Elena Chow is the founder of ConnectOne, a talent solutions company specializing in partnering high-growth tech startups in building and developing teams. In this episode of Humanizing Learning, Elena sheds some insights on how startups hire, on the right questions to ask candidates, and the hottest skills - both hard and soft - that are in demand right now.

Stephen Bailey, founder and CEO of ExecOnline, joins us in this episode of Humanizing Learning and talks to us about how leaders are developed, why companies expect their leaders to be always learning, and why data and resilience are some of the key factors to making a great leader.

Every few episodes, we interview a member of the SmartUp team so you can get a better idea of the people powering the platform. This week, we put junior frontend developer Alexandra Baranova in the hot-seat and learn more about her career change from public relations to tech.

The second season of our series starts with Michael Jenkins, CEO of The Human Capital Leadership Institute. Here, Jenkins talks about how organizations can promote learning and development as an experience, and in what ways some companies are still making it so difficult for their people to embrace learning.

Michelle Sun is the founder of First Code Academy, a leading coding and STEM education institute for kids from 4 to 18 years old and author of Amazon Best Seller First Time Coders. She is also an advisor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). In this episode, she talks about how easy it is for anyone, be it a child or an adult, to learn how to code.

Founder and Strategic Advisor of the ASEAN Human Organization Bob Aubrey shares in this inspiring episode why it's so important for us to respect our dreams and take concrete steps into making them a reality. Not only is this important from a personal development point of view, it is also crucial for companies to help their employees reach their dreams.

Michelle Katics, CEO and founder of PortfolioQuest and BankersLab, runs a company that provides simulation training for bankers. In this episode, Michelle talks about why it is time bankers should start getting uncomfortable with their current job situations, what actually happens during a simulation training, and how it can sometimes make bankers emotional.

Every few episodes, we interview a member of the SmartUp team so you can get a better idea of the people powering the platform. This week, we put co-founder Frank Meehan in the hot-seat and learn more about the tech that's inspired him the most, where learning is moving towards, and the TV show character he most identifies with.

With a focus on startups and ventures that use vocational technology (voctech) to drive productivity, Richard Male of Ufi Ventures from the UK believes that vocational skills should be celebrated by all, and it's an engine upon which the economy is built. In this episode, he talks to us about the importance of democratizing learning and why the success of a business is truly tied to how well Learning & Development is accepted within it.

Millennials now make up the largest portion of any workforce so, what should employers be doing to maximize their learning experience at work? Kartik Krishnamurthy, Managing Director, Asia, of Cornerstone OnDemand, shares with us some ways L&D and HR managers should be using their learning management systems to drive employee engagement and, thereby, improve retention. Psst ... we also have an announcement to make in this episode.