In this insightful interview, Adam sits down with Kelly Rodrigues. Kelly is a multi-award-winning learning specialist currently at WebPros, with a diverse background spanning the arts, non-profits, and commercial sectors. She shares her unique journey from professional dancer to global L&D leader and discusses the transition from community-focused roles to the fast-paced corporate tech world.

In this episode, Kelly discusses how to disrupt traditional corporate training methods and build a strategic learning function, including:

1. Lessons from the Charity Sector: Kelly shares three key principles she brought from community work to the corporate sector: getting truly familiar with the problem, removing constraints to be resourceful ("there is no box"), and measuring impact through storytelling.
2. Building an L&D Brand: Despite L&D sitting within HR at WebPros, Kelly emphasises the importance of creating a distinct brand and vision to move the team from order-takers to strategic business partners.
3. Challenging the E-Learning Default: Kelly reveals she placed a "light ban" on e-learning to force her team to find the right solution rather than the easy one, citing examples where simple checklists or video workflows were far more effective.
4. Upskilling Technical Trainers: How she is transforming a team of technical trainers into true learning designers by grounding them in adult learning principles and learning science.
5. Measuring Real Impact: Kelly discusses moving beyond "happy sheets" to use the LTEM framework for evaluation, combining data with qualitative narratives to prove that L&D is not just a cost centre.

Kelly offers a refreshing, candid look at the realities of modern L&D leadership. If you want to learn how to build a learning brand from scratch and challenge the status quo of "default" training solutions, this is a must-listen-to episode.

Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn: Kelly Rodrigues (Brown) CMgr MCMI

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