Like many of you, I joined SEWI-ATD to connect with other talent development professionals. I love being able to ask peers for advice to solve challenges in my job, and I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with others.

Since I love learning with others, I’m incredibly excited about our chapter’s professional development networks, or PDNs. We currently have standing groups for leaders of learning, training delivery, and (as of last week!) organizational development. These groups enable practitioners to discuss challenges, share techniques, and see how other companies are tackling similar issues. Every time I attend, these conversations are a highlight of my week.

I want to thank all the group leaders who make these sessions engaging and insightful. Jennifer Buchholz, Megan Cardenas, Lora Haines, Susan Keith, Camille Parham, Sheri Weaver, and Kathleen Volk--you do amazing work to create these collaborative learning opportunities!

Because these groups are such powerful learning communities, I want to encourage you to start your own group within our chapter. Megan Cardenas will tell you that the reason she started the leaders of learning group is because she wanted to get together with a bunch of people facing similar challenges, and forming a group was an easy way to make that happen.

You too can form a PDN to scratch your own professional development itch! Your PDN can be organized around almost any aspect of our field:

• Do you want to collaborate with others in a subject area, like instructional design, e-learning, or talent analytics?
• Would you like to share insights with others in your industry? (We’ve got a lot of chapter members in financial services, health care, and manufacturing!)
• Do you have a short-term project that would benefit from a working group? (Maybe you want to collaborate for the next four months on how to launch an affinity group program...)

As a chapter member, all you need to do is reach out to me or another board member and tell us about your proposed group! We’ll announce it to our list of over 700 local TD professionals, and you can start sharing ideas and building connections.

I look forward to collaborating with you!