Emerging Training Leaders: Beacons of Light

The 2020 Emerging Training Leaders are guiding lights as they continue to help their organizations face and conquer the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic uncertainty.

The winners of Training magazine’s Emerging Training Leaders Awards named in fall 2020 serve as beacons of hope and light as they guide their organizations to success in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic uncertainty. They created innovative solutions for remote learning; communicated with teams and employees suddenly working from home; and managed and trained with trust, empathy, and transparency.

These 25 Training professionals have been in the industry for 2 to 10 years and have inspired and engaged their organizations with their exceptional leadership skills, business acumen, and training instincts. All Emerging Training Leader candidates had to be nominated by co-workers or industry peers.

Training Editorial Advisory Board members and I judged the nearly 50 nominations and chose the 25 winners based on the following factors:

  • Took on at least one new responsibility in the last year
  • Successfully led a large-scale training/learning and development initiative within the last year that required management/leadership of a group of people and resulted in the achievement of a corporate strategic goal (with behavior change/business impact results provided)
  • Demonstrates specific leadership qualities (such as acts as a mentor/coach; adopts new technology; collaborates; embraces and adapts to change; empowers employees; innovates; and thinks strategically)
  • Has the potential to lead the Training or Learning and Development (L&D) function at an organization in the next 1 to 10 years

In the PDF below, you’ll find in-depth profiles of the Top 5 Emerging Training Leaders (listed in alphabetical order), plus slightly shorter profiles of the other 20 Emerging Training Leaders. And we continued our tradition of creating a “To Watch” list, which features 5 up-and-coming professionals who are well on their way to becoming future Emerging Training Leaders.

Click here to see the full list of the 2020 Emerging Training Leaders.

Lorri Freifeld
Lorri Freifeld is the editor/publisher of Training magazine. She writes on a number of topics, including talent management, training technology, and leadership development. She spearheads two awards programs: the Training APEX Awards and Emerging Training Leaders. A writer/editor for the last 30 years, she has held editing positions at a variety of publications and holds a Master’s degree in journalism from New York University.