L&D Leaders Podcast

#11 with Anamaria Dorgo, L&D Manager at Adyen and Founder of the L&D Shakers community. Many organisations still treat the course as the default unit of learning, even though the evidence says it no longer holds up. Anamaria makes the case for communities of practice inside organisations — a practical, measurable way to help people make sense of constant change together — and shares the business case she uses to win leaders over, alongside an honest view of what a community can and cannot fix.

Other themes in this episode include:

• A business case that holds up: Anamaria shares the evidence she reaches for when leaders ask for proof — billions spent on training, low application rates, and the shrinking shelf life of skills — and why a small pilot makes the case faster than a deck.
• Starting with why, not the platform: Why launching a Slack channel or buying a community tool is the last step, not the first. Interviews, focus groups, and a clear desired outcome come before any format decisions.
• Co-create or enable: The distinction between top-down communities, which must be co-created with members, and bottom-up ones, which L&D should stoke rather than absorb into a programme.
• Facilitation as the underestimated skill: Why ritual design, prompts, psychological safety, and the ongoing work of keeping a conversation alive are consistently undervalued — and rarely resourced as part of someone's actual role.
• AI as a third colleague: How Anamaria's team treats their AI assistant as an extra team member that summarises, researches, and pokes holes in thinking, while humans keep judgment, context, and emotion.

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction to community-led learning
[00:45] Anamaria's role at Adyen and the L&D Shakers community 
[02:28] Daily learning habits: podcasts and a curated LinkedIn feed
[03:30] Unlearning busyness as a measure of success
[04:34] Turning points that shaped a belief in social learning 
[07:19] Distributed learning: why L&D doesn't need to be in the room 
[09:03] Making the business case for social learning 
[11:52] Why courses go stale faster than ever
[14:00] Case study: communities of practice in retail at Ace & Tate
[19:29] Ripple effects: confidence, promotions, and employee NPS
[22:44] How to start a community that actually works
[25:40] Co-created versus enabled communities
[26:28] Securing leadership sponsorship
[27:48] The pitfall of underestimating facilitation
[29:11] What people come together for in a world of content overload
[33:18] Bringing AI into collaboration
[35:26] Facilitation as a strategic capability
[39:51] The skills L&D leaders need next
[42:05] Final reflections and closing

Takeaways

• Start with the why, not the tool: A platform is not a community, and engagement is the last thing to arrive, not the first. Validate the need through real conversations before you design a single format.
• Align the how with the why: If the goal is more innovation, an expert webinar won't get you there. Whatever happens inside the community needs to drive people towards the change you're actually after.
• Don't underestimate a good anecdote: When quantitative data isn't available, stories of how being in a community changed someone's day-to-day are valid evidence — and they travel further with leaders than you'd expect.
• Facilitation is the strategic skill: As AI takes over content creation, L&D's value shifts to creating conditions for learning, helping teams surface what's unsaid, and making sense of complexity together.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#10 with Melanie Calle, Senior Manager of L&D at Kontoor Brands. When a global business undergoes massive change, it becomes clear that traditional training alone isn't enough to help leaders keep up. Melanie shares how her team is shifting their approach to focus on peer learning and reflection, helping leaders make sense of new realities together rather than just consuming information.

Other themes in this episode include:

• Designing for leadership at every level: Melanie explains why leadership skills should not be reserved for formal managers alone. At Kontoor Brands, leadership starts with self-leadership and expands into influencing across teams, functions, and global contexts.
• Balancing scale with relevance: The conversation explores how global leadership programmes can stay consistent without becoming generic. Melanie shares how learning at your own pace, live workshops, and local facilitation can work together to make learning feel practical and personal.
• Embedding learning into real work: Rather than treating leadership development as something separate from the business, Melanie highlights the importance of immediate use cases, peer dialogue, and manager feedback that connect learning directly to everyday challenges.
• Creating psychological safety in global cohorts: Melanie discusses how vulnerability, anonymous reflection, and structured dialogue help leaders open up about real struggles. That openness becomes the foundation for stronger peer learning and more honest ways to develop new skills.
• Shifting L&D from provider to connector: The episode also looks at how L&D’s role is changing in large organisations. Instead of simply facilitating training, L&D increasingly acts as the bridge that links business priorities, leaders, teams, and all the ways people learn together.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to leadership development in transformation
00:57 Melanie’s career journey from recruitment to global L&D
02:22 Daily learning habits and building a 5:15 a.m. routine
04:19 Best advice: progress over perfection
05:02 Balancing personalization and scale in global learning
07:36 What leaders need that traditional leadership development misses
08:48 Why everyone is a leader
09:32 Learning through application, peers, and manager involvement
12:09 Building common language and shared leadership foundations
14:05 How Kontoor Brands designs leadership programmes across levels 16:07 Using self-paced learning and workshops together
17:27 Creating psychological safety for real dialogue
19:08 Bringing global cohorts together across regions
20:04 Why leadership development had to become more social
21:46 Making learning practical with real cases and using AI to practice
23:47 The role of leadership development during business transformation
24:35 Helping leaders translate vision into team-level action
28:01 Why L&D is now connecting different parts of the business
28:42 Building business partnership across 17,000 employees
32:03 The future skills L&D leaders need most
35:46 Final reflections and closing

Takeaways

• Start with self-awareness: Leadership development becomes more effective when people first understand their own tendencies, habits, and learning patterns. That self-understanding creates a stronger foundation for changing how we act.
• Design for application, not just understanding: Learning sticks when leaders can immediately test ideas in real situations, reflect on what happened, and try again. The workplace itself should become the practice ground.
• Make managers part of the learning journey: Programmes create momentum, but real change deepens when direct leaders observe, reinforce, and give feedback in simple ways that fit into everyday work.
• See L&D as the bridge between business needs: In times of transformation, the value of L&D is not only in content or facilitation. It is in connecting business needs, people, tools, and shared learning processes so skills can grow at scale.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#9 with Emilia Åström, Community Lead at L&D Leaders. This episode zooms out from a single organization to look at what's happening across the entire L&D field. What are senior leaders struggling with right now? What experiments are they running, and what’s actually working? Emilia shares her unique perspective from daily conversations with L&D leaders.

Other themes in this episode include:

• The shift to problem-solving: Why L&D is moving from content delivery to becoming a strategic partner that helps the business solve its most pressing challenges.
• The challenge of distributed learning: As teams increasingly create their own learning initiatives, L&D's role is shifting to "enabling the enablers" by providing tools, guidance, and expertise.
• Learning in the flow of work: How to design learning systems that support continuous development with social support and nudges, rather than relying on one-off training sessions.
• AI as a design partner: How one organization used AI agents to design a leadership program, resulting in a more human-centric, facilitation-led experience.
• Building trust and relevance: The core principles of community management that every L&D leader can apply to build engagement and ensure learning initiatives are valuable to participants.

Chapters [00:15] What's happening across the L&D field? [01:08] Who is Emilia Åström? [04:04] What are L&D leaders discussing right now? [06:47] Innovative experiments in L&D [10:06] What makes these approaches non-traditional? [14:22] What is frustrating L&D leaders? [18:21] How L&D can support business problem-solving [20:49] Cutting through the AI hype [24:20] Why is it hard to scale a community approach in an organization? [29:07] The future of L&D [31:10] What to focus on when feeling overwhelmed [32:49] How the L&D Leaders community actually operate

Takeaways

• Co-create to build ownership: Involve learners in the design process. When people help build something, they are far more likely to use it and find it valuable.
• Enable the enablers: As learning becomes more decentralized, the role of L&D is to equip and empower teams to create effective learning experiences for themselves.
• Listen first, design second: The foundation of any successful learning initiative or community is a deep understanding of the participants' real needs and challenges.
• Combine synchronous and asynchronous learning: Give people time to reflect before and after live sessions. This makes discussions richer and more inclusive for everyone.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#8 with Sotos Poulimenos, Head of Global Learning and Leadership Development at Dynatrace. In this episode, we challenge the traditional view of corporate learning as a series of isolated events or polished courses. Tune in to discover how to design cohort-based programs that prioritize peer connection, drive  behavioral change, and strengthen organizational trust.

Other themes in this episode include:

• L&D as a strategic demand center: Practical strategies for shifting the L&D team's positioning from a passive order taker to an active partner that business units actively seek out.
• Peer groups as your number one team: How structuring safe spaces for leaders of similar levels to share their struggles creates a powerful, sustainable peer-to-peer support system.
• Continuous journeys as the end of one-offs: How to design structured learning journeys using the "before, during, and after" framework rather than relying on disconnected virtual workshops.
• Polished content as a trust leak: Why overly slick, hyper-produced training materials can trigger skepticism in learners and how embracing a more raw, authentic approach builds deeper engagement.

Chapters

• [00:00] Introduction to Sotos Polimenos
• [02:04] The best advice: Gratitude and luck
• [03:04] Cross-industry lessons on how humans learn
• [04:40] Overcoming skepticism toward social learning
• [05:48] The truth about ROI and quantitative vs. qualitative data
• [10:41] Adapting learning designs across global cultures
• [13:17] Harnessing the power of the peer group
• [17:10] Designing structured, action-oriented breakout sessions
• [21:48] Sustaining impact with the before, during, and after framework
• [24:46] Shifting from order taker to demand center
• [28:16] How cohort environments build organizational trust
• [31:06] Trust leaks: Polished content and adult-to-adult expectations
• [34:40] Balancing AI automation with human connection
• [35:00] Case study: The "circle of trust" in high-pressure healthcare
• [39:24] Crucial mindsets for future L&D leaders
• [43:13] Episode outro and community invite

Takeaways

• Speak the language of the business: To earn a seat at the table, L&D leaders must discard academic jargon and translate behavioral change into terms that business stakeholders actually care about.
• Treat corporate learners like adults: Avoid paternalistic policies or administrative threats to drive attendance; setting clear, professional expectations allows adult learners to self-select and commit fully.
• Leverage the power of human storytelling: While quantitative metrics matter to show long-term correlation, it is the profound, qualitative stories of human transformation that ultimately win executive buy-in.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#7 with Kati Järvinen, Talent and Organization Development Lead at Wärtsilä. This episode explores how L&D can evolve from a support function into a strategic driver that moves the business forward. We discuss how to connect capability building directly to strategy execution, talent management, and business performance.

Kati shares her experience from Wärtsilä's transformation, offering a practical framework for embedding learning into the core of the organization. The conversation focuses on moving beyond traditional L&D metrics to demonstrate real, measurable business impact.

Other themes in this episode include:

• Connecting competence to strategy: How to build a dynamic competence framework that translates strategic priorities into relevant skills and career paths for employees, moving beyond static, compliance-driven exercises.
• Measuring what matters: Shifting focus from lagging indicators like completion rates to leading indicators that show a direct correlation between learning initiatives and business KPIs.
• The L&D role in transformation: Why L&D is a critical driver during organizational change and restructuring, and how to move from a reactive to a proactive role by forecasting future competence needs.
• Bridging the learning-application gap: How to diagnose workflow challenges and design targeted interventions that are integrated into daily work, instead of relying on a content-first approach.
• Shared ownership of development: Defining the distinct roles of the business, L&D, and employees in owning competence development to ensure alignment and accountability.

Chapters

[00:27] Introducing Kati Järvinen [02:39] From support function to strategic driver [06:06] Collaborative learning and strategy execution [09:21] Connecting L&D to talent management [12:48] Building useful competence frameworks [15:06] How to demonstrate the real value of learning [20:14] Bridging the gap between learning and application [23:32] Who owns competence development? [26:35] The role of L&D in organizational change [30:15] The future mindset for L&D leaders

Takeaways

• Speak the language of business: To prove its value, L&D must connect its initiatives directly to business metrics and performance. Frame learning not as a cost center, but as an engine for executing strategy and achieving results.
• Challenge the content-first mindset: The most effective learning isn't always a new course. L&D leaders should first diagnose the root cause of a performance issue and then design the minimum viable intervention, which might be a change in workflow, process, or a highly targeted learning moment.
• Embrace a "what if" mindset: Cultivate curiosity and be brave enough to challenge the status quo. Instead of benchmarking and copying others, trust your understanding of your organization to invent new, more impactful solutions.
• Own the system, not the content: L&D's role is to build the structures, processes, and governance that enable learning across the organization. The business owns the "what" (competence needs), while L&D owns the "how" (the framework for development).

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#6 with David Goddard, Leadership Coach and Founder, Successify. This episode explores how to shift leadership development from a series of isolated programs into a continuous, energizing practice. We discuss what it takes to build organizations where learning isn't just about training, but about fueling performance, clarity, and wellbeing in an era of permanent complexity.

Other themes in this episode include:

• Learning between the moments: Why the most meaningful development happens on the job and in the spaces between formal training sessions, and how to design for it.
• The ROI of conversation: How to measure the success of L&D not by completion rates, but by observing changes in the quality of dialogue, energy levels, and team interactions.
• Leading in complexity: Practical ways to create anchor points for teams navigating matrix structures, multiple projects, and constant change, turning complexity into an opportunity for growth.
• Trust across cultures: How the definition of trust varies globally—from reliability in the Nordics to relationships in Southern Europe—and how leaders can build psychological safety in multicultural teams by asking better questions.

Chapters

[00:00] Intro [02:54] A small daily habit that helps you learn or stay curious [04:23] Key turning points that shaped how you think about leadership and learning today [06:52] Where does the most meaningful learning happen? [09:10] How learning and leadership development are evolving in a state of permanent complexity [13:07] The role of social and collaborative learning in today's organizations [15:33] How to make learning a daily practice instead of an isolated event [20:19] Why we need more human-centric work practices in the age of AI [22:39] How to connect learning journeys to daily work and business context [24:25] Creating accountability for learning without causing performance anxiety [26:20] The connection between psychological safety, trust, and multicultural teams [30:09] How to measure the impact of social learning beyond completion rates [31:51] The number one skill L&D leaders will need in the next five years

Takeaways

• Leadership starts with self-leadership: Before you can lead others, you must be able to lead yourself. Protecting your own thinking time and energy is not a luxury but a prerequisite for effective leadership.
• Learning is energy: The quality of learning is directly tied to the energy of the individuals and the team. When people feel seen, heard, and energized, their capacity for learning, creativity, and performance expands dramatically.
• Ask what people bring, not just what they want: Shift the focus of learning from passive consumption to active contribution. Asking participants what they bring to a learning journey fosters ownership and turns development into a collaborative act.
• The future is creative thinking: In a world increasingly automated by AI, the most critical human skill will be creative thinking. L&D leaders must champion environments that protect time for reflection, as creativity and learning are two sides of the same coin.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#5 In this episode, Frida Monsén, Global Head of L&D Strategy and Portfolio at Vattenfall, joins us to explore how to scale learning in a 20,000-employee organization by moving beyond traditional training. We discuss the critical role of social learning in navigating the AI transformation and why psychological safety is essential for fostering a culture of continuous improvement, especially in an engineering-heavy environment.

Other themes in this episode include:

• Balancing Compliance and Continuous Learning: How to meet mandatory training needs while focusing on the continuous, meta-learning required to navigate uncertainty and the AI transformation.
• Social Learning as a Key Component: Frida explains how Vattenfall designs learning with real business cases, cohort-based learning, and expert-led communities to make interaction a core part of the experience.
• Creating the Prerequisites for Social Learning: In an expert-driven culture, it's crucial to build psychological safety so people feel comfortable learning and discussing topics where they aren't yet experts.
• Embedding Learning in Everyday Work: Practical ways to integrate learning into daily workflows through team meetings, peer pairing, and shared communication channels to support transformation goals.
• Making L&D More Strategic: Frida's advice for L&D leaders: Don't wait for an invitation. Be curious, deliver high-quality work, and connect learning directly to core business objectives to gain stakeholder buy-in.
• Measuring What Matters: Moving beyond simple metrics like course completion to measure the true impact of learning on tool adoption, project success, talent retention, and business results.

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction [01:01] Frida's Background in Learning and Development [04:06] Key Career Turning Points and a Skills-Based Approach [08:13] Corporate Learning in the Age of AI [10:25] The Power of Social Learning at Vattenfall [14:35] From Content Delivery to Competence Spreading [16:48] Balancing Formal Training with Everyday Learning [22:16] Learning's Role in the AI Transformation [24:36] Creating Pull for Learning [26:45] Making L&D More Strategic [29:25] The Role of Psychological Safety in Learning [32:15] Measuring the Impact of Learning [36:00] The Future of L&D Leadership

Takeaways

• Learning is Fundamentally Social: The most impactful learning happens when people connect, share experiences, and solve problems together.
• Bias for Action: Don't wait for the perfect plan or invitation. Start delivering value, be curious, and work both bottom-up and top-down to drive change.
• Psychological Safety is Non-Negotiable: Without a safe environment to experiment and fail, true learning and innovation are impossible.
• Connect Learning to Business Impact: To be strategic, L&D must understand and align with core business objectives, demonstrating how learning drives results.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#4 with Dr. Eerika Hedman-Phillips, an experienced OD and change professional who currently leads Talent Management for a global sports media and broadcasting company. We explore what it really takes to develop leadership and learning in a way that strengthens relationships and supports organizational transformation. Eerika shares how she combines a pragmatic approach with deep academic expertise to create environments where people genuinely thrive.

Other themes in this episode include:

• Empathy in the Age of AI: While AI can handle technical tasks or digital coaching, the human element—like connecting with an upset colleague—remains a biological and neurological necessity.
• Amplifying Learning Through Social Sense-Making: Group discussion and sharing different "takes" on content amplifies learning more effectively than solo consumption.
• Making Learning Stick: Moving beyond "a great day of training" by using follow-up touchpoints, gentle nudges, and detailed visualizations of when and where to implement new behaviors.
• Reflexivity and Owning Impact: Leaders have a responsibility to understand that the meaning of their communication is found in the response it generates, regardless of their original intention.
• Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM): A framework for paying attention to the stories people tell—and the words they use—to understand how those narratives influence their perception and actions.
• The Non-Linear Challenge of Measurement: Human behavior is non-linear, making it difficult to measure impact in a strictly linear way; practitioners should look for qualitative signals rather than "fabricated" metrics.
• Securing a Strategic Seat: L&D leaders must move beyond "order taking" by deeply understanding business pain points and networking to build capabilities before a shift occurs.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Learning Development 

02:58 Erika's Journey into Organizational Development 

05:57 The Role of Organizational Development in Transformation 

09:01 Navigating Internal Dynamics in Organizations

11:50 Merging Pragmatic and Academic Approaches 

14:58 Developing Leadership Capabilities for the Future

18:00 The Importance of Social Learning 

21:03 Reflexivity in Leadership Development 

23:50 Understanding Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) 

27:00 Measuring the Impact of Learning Initiatives 

30:08 The Future of Learning and Development 

33:08 Encouraging Strategic Conversations in L&D 

36:08 Final Thoughts and Reflections

Takeaways:

• Model the "Explorer Mindset": L&D leaders should update their own thinking and "internal software" to model lifelong learning and integrity for the organization.
• Design for Human Connection: While AI can handle technical tasks, the human element—like showing empathy and support—is a neurological necessity that organizations must intentionally protect and design for in their collaboration.
• Focus on Impact, Not Intention: True reflexivity means moving beyond what you "meant" to do and taking responsibility for the actual results your behavior creates in your team.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#3 with Domenico Dargenio, Leadership and Culture Transformation at Fortum. In this episode, we discuss how leadership, learning, and culture come together when organizations go through massive transformation. We explore why psychological safety is the foundation for learning and change, and how Fortum is bringing capability development to where the problem is – embedding learning into real work rather than isolating it in training rooms.

Other themes in this episode include:

• Send learning to the problem: Why development should happen in the context of real team challenges, not in isolation.
• Psychological safety as a precondition: How fear blocks learning and what we mislabel as "change resistance."
• Cultural ambassadors at scale: Dom shares a pactical way to make change credible and relevant at Fortum, scaled across thousands of employees.
• Convincing executives: Why learning and culture are real performance drivers, not just soft topics.
• Beyond 70-20-10: Why ultra-personalized, in-the-flow-of-work learning needs social learning to be impactful.
• Collaboration as strategy execution: How complex projects like Microsoft's CO2-free data center require cross-functional teamwork – and how to support it.
  
  

Chapters

02:04:00 Dom's current role and the "large renewal" at Fortum
03:18:00 Rapid questions: Googling and daily learning habits
04:55:00 Dom's journey into transformation leadership
08:15:00 Ultra-personalized learning & social learning
11:00:00 Fortum's approach: Sending learning to where the problem is
13:58:00 The role of inclusion and social learning in building culture
16:45:00 Psychological safety as the #1 driver for high performance
25:12:00 The most critical leadership capabilities for the future
30:21:00 Convincing the C-level: Learning and culture as business drivers
37:21:00 Scaling psychological safety across a large organization
42:15:00 The role of cultural ambassadors and transformation coaches
47:11:00 What organizations underestimate about learning during transformation
49:33:00 Final reflection: L&D leaders as the "ultimate students"

Takeaways:

Send learning to where the problem is: Bring coaching and development into real team friction points where strategy execution happens.

Psychological safety enables everything: When people can say "I don't know," they can learn. Without it, fear takes over.

Make transformation relevant: People need to see how change connects to their goals and work—managers translate this locally.

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.

#2 with Patrik Hedljung, Manager of AI Adoption at Scania. In this episode, Patrik discusses the evolving role of L&D as organizations navigate the shift toward new technology. We explore the tension between slow organizational processes and fast-moving tech, and why AI transformation requires a cross-functional effort across IT, HR, and Legal.

Other themes in this episode include

• Speed over perfection: Why perfectionism is the enemy in a fast-moving landscape and why you must iterate rather than waiting for a mandate.
• Beyond content delivery: Why an overabundance of content doesn't solve the learning gap.
• Leading by understanding: Why leaders don't need to be AI experts but must understand the tech enough to manage the transition.
• Integrating into existing flows: How to tweak existing leadership structures rather than adding more to busy agendas.
• The "Scania Learner": Fostering individual agency and curiosity as the core of digital transformation.
• L&D's cultural role: Why AI adoption is a cultural change that requires a human-centric perspective.
• Collaborative learning as a choice: The need to prioritize and incentivize social learning in a results-driven culture.

Takeaways

• Screw the mandate: Stop waiting for permission and start experimenting, demonstrating, and inviting others to learn.
• Bridge the silos: AI transformation cannot be solved by one department; it requires leaning in together across IT and HR.
• Leaders as learners: Use the "Nordic" style of dialogue to learn alongside direct reports rather than standing on a pedestal.

Chapters

• 00:01:21 Introduction and Patrik's role at Scania
• 00:03:46 The "two-minute rule" for daily learning
• 00:10:45 Why AI transformation requires cross-functional collaboration
• 00:12:25 The challenge of yearly processes in a fluid tech world
• 00:18:29 Scania's culture: From classroom sharing to digital internships
• 00:23:53 Prioritizing collaborative learning as a strategic choice
• 00:28:04 The impact of AI on white-collar roles and leadership
• 00:32:44 Integrating AI knowledge into leadership programs
• 00:43:36 Why L&D is crucial for the cultural side of AI
• 00:53:47 A call to action: "Screw the mandate" and start experimenting

Join the L&D Leaders Community at ldleaders.net. Free, curated community where leaders come together to share what's actually working, ask the harder questions out loud, and build relationships with peers who genuinely get it.