Trew Landis

November 12, 2026

9:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Modernwell

This event is limited to 12 participants.

Making better choices when priorities compete and plans change; interactive workshop plus an individual virtual strategy coaching session.

You may be putting the finishing touches on your 2027 L&D plan, still making decisions about priorities and resources, or waiting for pieces of the business strategy to become clearer. And even once the plan is done, you know the year won’t unfold exactly as expected.

New requests come in. Business priorities shift. Budgets and capacity get tight. Something that seemed critical in November may look different by March. And several priorities may all be important, even though you don’t have the resources to do everything at full scale.

That’s the real strategic challenge: not just setting L&D priorities, but continuing to make good choices about them throughout the year.

And it’s a common one. ATD’s 2026 State of the Industry research found that 46% of talent development professionals name prioritizing multiple demands as a top challenge, while one-third struggle to scale their work with limited resources.

This hands-on workshop is for L&D, Talent and HR leaders who influence learning priorities and resources. You don’t need a finished 2027 plan—you just need real priorities, demands and decisions you’re working through.

You’ll leave with:

• A practical way to pressure-test L&D priorities and make more intentional choices about where to focus
• Tools to challenge assumptions, bring in perspectives you may be missing and look ahead at what could change
• An approach for making tough choices when several priorities compete for limited time, money and capacity
• A way to move multiple important priorities forward without overcommitting your resources—and clearly communicate the tradeoffs required
• A clearer way to articulate the business impact you’re trying to create and how you’ll know whether it’s happening

More than a year-end planning exercise, you’ll leave with a framework, tools and strategic thinking practices you can return to throughout 2027—when priorities shift, new demands emerge, or you need to examine, explain or justify where L&D is focusing its resources.

Individual Strategy Coaching Included

Your follow-on virtual coaching session with Mary Rapaport gives you the opportunity to apply the workshop to a real priority or decision. After you’ve gathered additional information and put the thinking into practice, you’ll work together to examine what you’ve learned, what may have changed and your next strategic move.

$149 ATD Members | $199 Nonmembers.

Mary Rapaport is donating her time for this program, allowing ATD to offer the workshop and individual coaching session at a special chapter rate. All registration proceeds support the chapter.

By registering for this event, you consent to the use of your image and likeness in photographs and videos taken at the event. These images may be used by ATD-GTC for promotional purposes, including but not limited to, social media, website, and printed materials.  

Modernwell is a members-only coworking space. We are excited to hold our events in their beautiful space, but can not extend access beyond the event time. Once the event ends, all attendees are expected to depart the building OR they can purchase a day pass at a discounted rate of $30 for the remainder of the day. Please stop by the ModernWell front desk before or after the event to purchase your pass.

Your Facilitator

Mary Rapaport
Learning Strategist | Strategic Thinking Consultant | Creator of The Strategic Playground®

Mary Rapaport is a learning strategist and strategic thinking consultant with more than 25 years of experience across strategy, organizational learning, leadership development and business. She helps organizations make smarter development choices and build strategic thinking as a practical, repeatable capability. As the creator of The Strategic Playground®, Mary helps leaders and teams move beyond simply executing the plan to thinking more strategically about what the business needs and where to focus.

Register for the Event

December 4, 2026

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM – Oxboro Library, located at 8801 Portland Ave. S., Bloomington, MN 55420

This event is limited to 30 participants.

NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FROM NOVEMBER 10TH AND WILL NOW BE HELD IN PERSON AT THE OXBORO LIBRARY.

Emerging leader development programs are an important tool for building an organization’s leadership pipeline. Designing an impactful program involves many considerations, including the target audience, selection process, learning experience, manager involvement, success criteria, and more. In this interactive session, we’ll look at real case studies from organizations of different types, sizes, and cultures to see what it takes to design and develop programs that build leadership capability while ensuring stakeholder support.

We’ll cover the key design decisions, from defining “emerging leader” and selecting participants to choosing learning methods and measuring impact. We’ll also share candid lessons about what worked, what didn’t, and what we’d do differently. Whether you’re launching a new program or refreshing an existing one, you’ll leave with practical ideas you can adapt to your own organization.

Participants will be able to:

• Identify the key design decisions in building an emerging leader program, including audience definition, participant selection, learning approach, and manager involvement, and adapt them to their own organization.
• Apply strategies to gain and keep stakeholder support from executive sponsors, managers, and HR partners throughout the life of a program.
• Use lessons from real-world case studies and a practical design canvas to avoid common pitfalls and plan or refine their own program.

Meet Our Presenter:

Michelle Kelly is the founder and CEO of Empowering Performance, Inc. (EPI), a leadership and organizational development company. For more than 30 years, she has helped leaders, teams, and organizations perform at their best. Through EPI, Michelle partners with executives and HR leaders on strategic consulting, organizational development, and leadership programs. Her work strengthens culture, builds leadership capability, and improves performance. Michelle translates leadership concepts into clear, actionable tools leaders can use right away. Her flagship Leadership to Live By™ program brings that approach to life with energy, relevance, and impact.

This program is FREE for all ATD-GTC members. Members may bring one complimentary, registered guest. 

By registering for this event, you consent to the use of your image and likeness in photographs and videos taken at the event. These images may be used by ATD-GTC for promotional purposes, including but not limited to, social media, website, and printed materials.  

Register for the Event

December 09, 2026

4:30 PM – 6:00 PM – Location TBD

This event is limited to 15 people

The purpose of the Lead and Learn program is to provide an opportunity for talent development professional (or aspiring talent development professionals) to build their network, lead others by sharing their knowledge and experience, and learn new strategies, tools and best practices from other professionals to expand their Joy of Learning. 

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We’re thrilled to share that ATD Twin Cities events have been filling quickly — and many now have active waitlists. That is such a great reflection of the engaged, curious, and committed community we continue to build together.

Because seats are in high demand, we ask one simple favor: if your plans change and you’re no longer able to attend, please take a quick moment to

1. View your profile on our website
2. Select MY event registrations
3. Locate the event you cannot attend and select CANCEL REGISTRATION.

That helps us open your seat to another member who is hoping to join us and keeps valuable spots from going unused.

We look forward to seeing you there and if you cannot attend, thank you in advance for helping us make sure every seat is filled by someone ready to participate!

This program is FREE for all ATD-GTC members. Members may bring one complimentary, registered guest. 

By registering for this event, you consent to the use of your image and likeness in photographs and videos taken at the event. These images may be used by ATD-GTC for promotional purposes, including but not limited to, social media, website, and printed materials. 

Meet Our Co-Hosts:

Kaydra Weigel, MEd is a Learning Solutions Business Partner at Life Time. She has a diverse array of facilitation and instructional design experience that ranges from education to talent development. In her current role, she develops performance-based learning experiences, partners with cross-functional teams to support organizational development, and recommends and designs targeted learning solutions to address performance challenges. Additionally, she has presented at IUPUI’s Assessment Institute, an event focused on assessment and improvement, and at ATD-GTC’s Unlearning to Drive Change Vision event.

Mary Armstrong is a Verified ATD Master™ Instructional Designer at Aveda Corporation. Her previous 20-year career in journalism included staff jobs at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota Public Radio and The New York Times. She is the secretary of the board for Wilson’s Image College Scholarship, a nonprofit benefiting African-American scholars from North Minneapolis, and a volunteer for the Association for Talent Development–Greater Twin Cities. Mary has journalism and political science degrees from Indiana University and a graduate certificate in instructional design and technology from Florida State University.

Click Here to Register for the Event

December 11, 2026

9 AM – 10:30 AM -Modernwell

Throughout 2026, the ATD-GTC Change Leadership Community of Practice has explored a set of priorities first identified during our December 2025 Lean Coffee discussion. We began with change measurement in practice, examined resilience during sustained change, and considered how resistance can provide useful data. Across each conversation, one shared theme has continued to surface: people need more than information to understand, adopt, and sustain change.

In this final session of the year, we will explore how communication, learning, and leadership development work together to help people make sense of change and act on it. This discussion is designed for change practitioners as well as instructional designers, trainers, HR professionals, facilitators, and leadership development partners who play a role in preparing people for new expectations, behaviors, tools, or ways of working.

Rather than focusing only on communication plans, training deliverables, or polished messages, we will examine what actually helps people connect organizational intent to their day-to-day reality. We will consider how messaging, stories, learning experiences, manager conversations, practice, and reinforcement can create clarity, build trust, strengthen capability, and support movement.

Together, we will explore questions such as:

• How do we determine whether people need information, learning, practice, leadership support, or some combination of all four?
• What helps employees understand not only what is changing, but what they need to do differently?
• How can instructional design and facilitation support sense-making rather than simply transfer information?
• What role do managers and leaders play in translating broad change messages into meaningful local conversations?
• How can stories, examples, scenarios, and visible evidence strengthen understanding and adoption?
• Where do communication and learning efforts commonly break down, overlap, or leave important gaps?
• How do we support people when the change story is still developing or leaders do not yet have every answer?

This is a peer-led working session rather than a traditional presentation. Participants are encouraged to come ready to contribute a scenario, tool, learning approach, communication practice, lesson learned, resource, or challenge from their own experience. Together, we will compare approaches, test assumptions, and identify practical ways talent development and change professionals can help people move from hearing about change to understanding it, building confidence, and taking action.

Participants will leave with practical ideas for connecting communication, learning, leadership, and reinforcement in ways that make change clearer, more relevant, and more actionable.

—

We’re thrilled to share that ATD Twin Cities events have been filling quickly — and many now have active waitlists. That is such a great reflection of the engaged, curious, and committed community we continue to build together.

Because seats are in high demand, we ask one simple favor: if your plans change and you’re no longer able to attend, please take a quick moment to

1. View your profile on our website
2. Select MY event registrations
3. Locate the event you cannot attend and select CANCEL REGISTRATION.

That helps us open your seat to another member who is hoping to join us and keeps valuable spots from going unused.

We look forward to seeing you there and if you cannot attend, thank you in advance for helping us make sure every seat is filled by someone ready to participate!

Modernwell is a members-only coworking space. We are excited to hold our events in their beautiful space, but can not extend access beyond the event time. Once the event ends, all attendees are expected to depart the building OR they can purchase a day pass at a discounted rate of $30 for the remainder of the day. Please stop by the ModernWell front desk before or after the event to purchase your pass.

This program is FREE for all ATD-GTC members. Members may bring one complimentary, registered guest. 

Click Here to Register for the Event