Advertise on podcast: Brandon Hall Group- Excellence at Work

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host David Wentworth, Managing Director for Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Matt Paretsky, Learning and Development Project Manager at VPS Learning, about a leadership skill that rarely gets its own spotlight in development programs: the willingness to take an informed risk and move forward without every answer in hand. Paretsky's background includes years of work in risk management and business continuity planning outside of learning and development, and that experience shapes how he approaches leadership training today. He also draws on his time working alongside successful leaders and business strategists, as well as a current client project that is extending communication and emotional intelligence training well beyond the management ranks.

In the latest episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group™, sits down with Jeanna Shapiro, Chief People & Culture Officer at Grant Thornton Advisors LLC, to dig into new Brandon Hall Group™ research on the AI-enabled HR operating model. Shapiro brings nearly 30 years in HR and talent leadership across Booz Allen Hamilton, Oliver Wyman and now Grant Thornton, where she has served as Chief People & Culture Officer for the past 3½ years. That mix of HR expertise and business ownership shapes how she pushes back on the idea that a successful launch is the same thing as a successful outcome.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host David Wentworth, Managing Director of Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Bernie Barbour, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Skillsoft, about why most of the skills data organizations already have cannot actually be trusted, and what it takes to build a system that turns skills into a measurable business discipline instead of a completion rate. Barbour brings the technical and product view of what it actually takes to build that system at scale, from separating claimed skills from earned skills to using AI without letting judgment quietly erode. Together with Wentworth, Barbour digs into why proficiency is so hard to define, what changes once a skill has to show up in real work and why picking one problem to solve beats trying to fix everything at once.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host David Wentworth, Managing Director of Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Luis Camacho, Director of Customer Success for North America at EdFlex, about why practice and failure rarely get built into corporate learning programs and what it actually takes to make it safe for employees to try a new skill before it counts. Camacho brings a customer-facing view of how organizations actually roll out skill practice at scale, from assessing where employees already stand to building the kind of AI role play that gets used more than once. Together with Wentworth, he digs into why the audience matters as much as the material, what separates useful feedback from a script, and what has to change for practice to prove itself in real business results.

David Wentworth, Managing Director of Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, hosts Zach Pendleton, Chief Architect at Instructure, for Brandon Hall Group's™ Excellence at Work Podcast on what happens when AI stops being a tool bolted onto existing work and starts reshaping the work itself. Pendleton works inside Instructure's research and development organization, translating what customers need in the classroom into technology strategy while trying to anticipate where the underlying technology is headed next. He brings that vantage point to a conversation about job boundaries, data, trust and what an AI strategy should actually prioritize.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host David Wentworth, Managing Director of Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Roman Muth, CTO and a member of the Executive Board at Scheer IMC, and Dr. Sabine Zander, Director of the Innovation Lab at Scheer IMC, about why traditional skills frameworks are breaking down under the pace of AI and what it actually takes to build skills intelligence that keeps up. Muth and Zander bring both sides of the problem to the conversation, the technical architecture behind agentic workflows and the research into how skills intelligence actually gets used inside an organization. Together with Wentworth, they dig into why static frameworks have a shrinking shelf life, where AI should stop short of making the final call and what a company's data has to look like before any of this works.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host Rachel Cooke, COO of Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Saravana Sivanandham, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Absorb Software, about why the purpose of learning is being rewritten and what it actually takes for a learning function to be recognized as a business driver. Sivanandham has spent five years helping shape strategy at Absorb, a global learning technology company trusted by more than 3,500 organizations and 37 million learners worldwide. She and Cooke dig into why measurement still lags adoption, what has to change before technology can make a real difference and how Absorb's new AI engine, Aura, is putting those ideas into practice.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host Dr. Marline C. Duroseau, Managing Director, HR and Leadership Development at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Ivan Petrovic, founder and CEO of Insightful, about one of the most pressing challenges facing HR leaders today: proving that AI investment is actually translating into workforce productivity. Petrovic leads Insightful, a platform built around the emerging discipline of work intelligence, helping organizations move beyond simply tracking AI adoption to understanding how work actually gets done. He and Duroseau unpack why so many companies get stuck measuring the wrong things, how shadow AI can double as both a risk and a signal, and what separates organizations turning AI activity into real business outcomes from those still guessing.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host Dave Wentworth, Managing Director for Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Adam Thompson, Chief Product Officer for Confirm, formerly Learning Pool, about the frontline workforce and why the tools, systems and roles built for desk-based employees keep falling short for the 2.7 billion people who never sit at one.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal HCM Analyst at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with John Peebles, CEO of Administrate, about the hidden operational costs buried inside classroom training and the case for judging training technology by how openly it exposes its own data and workflows.

Rachel Cooke, COO at Brandon Hall Group™, hosts Nicole Gams, Vice President of Talent, Learning and Leadership for the Central Region at BTS, for Brandon Hall Group's Excellence at Work Podcast on what leadership requires now that knowledge and expertise are no longer the differentiator they once were.

David Wentworth, Managing Director of Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, hosts Mahesh Kumar of TraineryHCM for a frank look at the mistakes that keep showing up in human capital management. Mahesh has spent 15 to 20 years consulting with organizations on HR technology and process, and he brings that experience to a list of seven entrenched problems that persist year after year, along with why they are so hard to break.

Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group™, sits down with Bob Szostak of V2X Professional Services (VPS) for a candid look at where AI stands in learning and development today. Bob brings nearly three decades of industry experience to a conversation that moves past the hype cycle and into what organizations actually need to get right before they scale AI adoption.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work Podcast, host Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Steve Lange, General Manager of the Metrics That Matter business unit at Explorance, about a framework Lange unveiled at Explorance World 2026.

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host David Wentworth, Managing Director of Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Melissa Loble, Chief Learning Officer at Instructure, about what it really takes to become a skills-driven organization. Every company says skills are a priority. Far fewer can say what a skill actually means inside their own walls, let alone how it connects to the outcomes leadership cares about. Loble makes the case that no platform, library or borrowed framework does that work for you. Becoming skills-driven is a matter of culture, definition and follow through, and Loble walks through what that looks like in practice, from the executive team down to the individual employee.