The Learning Culture Podcast

What does it really take to grow from a good individual contributor to a great one? In this special edition of The Learning Culture Podcast, Andrew Barry sits down with leaders for short, sharp conversations about the mindset shifts, hard-won lessons, and small moves that separate ICs who plateau from those who keep climbing. ICs matter more than ever as AI reshapes how work gets done, and these episodes are built for anyone navigating that path or helping others walk it.

In this episode, Aimee Lantzy recalls the day a COO asked for her opinion and how it shifted her from doing the work to designing it. She talks about the advice her entrepreneur father gave her about working inside someone else's dream, what it means to choose a company rather than fall into one, and why the most productive ICs sometimes need help simply looking up from their desks.

If you're an IC looking to grow, or a leader responsible for developing them, this episode is for you.

What does it really take to grow from a good individual contributor to a great one? In this special edition of The Learning Culture Podcast, Andrew Barry sits down with talent leaders for short, sharp conversations about the mindset shifts, hard-won lessons, and small moves that separate ICs who plateau from those who keep climbing. ICs matter more than ever as AI reshapes how work gets done, and these episodes are built for anyone navigating that path or helping others walk it.

In this episode, Liz Brumels makes the case for asking the questions you're a little afraid to ask, even when the answer might be no. She walks through how a rejection became a nine-month development plan, why no one is going to build your career for you, and how stepping outside your own team is one of the fastest ways to create advocates across an organization.

If you're wondering what separates the ICs who plateau from the ones who keep climbing, this episode is for you.

What does it really take to grow from a good individual contributor to a great one? In this special edition of The Learning Culture Podcast, Andrew Barry sits down with talent leaders for short, sharp conversations about the mindset shifts, hard-won lessons, and small moves that separate ICs who plateau from those who keep climbing. ICs matter more than ever as AI reshapes how work gets done, and these episodes are built for anyone navigating that path or helping others walk it.

In this episode, Dax Rich opens up about the moment he realized a paycheck alone wasn't enough, and how aligning with company values changed the work he chose and how he showed up inside it. He talks about the cost of waiting for someone else to take the wheel, and why self-talk is the first thing he works on with high-potential ICs.

If you're ready to stop waiting for someone else to advocate for your career, this episode is for you.

What does it really take to grow from a good individual contributor to a great one? In this special edition of The Learning Culture Podcast, Andrew Barry sits down with talent leaders for short, sharp conversations about the mindset shifts, hard-won lessons, and small moves that separate ICs who plateau from those who keep climbing. ICs matter more than ever as AI reshapes how work gets done, and these episodes are built for anyone navigating that path or helping others walk it.

In this episode, Meganne Brezina shares the presentation day that reshaped how she thinks about preparation, why she believes knowing when to leave an organization is one of the most underrated skills in a career, and how self-advocacy separates the ICs who get noticed from those who quietly do great work. 

If you're building your career as an individual contributor or shaping the ones around you, this episode is for you.

What does it really take to grow from a good individual contributor to a great one? In this special edition of The Learning Culture Podcast, Andrew Barry sits down with leaders for short, sharp conversations about the mindset shifts, hard-won lessons, and small moves that separate ICs who plateau from those who keep climbing. ICs matter more than ever as AI reshapes how work gets done, and these episodes are built for anyone navigating that path or helping others walk it.

 In this conversation, Amy reflects on what gave her the confidence to trust her own ideas early in her career, the role preparation and relationships played in helping her work carry weight, and why she believes ICs often miss the bigger picture of the business they're inside of. 

 If you're an IC looking to grow, or a leader responsible for developing them, this episode is for you.

Most learning programs fail at measurement because they're asking the wrong questions with the wrong tools. 

Eric Grant, who leads learning and content at Figma, has cracked the code on learning analytics that actually matter. With an MS in data science and experience at LinkedIn, Coinbase, Uber, and The Trade Desk, Eric brings statistical rigor to a field that typically runs on intuition. 

In this episode, he shares his proven blueprint for measuring learning impact. He explains why the question "Did this make you better at your job?" beats satisfaction scores every time, how to set up control groups when AB testing isn't possible, and when to invest in rigorous measurement versus when to trust the vibe. 

From survey design that actually drives insights to avoiding the credibility-killing mistake of claiming every program worked, Eric provides the practical analytics toolkit that L&D professionals need to prove their impact. 

If you've been struggling to move beyond course completions and smile sheets, this blueprint shows you exactly how to measure what actually matters.

When employees equate growth with promotion, but promotion opportunities are limited, how do you develop your best individual contributors? 

In this panel discussion, Katie Hart from Faire, Sarah Jester from Lucid Software, and Krysta Kasinski from LinkedIn share their battle-tested approaches to developing ICs beyond the traditional promotion path. These three L&D leaders reveal why they've moved beyond the "growth equals promotion" myth to build leadership programs specifically for individual contributors. 

You'll discover the five core capabilities that accelerate IC growth, why cohort-based learning beats one-off training, and how to measure impact without killing engagement. Katie, Sarah, and Krysta share what's actually working in their programs, including the mistakes they've made and learned from. 

Whether you're at a 1,000-person company like Faire and Lucid or a LinkedIn-scale organization, this conversation provides practical frameworks for developing your IC population when traditional career ladders aren't enough. 

If retaining top talent and building leadership at every level matters to your organization, this playbook shows you exactly where to start.

Most companies take their best sellers and promote them into management, expecting them to magically know how to coach a team. 

It rarely works that way. Gail Behun, who leads frontline manager enablement at Zoom across 300 managers globally, learned that lesson firsthand when she made the leap from seller to manager and realized she had no template for what good looked like. 

In this conversation, Gail breaks down how she builds manager capability without overwhelming people who are already stretched thin, why the best enablement comes from managers themselves rather than top-down programs, and how she uses AI, including a custom "Gail Voice" bot, to scale her impact and communicate in a way that actually lands with CROs. 

If you've ever wondered how to make enablement stick beyond the training session, this one's for you.

When your people complete the mandated AI training but nothing changes, you don't have a tool problem; you have a culture problem. 

As Director of L&D at Publicis Sapient, Ian Stevens watched mandates and endless emails fail to drive the engagement, adoption, or completions they needed. 

The breakthrough came when they stopped teaching tools and started building mindsets. Ian reveals their secret weapon, the AI Caravan: 60-minute demos fueled by beer and pizza that brought record numbers into the office voluntarily. 

He explains why people need to evolve from writers to editors, why adaptability and judgment matter more than technical skills, and how widening the guardrails unlocked momentum. Most importantly, Ian shows how transformation happens with people, not to them. 

If you're tired of the "hurry up and wait" approach to AI adoption, this episode reveals how to build a culture where experimentation beats prescription every time.

What happens when the context you're preparing leaders for no longer exists by the time they get there? After seven years as Chief Learning Officer at Citibank building talent systems, Cameron Hedrick sees the cracks in how we predict potential.

In this conversation, Cameron reveals why mastery beats potential when everything is constantly emerging, why humans excel at inference with small data while AI needs millions of data points, and how self-knowing becomes the foundation for navigating what's next. 

He introduces his Prompt to Polymath framework, mapping our journey from basic augmentation to a world where your digital twin pre-flights conversations while you orchestrate outcomes across humans, agents, and proxies. 

From hiring people with scars to narrating learning in motion, Cameron shares why machines may calculate faster, but they don't rise stronger from failure and why that distinction matters more than ever. 

If you're still running quarterly talent reviews in static nine-boxes, this conversation will fundamentally challenge how you think about developing capability that endures.

HIGH POTENTIAL (for what?!)

New MIT Sloan research suggests that AI is more likely to complement, not replace, human workers | MIT Sloan