Director at RIMOWA, bringing over fifteen years of experience developing people, teams, and organizations across the luxury and fashion industry. Her career spans iconic houses including Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, and Berluti, complemented by four years as an Associate Director of Talent Development at INSEAD. Laura places experience at the center of her work — designing learning that triggers genuine reflection, growth, and lasting behavioral change. Her deep expertise in retail training and talent development makes her a sharp voice on what it actually takes to turn learning into performance.
Ryan Viehrig
Ryan is the founder of trevato, a SaaS platform designed to measure training effectiveness and bridge the gap between learning and business impact. With a strong background in L&D, Ryan has worked with leading organizations like adidas, Rimowa, and Leica to optimize their evaluation strategies. Passionate about making training impact measurable, Ryan combines research-based insights with practical tools to help L&D professionals drive meaningful results.
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AI and the future of impact
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Artificial intelligence is reshaping how learning professionals design, deliver, and measure training. From personalized learning paths to real-time performance analytics, AI offers unprecedented opportunities to create meaningful business outcomes.
In this session, we'll explore practical applications of AI in corporate learning—what's working today, what's overhyped, and where the real opportunities lie. We'll also tie back to key themes and insights from earlier sessions throughout the week, connecting the dots between what you've learned and how AI can amplify those strategies. You'll walk away with actionable frameworks to integrate AI into your L&D initiatives without losing the human touch that makes learning stick.
Josh Cavalier
Josh Cavalier is the founder and CEO of JoshCavalier.ai, helping L&D professionals harness AI to transform human-machine performance. With 30+ years in education technology, he makes AI practical through training, speaking, and his live show, Brainpower. His book, Applying AI in Learning and Development: From Platforms to Performance, provides a roadmap for integrating AI into L&D using real-world platforms, tools, workflows, and ethical considerations.
Margaret Spence
Margaret Spence is an AI governance strategist, women's leadership advocate, and author of four books, including When AI Breaks the Law. Founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab, she brings 40 years of talent and risk expertise to a single, urgent mission: making AI fair, explainable, and human. She equips organizations to map skills, design transparent reskilling pathways, and build governance systems that protect every person AI touches. From SXSW to ATD 2025 to Brazil's Humanize Conference, Margaret is shaping how the world leads in the age of AI. Subscribe to The Undisruptable Women on Substack and access her governance frameworks at AIGovernanceForHR.com.
Rahim Shamji
Rahim Shamji is the Founder and CEO of ADR ODR International, the first company to bridge traditional face-to-face dispute resolution with the digital world of Online Dispute Resolution.
A practicing Barrister and Fellow of the Civil Mediation Council UK, he brings over two decades of experience in international law, training, and public speaking. He's a graduate of Harvard Law School's PON Masterclass on Negotiation and has served as Academic Director at the Thailand Arbitration Center and Course Convenor at Queen Mary University of London.
Peter Kurzwelly
Peter Kurzwelly is an AI strategist and advisor working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, leadership, and organizational transformation. He supports executive teams, boards, and organizations in moving AI from experimentation to real impact. His work centers on helping organizations rethink how learning, leadership, and responsibility must evolve in an AI-enabled world.
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