Community of Practice

Book Banter – Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves

February 27, 2026 by Trew Landis

March 10, 2026

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM – Virtual

*You do NOT need to read the book to attend. You, your ideas, and your experiences are enough.

You are enough. In Talk, Alison Wood Brooks unpacks the hidden architecture of great conversations. Drawing on behavioral science and real-world research, she shows that meaningful dialogue isn’t magic—it’s skill. And like any skill, it can be practiced, refined, and mastered.

For talent development professionals, this book lands right at the center of our craft. Coaching. Facilitation. Feedback. Stakeholder alignment. Culture-building. Every one of these depends on how well we talk—and listen. Talk offers evidence-based tools for navigating high-stakes conversations, building trust faster, asking better questions, and creating connection that moves work forward.

This isn’t a book about small talk hacks. It’s about influence with integrity. Curiosity with structure. Confidence rooted in preparation. It’s about understanding the psychology of dialogue so we can lead with greater clarity and impact.

Join us at the ATD-GTC Book Banter as we explore:

What makes conversations succeed—or quietly fail
How to design discussions that generate insight, not just airtime
Practical frameworks you can immediately apply in coaching, leadership, and facilitation
The subtle behaviors that build credibility and trust

If your work depends on helping people grow, align, and perform—this conversation about conversation is worth your time.

Come ready to reflect, challenge your assumptions, and sharpen one of the most human skills we have.

Let’s talk about Talk.

Our Presenters

Benjamin Borchert is a Twin Cities–based facilitator and learning enthusiast who believes growth lives in the quality of our conversations. He’s curious about what helps people align intention with action at work and beyond. Benjamin enjoys convening thoughtful spaces where reflection turns into insight, and insight becomes meaningful change.

Michelle Kelly, is passionate about helping leaders and companies develop and retain their most valuable assets: people. As the founder of Empowering Performance, Inc., she and her team create engaging learning experiences that impact individual, team, and organizational performance. When not traveling, Michelle enjoys life in Northfield with her family and lots of books.

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

March – Community Of Practice: Small Yet Mighty L&D Teams – Build Your Coaching Muscle with AI—No Gym Membership Required

January 19, 2026 by Trew Landis

March 12, 2026

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM – Virtual

This event is limited to 28 participants

Want to strengthen your coaching skills without expensive training programs—or awkward role plays that feel like bad cardio?

In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to use AI to create realistic coaching role plays that actually work. Dream Lab CEO, Cherie Anderson will demonstrate the prompts that act like a personal trainer for your coaching conversations, then you’ll team up with classmates to design your own scenarios.

You’ll leave with ready-to-use prompts and role plays you can put into action immediately—no heavy lifting, no spotter, and no monthly fees. Just smarter practice, better reps, and stronger coaching muscles.

Our Presenter

As Dream Lab’s Chief Experience Officer, Cherie Anderson has 15 years of experience creating vibrant communities — including customer service, sales, and corporate organizations, as well as artists, entrepreneurs, authors, and social justice activists — by leading training classes, facilitating large and small groups, designing curricula, coaching learners, and producing events. She’s worked at Dream Lab Theatre (co-artistic director), American Express, Ameriprise Financial, Cray, Inc., and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as well as with numerous start-ups. She’s also collaborated with several authors and speakers. Formal education matters, too, so she invested in a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from the University of Minnesota, and a Masters in Organization Development from Bowling Green State University.

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

Long-Term Construction Alert: ModernWell

Significant MnDOT construction on I-394 and I-94 is ongoing through late fall 2026. Please allow extra travel time, especially during afternoon rush hours.

Major Impacts Through Mid-Summer 2026

Penn Avenue Bridge: Closed through November 2026. Use North Wayzata Blvd. or Theodore Wirth Pkwy as a detour.
Westbound I-394: Reduced to two lanes between downtown Minneapolis and Hwy 100.
Ramp Closures: The following ramps are closed through mid-summer:
- Westbound I-394 to/from Penn Ave.
- Eastbound I-94 to westbound I-394.
- Lyndale Ave to westbound I-394.

Upcoming Summer/Fall 2026 Shift

Starting in mid-summer, the construction focus will shift:

Eastbound I-394: Will be reduced to two lanes between Hwy 100 and downtown through the fall.
Penn Ave. Ramps: The eastbound I-394 ramps to/from Penn Ave. will close from mid-summer through late fall.

Register for the Event

Sales Community Of Practice – March 2026

January 26, 2026 by Trew Landis

March 19, 2026

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM – Location: Modernwell

This event is limited to 28 participants

Sales moves fast, and when sales leaders and enablement aren’t moving together, everyone feels it. In this candid, practical 60-minute session, Amber and Rebecca will talk about what it really takes to build a strong working relationship—one based on trust, open communication, and true partnership. This isn’t theory. It’s the stuff that actually makes teams better.

What We’ll Cover:

Why Alignment Makes Everything Easier
Building Trust, One Conversation at a Time
How Leaders Can Be Real Partners
Real-Life Scenarios We’ve All Face

Who’s This For?

Sales leaders, enablement pros, and anyone trying to build smoother, more genuine partnership across their teams.

What You’ll Leave With:

A clearer path for building trust, strengthening collaboration, and making alignment feel less like a buzzword and more like something your teams can rely on.

Our Presenters:

Rebecca Gebhardt is a 3x founder, 2x author, and has over 20 years of building and scaling organizations. As President of Rise Up Consulting, she now empowers sales leaders at all levels, focused on how better leaders impact recruiting, retention, and revenue. Her latest book Leaderboard to Leadership: How to Earn and Excel in Your First Sales Leadership Role is used at sales organizations as the playbook to sales leadership success.

Amber Watts is the author of From Onboarding to Everboarding: Redefining Employee Development (ATD Press), a keynote speaker, and founder of Radical GrowthWorks. She also serves as a Global Performance Consultant at LinkedIn, where she helps build systems-based talent strategies that drive long-term performance and retention.

A former Chief Revenue Officer turned talent strategist, Amber brings more than 15 years of real-world experience leading enablement and development in high-growth environments. She’s the creator of the Everboarding framework, a practical, strategic approach that moves beyond traditional onboarding to support employees well beyond Day 1.

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

Long-Term Construction Alert: ModernWell

Significant MnDOT construction on I-394 and I-94 is ongoing through late fall 2026. Please allow extra travel time, especially during afternoon rush hours.

Major Impacts Through Mid-Summer 2026

Penn Avenue Bridge: Closed through November 2026. Use North Wayzata Blvd. or Theodore Wirth Pkwy as a detour.
Westbound I-394: Reduced to two lanes between downtown Minneapolis and Hwy 100.
Ramp Closures: The following ramps are closed through mid-summer:
- Westbound I-394 to/from Penn Ave.
- Eastbound I-94 to westbound I-394.
- Lyndale Ave to westbound I-394.

Upcoming Summer/Fall 2026 Shift

Starting in mid-summer, the construction focus will shift:

Eastbound I-394: Will be reduced to two lanes between Hwy 100 and downtown through the fall.
Penn Ave. Ramps: The eastbound I-394 ramps to/from Penn Ave. will close from mid-summer through late fall.

Register for the Event

April 2026: Leadership Development Community of Practice – Leadership Assessments: Crafting a Strategic Approach to Unlocking Leadership Effectiveness

January 30, 2026 by Trew Landis

April 16, 2026

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM – Modernwell

This event is limited to 30 participants.

Organizations rely on leadership assessments to inform development, promotion, and succession decisions. Yet many L&D teams inherit tools without a clear strategy for why they were chosen or how well they truly support leadership effectiveness.

This session offers a practical approach to navigating the leadership assessment landscape. Participants will learn how to think more strategically about selection, balancing factors such as experience, scalability, cost, and alignment to performance outcomes.

Rather than promoting a single “best” tool, this session equips leaders with a clearer process for evaluating what will work in their context. Participants will also engage with peers to exchange insights and best practices, building collective perspective on what drives meaningful leadership insight.

Participants will walk away with:

A curated list of 50 behavioral, personality, and cultural leadership assessments for future exploration
A practical framework for evaluating assessments based on strategic fit and organizational needs
Key considerations for balancing experience, cost, scalability, and certification requirements
Insights from peer discussion on how other L&D teams are selecting and using assessments

Meet our Presenter

Jalaal Madyun is a leadership strategist, executive coach, and learning designer who helps senior leaders build high-performing teams by strengthening the relationships that drive results. Over the past 14 years, he has trained and coached more than 10,000 leaders across professional services, financial services, and health care. He has led enterprise-wide initiatives redefining leadership expectations. As the founder of Core Connections Leadership Institute™, Jalaal equips leaders and organizations with proprietary frameworks, assessments, and workshops that balance the hard business metrics with the human side of leadership. He is an ICF-certified coach, instructor for the University of Minnesota’s Professional Development programs, and a frequent speaker on leadership, coaching, and organizational development.

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

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.

Long-Term Construction Alert: ModernWell

Significant MnDOT construction on I-394 and I-94 is ongoing through late fall 2026. Please allow extra travel time, especially during afternoon rush hours.

Major Impacts Through Mid-Summer 2026

Penn Avenue Bridge: Closed through November 2026. Use North Wayzata Blvd. or Theodore Wirth Pkwy as a detour.
Westbound I-394: Reduced to two lanes between downtown Minneapolis and Hwy 100.
Ramp Closures: The following ramps are closed through mid-summer:
- Westbound I-394 to/from Penn Ave.
- Eastbound I-94 to westbound I-394.
- Lyndale Ave to westbound I-394.

Upcoming Summer/Fall 2026 Shift

Starting in mid-summer, the construction focus will shift:

Eastbound I-394: Will be reduced to two lanes between Hwy 100 and downtown through the fall.
Penn Ave. Ramps: The eastbound I-394 ramps to/from Penn Ave. will close from mid-summer through late fall.

Register for the Event

May 2026 – Community Of Practice: Small Yet Mighty L&D Teams – Buy, Build, or Borrow: A Practical Approach to Creating and Using Training Videos

January 4, 2026 by Trew Landis

May 7, 2026

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM – In-Person @ ModernWell: 2909 S. Wayzata Blvd. Minneapolis, MN 55405

This event is limited to 28 participants

Video has become one of the most powerful tools for L&D professional. But not every training goal requires the same video solution. In this practical, real-world session, Todd Vaske of Agile Video helps Learning & Development professionals cut through the hype and make smarter decisions about when and how to use video for training.

Participants will explore why video works and how to determine whether buying, building, or borrowing video content is the right approach for your organization.

The session goes beyond theory and dives into planning and execution. Attendees will learn what to consider before hitting “record.”

Expect to learn practical and best practices including:

Planning
Lighting
Location Selection
Audio

Throughout the presentation, real video examples will illustrate key points, helping participants see the impact of choices made at each stage of the process.

This session is ideal for L&D leaders, instructional designers, trainers, and anyone responsible for creating or managing training content who wants to use video more strategically and effectively.

Meet our Presenter:

Agile Video has been around in various forms since before the first iPhone. It starts with our producer and owner, Todd Vaske.

When he’s not writing, project managing, or on a shoot, you’ll find him cheering on the Twins, sitting by a campfire telling stories (hmm, that’s how he got into this business), listening to Van Halen or any other loud 80s or 90s rock band, grilling anything and everything on his trusty Weber grill, or pretending to be a pinball wizard.

You can see, he doesn’t take life too seriously.

But Agile Video is more than just one person. It’s a team of the top videographers, editors, animators, producers, directors and other creatives in the Twin Cities and beyond.

Training videos don’t have to be boring. Agile video creates videos that not only educate but also entertain.

Todd Vaske of Agile Video has produced training videos for a wide range of clients like Dairy Queen, Sub-Zero, Harley-Davidson, Sika, Arkray Medical, Hologic, Blue Ethos, and many other small and large companies.

The name Agile means we can scale up or scale down depending on the needs of your video. We bring in the best video production talent to fit your project needs.

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

Long-Term Construction Alert: ModernWell

Significant MnDOT construction on I-394 and I-94 is ongoing through late fall 2026. Please allow extra travel time, especially during afternoon rush hours.

Major Impacts Through Mid-Summer 2026

Penn Avenue Bridge: Closed through November 2026. Use North Wayzata Blvd. or Theodore Wirth Pkwy as a detour.
Westbound I-394: Reduced to two lanes between downtown Minneapolis and Hwy 100.
Ramp Closures: The following ramps are closed through mid-summer:
- Westbound I-394 to/from Penn Ave.
- Eastbound I-94 to westbound I-394.
- Lyndale Ave to westbound I-394.

Upcoming Summer/Fall 2026 Shift

Starting in mid-summer, the construction focus will shift:

Eastbound I-394: Will be reduced to two lanes between Hwy 100 and downtown through the fall.
Penn Ave. Ramps: The eastbound I-394 ramps to/from Penn Ave. will close from mid-summer through late fall.

Register for the Event