Member Spotlight

Tell us about your experience in the Talent Development space, including places you've worked, roles you've held, and organizations you're a part of.

I have worked in federal government, higher education, and consulting, building expertise in instructional design, leadership development, coaching, and workforce capability.

Where I've Worked

In my most recent position as a Training Development Specialist II with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, I was responsible for designing 36 e-learning modules that were implemented statewide across all 77 county jails. Additionally, I served as the LMS administrator for the agency's CrimCast system. Previously, I worked for five years as a Senior Human Resources Specialist (Development), GS-14, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where I received recognition as a 2019 Emerging Training Leader by Training Magazine which is an honor awarded to the top 25 training leaders nationwide spanning industry, government, and the nonprofit sector.

My experience also includes roles as a Training Specialist, GS-14, with the U.S. Navy Office of the Inspector General and as a contractor at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where I developed competency assessments and leadership learning pathways leveraging the Franklin Covey model.

Independently, through my consulting practice BAS2A, I provide L&D strategy and AI-driven learning solutions for clients in various sectors. I have also designed and delivered AI-centric certification programs and webinars via platforms such as Simpliv and FedLearn.

Roles I've Held

Throughout my work with these organizations, I have held roles such as instructional designer, LMS administrator, program manager, lead for executive coaching programs, founder of career coaching initiatives, leader for Training Needs Assessments, and advisor to Chief Learning Officers. I developed and oversaw the USPTO's agency-wide Career Coaching and Executive Coaching Programs, and managed major events including the USPTO Leadership Forum, which attracted over 1,300 participants.

Professional Organizations

I am certified by the Association for Talent Development (ATD) with CPTD and the Training Industry’s CPTM credentials and hold the Certified CLO designation from George Mason University. These memberships keep me current in the talent development field.

What are some of your interests, strengths, and unique qualities that would help others get to know you better?

Curiosity drives me, leading to a diverse background in public policy, organizational communication, data science, and adult learning. I enjoy exploring the connections among these fields. Currently, my focus is on AI and its impact on workplace learning and growth. It's an exciting time to work in this area, and I'm grateful to be part of it.

What distinguishes me in Talent Development is my combination of academic credentials and practical experience developing e-learning courses, coaching programs, leadership academies, and LMS systems. I value both theoretical understanding and hands-on application, viewing them as complementary rather than distinct pursuits. At the USPTO, I conducted an analysis demonstrating an $11 return for every $1 invested in a redesigned supervisory training program. My consistent approach involves rigorously evaluating effectiveness and seeking evidence to support results.

I enjoy helping people grow. I created the Career Coaching Program at USPTO by writing the business case, recruiting and training 13 coaches, and presenting it to leadership. Seeing others realize their potential never gets old. I regularly read organizational theory, psychology, history, and science fiction. Recent research on goal-setting and its impact on well-being informs my coaching approach.

In summary: a wide intellectual scope, an evidence-focused mindset, and a sincere passion for supporting others in their growth. I believe these qualities usually become apparent rather swiftly.

Favorite quote:

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin

Are there specific people in the Talent Development space you follow and why?

A few names come up consistently when I think about who has shaped how I see this field.

Elliott Masie consistently anticipates trends in learning and technology without exaggeration. His work shifted my focus from designing courses to developing organizational learning cultures.

I closely follow Josh Bersin for his insights on HR and talent trends. He excels at distilling vast amounts of data into clear narratives about workforce direction. Whenever I have to justify a new initiative, his frameworks often provide the exact wording needed for discussions with senior leadership.

Donald Kirkpatrick and Jack Phillips have been key influences on my approach to evaluation. The Phillips ROI Methodology is integral to my framework, and their work shapes how I evaluate projects.

I'd like to highlight Brian Little, a personality psychologist whose studies on personal projects and well-being I've been exploring recently. While he isn't typically considered part of L&D, his insights into how individuals' self-set goals influence motivation and flourishing are closely related to coaching topics I find important. Many of the best ideas in our field come from related disciplines, and Brian Little exemplifies this cross-disciplinary value.

Do you have a lesson you’ve learned in your career you’d like to share with others?

My main takeaway is that training is seldom the actual issue.

Earlier in my career, I addressed nearly every organizational challenge as a learning design issue. If someone was underperforming, I developed a course; if leaders were not communicating effectively, I created a workshop. Due to my proficiency in this area, I naturally continued with this approach. However, over time, I observed a disconcerting trend.

Occasionally, my most effective training programs failed to generate measurable improvements, while some less impressive initiatives produced satisfactory results. This inconsistency prompted further reflection.

Through experience, I have come to understand that learning occurs within complex systems, including organizational culture, incentive structures, management relationships, and workload demands. When these systems are ineffective or dysfunctional, even high-quality instructional design cannot address the underlying challenges. For instance, a supervisor who completes a leadership program but returns to a problematic team environment is unlikely to achieve meaningful change; in such cases, the course was neither the root cause nor the potential solution.

This insight has substantially influenced my professional approach. Prior to engaging in any instructional design, I now invest significant time in analyzing the situation thoroughly. I assess whether the issue stems from a lack of knowledge, motivation, or skills, or if environmental factors are preventing the application of those skills. Each scenario requires distinct solutions and conflating them often results in costly errors for organizations.

Do you have any favorite books or resources that you think others would find helpful?

I read constantly, so this is a question I have a lot of opinions about.

For anyone in Talent Development, I'd start with Cathy Moore's "Map It." It's the best practical book I've encountered on performance-based instructional design. She has a gift for cutting through the noise and getting to what matters when you're trying to change behavior, not just deliver content. If you only read one instructional design book, make it that one.

"The Fifth Discipline" by Peter Senge shaped how I think about organizations at a fundamental level. The idea that organizations are learning systems, and that most of our problems come from our inability to see the systems we're inside of never gets old. I come back to it regularly, especially when I'm trying to diagnose why a well-designed intervention isn't working.

For leadership development work, "Conversational Intelligence" by Judith Glaser is one I recommend constantly. She makes a compelling case that the quality of an organization's conversations literally determines its capacity to perform and innovate. That framing has influenced my own thinking and framework development more than almost anything else I've read.

And then there's Brian Little's "Me, Myself, and Us." A personality psychologist who writes about how people's personal projects and self-generated goals connect to their well-being and performance. It's not an L&D book in the traditional sense, but it's one of the most useful things I've read for thinking about motivation, coaching, and why people engage or disengage from their development.

The thread running through everything on this list is the same thing I look for in any resource is that it has to take the complexity of human beings seriously. The field has enough oversimplified frameworks. What I find most useful are the people and ideas that sit with the hard questions a little longer.

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/billbrantley/

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