Harald’s Curious Corner is where curiosity meets connection.
Harald chases that question with a guest, gathers perspectives from voices across the industry, and then steps back to reflect on what it all means. The show unfolds like a story arc, part exploration, part roundtable, part reflection, blending imagination with analysis.
The result: trusted insights, meaningful conversations, and forward-looking takeaways that shine a light on where learning is headed next.
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The default response to AI in the workplace is a training program. Roll it out, tick the box, and move on. The teams getting real results are doing something fundamentally different. Gabriela Gomez and Enrique Ortega Suarez did not arrive at their approach through theory. They arrived through practice. As HRD and Head of HR Business Partner at Provident México , they have been rethinking what genuine AI adoption looks like from inside the organization. For Gabriela, it means building readiness t...
Most customer education teams are measuring the wrong things. The ones who are not are already thinking differently about AI. Shawn Dinnocenti did not arrive at this perspective through theory. She arrived through data. As a customer education leader at Docebo, she has spent years connecting training outcomes to business results, tying knowledge articles to support ticket volume, and turning enrollment numbers into a reason to celebrate with marketing. Her work is grounded in one belief: if you ...
People are already learning with AI. The question is whether L&D helps shape that learning, or gets left handing out content no one asked for. Mirza Selimovic ’s story does not begin in a classroom or a corporate learning team. It begins with resilience. As a refugee from Bosnia, a first-generation graduate, and someone who wrote his dissertation while his newborn son was in the NICU, Mirza brings a deeply human lens to learning, growth, and leadership. In this episode, I speak with Mirza ab...
Most L&D teams are using AI to go faster. The best ones are using it to ask harder questions. Egle Vinauskaite joins me for a conversation that sits at the intersection of AI, performance, and the evolving identity of Learning & Development. Fresh from the keynote stage at Docebo Inspire, she brings both an evidence-based and practical lens to what separates high-performing L&D functions from the rest. That perspective comes through in everything we discuss. In this episode, we look ...
How can L&D leaders use technology to drive real business impact? In this wrap-up, I summarize what went down in Docebo Inspire 2026 and discuss what truly stood out during the conference. Time and again, the focus was on how learning and development can go beyond just creating programs to becoming architects of impactful experiences. The conversation constantly returned to the need for L&D to embrace AI and technology not as shiny new tools but as strategic partners that help solve real...
The real challenge for L&D is not delivering content. It is helping people change how they work. Jon Harald Espolin joins me for a conversation that sits at the intersection of leadership, learning, and change. Before moving into consultancy, and later becoming SVP of Learning & Development at XXL Sport & Villmark , he spent a decade in the army, where he became fascinated by a simple question: what actually helps people grow? That question stayed with him as he moved into corporate ...
Across these conversations with Dave Derington , John Leh , Debbie Smith , Courtney Sembler , Kristine Kukich , Dan Braithwaite , Melissa Kruminas , Clea Mahoney , and Vicky Kennedy , one question kept resurfacing for me: what actually makes customer education matter? In this wrap-up, I’m reflecting on where the season kept landing. Again and again, the conversation drifted back to the same tension: customer education is full of things that look promising on the surface yet leave the real proble...
Customer education fails when teams rush to buy technology before looking at the problem they’re trying to solve. In this episode, I sit down with Vicky Kennedy , Founder and Chief Education Architect of Echtus , to explore why so many customer education programmes look impressive on the surface but fail to drive meaningful business outcomes. Vicky brings a rare blend of experience across higher education, tech, product, and strategy and makes the case that education should be treated as a strat...
Customer education is a growth engine. If you can’t tie education to retention, revenue, and product adoption, you’re leaving real impact on the table. In this episode, I sit down with our Customer Educational Panel, Kristine Kukich , Dan Braithwaite , Melissa Kruminas , and Clea Mahoney , for a deep dive into what’s actually happening in customer education today. From reducing support tickets by up to 50% to driving expansion through certification programs, we explore how leading teams are prov...
Customer education is the key to long-term growth. If you can't connect education to customer success, you're missing out. In this episode, I sit down with Courtney Sembler , former Senior Director at HubSpot Academy , and now Managing Partner and COO at AlignedCX , to explore how customer education has become a core driver of business success. We dive into the evolution of HubSpot Academy, how they scaled educational programs, and the importance of being customer-centric in every educational in...
Customer education can’t just focus on clicks. It has to focus on the jobs to be done. That is the big question at the heart of this episode. What is customer education really for, and how do you prove it matters? To explore that, I spoke with Debbie Smith , a long-time customer education leader and current President of TSIA’s Customer Education Management Association (CEdMA) . Debbie has spent years helping organisations connect education to adoption, retention, certification, and measurable co...
Data is power. If you can’t tie learning to revenue, you’re guessing. Customer education has moved from a support function to a growth strategy. In this episode, I sit down with John Leh , CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning , to explore how external learning is evolving into a true revenue driver. We unpack what maturity really looks like in customer education, why integration is the only way to prove impact, and how AI and in-the-flow learning are reshaping the ecosystem. If you are resp...
Customer education shouldn’t stop at “You’re trained.” It’s just the start. What truly matters is whether a scientific approach to learning drives real outcomes, transforming how customers engage with your product and the results they achieve. In this episode, I get curious with Dave Derington , former scientist turned expert in customer education and Co-founder and Co-host of CELab . Dave’s journey began with science, veered to customer support, and ultimately led to becoming a key player in ed...
Customer education is evolving. But is it driving real business impact or just more training? In Arc 3 of Harald’s Curious Corner, I explore the connection between skills, customer education, and performance. Through conversations with leaders across L&D and customer learning, one theme keeps surfacing: training alone isn’t enough. What matters is whether learning moves the needle on adoption, retention, and growth. This season involves discussion on why skills data is becoming foundational ...
This is a special episode of Harald’s Curious Corner, recorded right as the L&D Global Sentiment Survey 2026 is released and the conversation across our field starts to shift. Instead of a typical interview arc, this one is more of a pulse check from the survey’s results: what’s rising, what’s fading, and what it tells us about where L&D is heading next. To make sense of it, I sat down with Donald Taylor , L&D veteran researcher, strategist, and "pulse-taker" of the industry. Donald ...
Over the past few episodes, I’ve been chasing one big question with Koreen Pagano , Dr. Sandra Loughlin , Eran Vaisfailr , Matthew J. Daniel , and Samantha Murray : What does it actually take to build a skills-based organisation that works in the real world? In this wrap-up, I’m connecting the dots. “Skills-based” can mean a lot of things, and it’s easy to get stuck in frameworks, taxonomies, and tools before you’ve nailed the basics. The theme that kept coming up is simple: skills only matter w...
Too often, skills-based initiatives are implemented without clear use cases or business impact in mind. In this episode, we challenge that approach. Many skills programs fail because they are disconnected from business needs and are difficult to implement. It’s not the technology, it’s the approach. Skills programs must be integrated into the daily workflow where learning happens. To explore what makes this work, I spoke with Loïc Michel , CEO of 365Talents . Loïc has spent years developing AI-p...
“How do you design learning and skills experiences people actually want to use?” A lot of skills and learning programs don’t fail because the content is bad. They fail because the experience feels like extra work: hard to find and navigate and disconnected from what people are trying to get done. To explore what actually changes that, I spoke with Samantha Murray , founder of AlignedCX . Sam has led customer education at Shopify, worked on the vendor side at Docebo, and now advises teams on desi...
Imagine if learning wasn't just about courses, but about unlocking real career opportunities through the right skills. In our previous conversation, we explored the overwhelming number of systems that impact employees' ability to learn and grow. In this episode, I’m diving deeper with Matthew J. Daniel , Senior Principal, Talent Strategy & Mobility at Guild Education , on a crucial topic: how we can link learning to real career opportunities. We talk about how a skills-based organisation thr...
“How do we drive real skills transformation within a company?” That’s the question we explore in this episode with Eran Vaisfailr , former Product Owner of Learning and Development at Booking.com, now Co-founder and CEO of Plynn , a learning startup focused on turning informal learning into measurable skills. In his time at Booking.com, Eran was at the forefront of building a skills-based organisation, focusing on aligning employee capabilities with business needs. Our conversation explores why ...
“Skills only matter if they solve a real business problem.” In the last episode, we explored why skills require a deeper understanding of the work being done and why HR and L&D cannot build this alone. This conversation picks up that thread and moves it into the real world. Sandra Loughlin, PhD , Chief Learning Scientist at EPAM , joins me to show what a skills-based organisation looks like when it is designed around data, roles, and the actual needs of the business. We explore how EPAM unif...
How do you actually build a skills-based organisation in practice, and why does it matter now? L&D has been mainly about designing learning content and delivering training. Now, we’re moving towards reimagining the very foundation of how we work, especially with the rise of AI. I chatted with Koreen Pagano , co-founder of Rising Tide Cooperative and author of Building the Skills-Based Organization: A Blueprint for Transformation . Koreen shares her expertise on the intersection of learning, ...
Over the past few episodes, I’ve gone down a lot of rabbit holes with Lori Niles-Hofmann , Laura Overton , Michelle Ockers , Dr. Ashwin Mehta, Nicki Finnigan , Hannah Frame , and Erica Farmer , trying to answer one big question: What does it mean to be an L&D leader in the age of AI? In this wrap-up, I’m connecting the dots. While AI can absolutely accelerate your impact, it can just as easily derail it, depending on how you use it. Ultimately, it’s a powerful enabler, not a silver bullet. A...
“How do L&D leaders stay grounded, strategic, and human while leading through the age of AI?” In this episode, we’re exploring how leadership adapts when AI accelerates change faster than traditional models can keep up. I’m joined by Hannah Frame and Nicki Finnigan of Every Day's a School Day Podcast and Erica Farmer of EricaFarmer.a , three of the best L&D consultants and practitioners I’ve come to know. Collectively, they bring perspectives from large-scale corporate environments, emer...
“How can L&D leaders stay strategic in the age of AI?” Previously, we were shifting our perspective from technology to leadership. For this episode, we’re shifting the focus to leadership and strategy. I chat with Dr. Ashwin Mehta , founder and CEO of Mehtadology, an AI researcher, and someone who runs a company with more agents than people. He brings sharp technical and practical insight to a question many L&D teams still face: How does AI reshape our work? We discuss the three key forc...
“How do we keep the human touch as L&D leaders in the AI era?” In our last episode, we explored how AI is transforming L&D from reactive to strategic, helping leaders prove business value beyond completion rates. This time, we’re shifting our perspective from technology to leadership. Laura Overton and Michelle Ockers , co-authors of the book The L&D Leader: Principles and Practice for Delivering Business , remind us that while AI can amplify what we do, it’s courage and connection t...
Lori Niles-Hofmann, author of 'Eight Levers of EdTech Transformation,' explores AI's impact on Learning & Development. She emphasizes moving from course creation to designing bespoke learning experiences, securing clean data, and fostering cross-functional partnerships. The discussion highlights overcoming political hurdles and the critical need for L&D leaders to proactively engage with and leverage AI to keep workforces relevant.
Harald’s Curious Corner is where curiosity meets connection. Harald chases that question with a guest, gathers perspectives from voices across the industry, and then steps back to reflect on what it all means. The show unfolds like a story arc, part exploration, part roundtable, part reflection, blending imagination with analysis. The result: trusted insights, meaningful conversations, and forward-looking takeaways that shine a light on where learning is headed next....
