Professional Development Fall 2025 – Spring 2026

My first year in the doctoral program has been a significant step up in many ways for my development, both academically and professionally. From becoming a reviewer and speaking at my first academic conference to leading professional workshops and being promoted, I have seized and explored several growth opportunities.

Professionally

In my practioner life, I am the Measurement and Evaluation Specialist for Critical Skills Development Programs at Northrop Grumman. Since beginning the doctoral program, I have presented at two professional conferences hosted by the Learning Guild. The first was Learning Leadership Conference in Orlando, Florida In October of 2025 where I led three sessions.

The first was a pre-conference workshop session on Developing a Learning Ecosystem. I collaborated with Matthew Tang of Tang Technologies to present how to evaluate and scaffold your current learning ecosystem and how to build for the future to meet both learner and business needs effectively. I then moderated and spoke at a panel on how to negotiate with business stakeholders to develop a robust learning ecosystem. Finally, I presented my own presentation on how to Use Effective Gap Analysis to Identify Real Learning Needs. I was able to discuss the needs for gap analysis, how it aligns with business needs, and pracital tools that pracitioners could implement to prioritize the identified gaps.

While presenting at Learning Leaders is an honor and exciting, I have presented there on other topics before. 2025 was the first year I was invited to present at DevLearn, an industry-leading conference for Learning and Development. I started by leading a session From Good to Great: Leveraging Your LMS with Best Practices. I was able to tap into my experience as an LMS administrator to detail the best practices that can be followed to optimize an LMS for ever shifting business needs. I then moderated a panel Preparing Your Learning Ecosystem for Emerging Technologies where I discussed how to keep you learning ecosystem agile to keep up with new workforce demands.

Academically

My first year in the LDT PhD program has been exciting. I presented at my first academic conference, AECT (Association of Educational Communications and Technology). My roundtable was titled “Leveraging LMS Adoption in Higher Education: Trends, Challenges, and Future Directions,” where I discussed my systematic review of global LMS adoption trends in higher education.

I had my first academic publication in the Journal of Applied Instructional Design, Leveraging Practice-Based Scholarship to Develop Evaluation Methods for Workplace Informal Learning. These were methods I employed in my professional life, grounded in my scholarly research.

In addition to the conference and the publication, I have also acted as a reviewer for the Journal of Research on Technology in Education.