Nonprofit SIG Meeting: Making the Leap to Trainer and Instructional Designer

Making the Leap to Trainer and Instructional Designer: How you can design a career in learning and development

Many trainers, instructional designers, or learning coaches start their careers in different job roles and industry sectors. Discovering their interest and talent for sharing their knowledge, mentoring, and designing learning, they decide to make the leap to a full-time career in learning and development. Come meet 3 professionals who started their careers in various fields and then moved into learning and development careers. Learn about the skills they leveraged to create their successful transition and what they did to create opportunities for their own job mobility, within a company or as a freelancer.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Any person that wears hats as a technical/subject matter expert, team leader, and trainer and would like ideas on growing their career or making a career transition into training and instructional design.

OUR SPEAKERS

We are excited to host a 3-person panel of professionals.

Ann Bridge works on the Head Start Training and Professional Development team for Child Care Resource Center in Chatsworth, CA. However, she started her career as a pre-school teacher eventually working her way up to Site Director. In her role, she mentored new teachers, helped developed instructional support skills, and ensured quality learning was taking place. Her subject matter expertise and love of learning led her to apply to become a teacher-trainer and learning coach full time. Ann has a Masters degree in Early Childhood Education from California State University Northridge and has completed professional development from ATD in Adult Learning.

Linda Blackman is currently a Quality Training Supervisor for Kindeva Drug Delivery's Northridge site. She previously managed the Imaging Department and Facilities Department at SAG-AFTRA Health Plan- SAG Pension Plan for nearly a decade.  It is there where she understood the importance of training resources and the value of continuous knowledge sharing. This belief only grew stronger as she returned to college in her 30's to get her undergrad and graduate degrees. It is then that she appreciated, even more, the experience of adult learning. This journey gave her the courage to dive into the Training and Development career field. Linda holds a BS in Organizational Development and a MS in Leadership Management from the University of La Verne and enjoys learning and traveling.