ATD Sessions
Explore ATD26 Education Sessions
Get a sneak peak at the sessions planned for ATD26, designed to help you learn, grow and connect with industry experts and peers.
The full education session lineup will be released in early 2026.
AI-Powered Personal Branding: Elevate Your Humanity with Technology
As AI reshapes work and hybrid models become the norm, the need for human connection has never been greater. Personal branding helps professionals clarify and communicate their unique value—boosting confidence, visibility, and impact. In this interactive session, you’ll explore how to use AI to amplify personal brands, enhance employee engagement, and create scalable learning experiences. Learn the proven 3-step branding framework and discover how AI can make personal branding more powerful, personal, and practical. You will leave the session with a roadmap for building personal branding experiences for your talent, along with your own personal brand action plan to help you increase your success and happiness at work.
Build, Buy, or Bot: Rethinking Talent Development for AI Disruption
Build, buy, or bot? Choosing the right learning solution is no longer optional—it’s strategic. This session unpacks each option’s value, from custom design to AI-powered tools, and equips you with a hands-on framework to guide decision-making. Learn from real-world examples and walk away with tools to make smarter, faster learning choices—no matter your team size, tech stack, or budget. Through case studies, interactive exercises, and emerging trends, you’ll explore when each option makes the most strategic sense—and leave with a practical framework to future-proof your learning strategy.
East Meets West: Rethinking Leadership in a Globalized World
What makes someone a “great leader” in one culture might cause resistance—or even offense—in another. In this session, explore how leadership values differ across Western and Eastern contexts, and why it matters now more than ever. You’ll gain insight into how cultural expectations around authority, communication, and decision-making shape leadership success—and failure. Drawing on field experience from clients across the U.S., MENA, and Asia, this session equips you to build inclusive, effective leadership development programs that work globally.
Flipping the Script: The Feedback Habit That Changes Everything
Most leaders give feedback—but the best ones ask for it. While traditional leadership focused on top-down control, new research shows that leaders who seek input from direct reports are seen as more effective and trusted. This powerful shift doesn’t just improve individual performance—it transforms how feedback is exchanged across the entire organization. In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to ask for feedback in the right way, overcome common fears, and walk away with a simple one-month plan to spark a culture of openness, trust, and growth.
Identity-EQ at Work: Building Unified Teams in Polarized Times
Polarization is showing up at work—through silence, tension, or escalating conflict. Leaders and teams are struggling to talk about identity without triggering resistance, fear, or fatigue. In this session, you’ll learn how to apply IdentityEQ: a behavior-based framework that helps people navigate identity-driven dynamics with emotional intelligence and clarity. Whether you’re supporting DEI efforts, developing leaders, or building cohesive teams, you’ll walk away with language, tools, and a new lens for building trust and unity in a divided world.
Inclusive AI: Elevating Learning & Talent for All Through Accessibility
Struggling to make your learning programs truly accessible and effective for all employees—especially those with invisible disabilities or working across multiple languages? This session will show you how cutting-edge AI tools like TranslateLive and Deep Sign are transforming inclusive learning. You’ll discover practical strategies to break down barriers, reduce costs, and boost engagement for neurodiverse and global learners alike. Leave equipped to design accessible, impactful talent development programs that drive real business results.
Is an Asynchronous Course the Best Choice: A Decision-Making Model
LOL for ROI: The Science Behind Humor in Training
Laughter might not be in your learning objectives, but it should be in your strategy. In this research-backed session, Fringe Professional Development leaders will unpack why humor is a powerful — and underused — tool in legal training. We’ll explore the science behind what makes humor effective, how it boosts psychological safety and retention, and why “funny” doesn’t mean “fluffy.” Think of it as broccoli in a dinosaur nugget costume: the science is serious, but the delivery keeps learners engaged. Whether you’re designing curriculum, facilitating programs, or choosing outside speakers, you’ll walk away with fresh insights and practical tactics to make learning stick (and spark a few smiles in the process).
New ways of training with AI - Podcasts, Notebooks, Coaches
AI is reshaping how learning is delivered—making it more accessible, personalized, and scalable than ever. In this session, you’ll explore three powerful, ready-to-use approaches: turning learning content into auto-generated podcasts, designing AI-powered interactive notebooks, and deploying AI coaches that offer contextual learner support anytime, anywhere.
You’ll leave with practical ideas, real-world examples, and a clear understanding of how to apply these innovations in your own organization. Whether you’re looking to boost engagement, expand reach, or experiment with new formats, this session will spark your creativity and give you a roadmap to get started.
No Desk. No Problem. Craft a Right-Fit Frontline Learning Strategy.
Busy. Overwhelmed. Burned out. Frontline workers are essential to your business. But with packed schedules and limited tech access, they’re tough to support with traditional L&D tactics. This session will show you how to design solutions that fit the flow of frontline work. Learn how to keep up with change, engage managers as performance partners, apply AI to scale your strategy, and influence stakeholders to prioritize the frontline. Walk away with a proven framework to boost engagement, reduce turnover, and drive performance—without disrupting the operation.
No More Fire Drills! Foster Strategic Thinking in Your Team
As a leader in Learning & Development, you’ve mastered aligning your strategic mindset with the company’s North Star. Now it’s time to elevate your team from mere ‘order takers’ to influential ‘strategic partners.’ A strategically thinking learning team can scale their impact with less effort by asking insightful questions, prioritizing tasks effectively, and consistently connecting their work to organizational value. Join this interactive session where you’ll gain hands-on techniques and first-hand knowledge to upshift the strategic thinking on your team in the next 30 days.
Rethinking Learning Ecosystems: Meeting Learners and Organizations Where They Are
Today’s learners expect personalized learning experiences in the flow of work, while organizations demand measurable impact and agility. This panel explores the essential elements of a modern learning ecosystem, from skills data and AI-powered content to embedded performance support and real-time analytics. Learn how leading organizations are building connected, modular learning ecosystems that align development with business goals. Discover strategies to rethink your learning ecosystem to meet evolving learner needs and drive meaningful outcomes.
Smarter, Faster, HUMAN: AI for Next-Level Learning Design
Can AI speed up custom learning experience design without losing the human touch? Blanchard says yes—and we’ll show you how. In this session, we go behind the scenes of our AI-enhanced learning design workflows.
Discover how we blend tools like generative AI with deep instructional strategy to work smarter, faster, and still (and always) human-first. You’ll learn where AI saves time, where it still falls short, and how to integrate it in a way that keeps learners—and your values—at the center. Leave with practical strategies, questions to guide your own exploration, and the confidence to lead with both innovation and intention.
Stronger Together: Innovative Teambuilding Strategies for the Modern Healthcare Workforce
In today’s fast-paced healthcare settings, collaboration isn’t optional – it’s essential. This interactive session delivers proven, practical strategies that talent development professionals can use to build stronger, more resilient healthcare teams. Walk away with tools that improve communication, reduce burnout, and elevate team-based care.
Talent Development Insights: What’s Now and What’s Next
What are your peers prioritizing right now in talent development? How are they approaching AI? What does the future of talent development look like?
Join this interactive session to explore The Edge of Work’s latest research on what’s top of mind for talent development professionals. We’ll cover key insights across leadership development, AI, and evolving talent development priorities, as well as hear perspectives on how we can evolve as practitioners in a changing world of work.
Walk away with benchmark data, fresh ideas, and strategic insights to inform how you grow your practice, team, and career in the months ahead.
The Leadership Imperative: Bridging Generations in the AI Era
Talent leaders face an unprecedented challenge: preserving decades of institutional knowledge as experienced professionals retire while digital natives reshape how work gets done. This interactive session provides practical frameworks for bridging generational divides and strategically integrating AI to enhance rather than replace human expertise. Discover how leading organizations turn potential knowledge loss into competitive advantage through cross-generational collaboration. You’ll gain ready-to-implement strategies for building psychological safety across age groups, capturing critical knowledge before it exits your organization, and creating sustainable mentoring practices that leverage both human wisdom and AI capabilities for extraordinary talent outcomes.
The Leadership Trifecta: Three Shifts Every Emerging Leader Must Master
Most first-time leaders aren’t set up to succeed. They get a title and expectations — but not the tools to lead with confidence. If you’re developing emerging leaders, you know this struggle. And if you are an emerging leader, you’re living it — missed opportunities, awkward conversations, and self-doubt. It’s not about capability; it’s about not having the playbook. This session gives it to you, with three essential shifts: navigating tough conversations, turning feedback into career fuel, and making confident decisions without perfect information. You’ll practice each one, get peer feedback, and walk out ready to lead — and to believe in what’s possible.
UNMUTE Yourself: Activate Your V.O.I.C.E., Value, and Vitality at Work
Too many leaders are burned out, stuck in self-doubt, and holding back, and that’s costing teams their trust, energy, and engagement. This interactive session introduces the VOICE Method, a practical and research-informed framework to help leaders reclaim their confidence, clarify their value, and take initiative. You won’t just listen; you’ll reflect, connect, and contribute through peer dialogue, guided prompts, and live audience responses. Walk away with replicable tools to foster emotional intelligence, ownership, and courageous leadership.
Wise by Design: Crafting Lasting Learning Experiences
In a world where learning is often fragmented and quickly forgotten, this session offers a fresh approach to designing experiences that truly stick. You’ll discover a practical five-stage framework anchored in emotional intentionality—building programs that engage hearts and minds, from establishing relevance and psychological safety to activating transformation and supporting future growth. Through real examples, guiding questions, and hands-on exercises, we’ll tackle the challenge of making learning meaningful and give you tools to boost engagement, retention, and impact.