In this episode of Learning Matters, host Doug Wooldridge sits down with Nikki Ward, a learning and development leader with a rich background in HR and talent strategy. After 15 years at Athena Health, Nikki shares how her journey from HR business partner to head of L&D shaped her people-first approach to training.

We dive into:

✅ How to align learning programs with business goals

✅ Using design thinking to simplify and scale L&D

✅ Creating learner personas for better engagement

✅ Trends like AI, learning analytics, and microlearning

✅ How to prove ROI and make training actually relevant

Plus, Nikki shares powerful advice on career growth, taking on new challenges, and how leaders can better support their teams’ development.

📌 Connect with Nikki Ward on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkiwardhr/

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Welcome back to Learning Matters. I'm Doug Wooldridge, your host, and today I am thrilled to be speaking with our guest who's built her career from an entry-level HR business partner to leading learning and development and talent management. Having recently embarked on a new chapter after 15 years with Athena Health, she's with us today as a seasoned HR professional offering her personal viewpoints on talent learning and development.

What makes her perspective so valuable is her unique journey from being an HRBP supporting nearly every non-tech division for 12 years to leading L &D and talent management. This transition gave her an insider's view on how to connect learning initiatives directly to business needs. She knows firsthand what managers and leaders are asking for because she used to be the person they called. Nikki Ward, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much Doug, I really appreciate it and happy to be here.

Awesome. As always, we'll be discussing the latest and greatest developments in the world of L &D. I'd like to start off with this, Nikki. What strategy do you think matters most in learning and development today?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things I like to focus on is keeping it simple, keeping it relevant, and focused on growth. And so I find kind of those bigger strategies or guiding principles are really helpful as you embark on any initiative or program within learning and development.

Definitely what how do you take such a complex idea as like doing a massive training initiative and and take it down to to just the basic levels is there a process to it is it something that you're discussing with the the leadership team? Where's the starting point?

Yeah, no, it's a great question. And this is actually something I learned and why I think rotations, right, if you're looking to grow in your career are so important. So like you said, I spent 12 years as an HR business partner, growing my career there and leading actually the HR business partner team. And I was encouraged by my leaders and mentors to say, hey, make a change here, right? And in that change, I learned some of these new skill set.

one being design thinking. And I don't pretend to be an expert in it, I'm still learning.

But good design principles help you focus on these strategies, right? And so I always say like let's start off first and know your audience Know who you're you're bringing these programs to and who will be the consumers right a line on on basic guiding principles and outcomes and Everyone should be aligned on that right? So if you you know, I learned pretty quickly and you learn by by, you know making mistakes and failing first

Mm-hmm.

is to say, what I think people need is this, and then building something within your team and bringing it out there. But if you start off in aligning on your guiding principles and outcomes, and part of those guiding principles, with my teams I've always said, keeping it simple is oftentimes one of them, right? Keeping it relevant and focused on growth are generally that strategy and become our guiding principles. And then you can always come back to them. So part of good design is just having constant iteration.

It's bringing it to people, testing things out, getting that feedback, incorporating that feedback. And coming back to your design principles, is it simple? Are we getting ahead of ourselves? We got so excited about this, it just became overly complicated. So that's how we do it, is just by following some good design.

Yeah.

thinking and good design practices and just constantly coming back to it, right? Because it can get unwieldy pretty quickly if you're not careful. So just really putting in that time in the beginning to say, hey, what are we really trying to achieve those outcomes? What are our guiding principles? And if it is truly that simplicity and relevance, making sure you're sticking to that. And even when you're asking for feedback, you can share those things with folks so they know what you're trying to.

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

achieve and if you've aligned on them in the beginning everyone kind of comes back back to that so that's how we stay on track with that strategy of keeping it simple keeping it relevant and focusing on growth and development yeah

I think that's awesome. Has that always been the case or is there like an aha moment that led you to this?

Yeah, so my, like I said, was this, my personal growth and development was in this rotation to say, okay, I've experienced being an HR business partner, let's try a different center of excellence, right? And while in an HR business partner role, you're always, you know.

a partner for the learning teams and the talent teams or maybe depending on the size of company you might be doing that. When we were a smaller company we did that. It all fell under the HR business partner. So it was more in a ha moment when I transitioned over to that center of excellence. And really had to step back and think about...

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

what is an effective way to deliver a program? And it was, again, through that design thinking. Now, the other thing is it was my experience as an HR business partner. So when I talk about simplicity and relevance, part of the thing that I had experienced when working side by side with the business and partnering directly with business leaders and the executives and people leaders.

Mm-hmm.

is that people are busy, right? And something that I've told my teams in the past, and it's not to devalue what L &D teams can bring, because I think they can bring amazing things to the company, right, and to individuals and to the learners. But I always say nobody cares.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right. Everyone has their their day job. Right. And people's lives are complex and complicated. Right. We all have stuff going on that no one knows about. There's also really you know if you're running your business well people have full plates. Right. And so you have to make it relevant to what they're doing. You have to make it consumable and you kind of have to go you know. So I kind of had this mindset coming in again because of the perspective I was bringing as a business partner and really

Ha ha.

Mm-hmm.

of sitting with the business to say, hey, nobody cares. So how can we make it simple? And then how can we make it relevant? How can we meet them where they're at and bring folks things that will help them achieve the things they want to achieve? So I just think it's so important to get to where you want to go. Just kind of creating an awesome, cool learning program, whatever it might be, is great. But if people don't consume it, you've kind of lost the relevance.

the magic there. Yeah.

Definitely. I want to put a pin on that because I want to go back to that just a little bit here in a few, in a future question, but I also kind of want to get your perspective on how you transition from the HR world into learning and development and what that was like for you making the transition and why you made the transition in the first place.

Mmm.

Sure. So I actually had a few leaders and mentors recommended to me. And I will tell you, and it was recommended to me, I think, a year or two before I actually made the change. And I was really hesitant. And I like to call this out because when we think about learning and development, 70 % of what you learn is on the job.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it's so important for us if we are really looking to learn and grow to make those changes in our jobs. And maybe that's just taking on a new role, taking on a completely new role. Maybe it's just taking on a new challenge within role. So it can look many different ways.

But I talk about saying no because many times our instinct is to stay in what's comfortable, even if it's hard, to stay in what's comfortable. And it's really important to take on those new challenges. again, in my work as an HR business partner, I know having worked with managers that oftentimes managers hold onto their people tightly, right? They hold onto their good people. And so they're not always kind of encouraging that movement in a way that a person will take advantage.

yeah.

Ha ha ha ha ha

individuals innately we want to remain in that comfort zone, right? And are initially opposed can be opposed to change. you know, oftentimes, you know, you don't have two parties who are both open and encouraging that. So I was very lucky that I had some advocates, some great leaders, some great mentors who recommended it. And I had someone who had some great advice. They said, Nikki, if you're going to try something new, you know, you've been at this company for a long time.

Why don't you try it here? Right? Why don't you try a new recipe here? Why don't you you take that leap? And so I did take that advice and it was amazing advice and it was one of the best things that I've done in my career and it made me wish I'd done it sooner. And so that's what I'd recommend to folks is you know again remember that 70 % of the learning is on the job and what are the new challenges? How can you make yourself you know continue to feel what I call like uncomfortable and challenged and in your day to day? And so it was the recommendation again of those folks.

that caused me to take the leap and I was very lucky that that opportunity was open, right? So I would say it takes a lot of hard work, know, and a little bit of luck and timing. And so those two things were in place.

And I made that move. And what it did for me and what I wish for others as well is it gave you a different perspective, but it also gave me new skills. So I was an HR VP for 12 years. I shifted over and now I have the perspective of a center of excellence who is trying to build things and collaborate then with HR business partners and the business. And so it gave me a great perspective. And I think it can help, especially, I was recommending it can be helpful having that

Mm-hmm.

perspective on teams, right? It's helpful, you know, I've really benefited from working with L &D professionals who are lifelong L &D professionals and it's also great to mix it up with folks who haven't been in L &D forever, right? So again, you're bringing that different perspective and it really helps make the...

Sure.

the best type of programs when you bring that in. So yeah, so that's a little bit about what brought me there was a little bit of a push and me kind of saying, all right, let's do this and moving over to and into the new opportunity.

So you really don't have fear of taking on new challenges. I love that.

You

I would say, though I did say no, right? that was my, initially I said no. I don't know if I wanna move and I love this HR business partner role and it's really a part of me and I love having these stakeholders. So I was also someone who had that fear of change initially. And I'm glad that I didn't let that continue and that I did opt in. So it was a lot of great people pushing me and I need to remember that moving forward and will remember that and try to pass that on to others.

Definitely. So let's go back a little bit to the learners themselves. So I know folks are always looking to showcase ROI to the organization when it comes to L &D. can be a big investment and not just time but money. How do you showcase the importance to the learners? Like you mentioned that they already have a ton of work on their plate. So

Yes.

Yeah.

you know, not like how do we make learning fun, but more so what the learners are going to get out of all the time that they spend going through the training.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Yeah, and I think there's a few different things. One, you have to be really focused on what the ROI is for the business. And a lot of times we focus on one great model is the Kirkpatrick model. You can focus on the reaction, so an immediate survey, hey, how did you like the training? Immediately after it ends, did people learn? So you can kind of do a delayed survey, what the behavior is. We like focusing.

Mm-hmm.

One great way to do that is through the sentiment or engagement survey. So you can say, interesting. If I've been training on feedback, how did a manager

Mm-hmm.

How did the manager's direct reports rate them on feedback in the engagement survey? Did that increase? So you can kind look at the sentiment. And that's kind of the, did they adopt those behaviors and put them into place? And then the results, right? Are we seeing better results in the company? Are we seeing, in the case of say, good feedback, are we seeing decreased turnover? Are we seeing better performance on teams? Increased performance, is the company performing better? So you can tie all those things together.

you know the Kropatler model is great because it really is that multi-part approach. Then you also mentioned the ROI for individuals, right? Like why is this going to be important to you and why should you even do it?

And I think, you know, there's a few things I think about that. And one of the things that we focused on in the past was even personas, right? You can't, if you take this kind of one size fits all approach, I think you miss a lot of people. And so, you know, again, to scale, you can't focus if it's a, you know, 10,000 person company, you can't focus on 10,000 different learners.

Mm-hmm.

But you can break that up into different personas. So you can focus on the newer manager, maybe someone who's been enrolled for the first year. Maybe you can look at engagement results, and you can focus on folks that maybe didn't get the best score and feedback, or whatever scores might relate to manager performance. And so you can focus on those folks. And it's less to say, hey, you're not doing a great job at this, but more to say, hey, how can we help? Hey, how can we bring this to you?

and help support and develop you here. So I think there's those two ROIs.

Yeah, I definitely. And I think the goals for most organizations is to keep retention up because you spend so much time and energy bringing this person into the company and you want to make sure that you can help lift them up in times of where they're struggling or things like that. So thank you for giving us that perspective. think it's also like you said, such a it's so much different when there's like

Yeah.

Yeah.

10,000 employees to a company as opposed to let's say like a thousand. You really have to group people up and make sure that with that you're raising all boats like with the tides. What top trends are you most excited for in our industry right now?

Yeah. Sure.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Yeah, so I would say there's a few, right? I mean, it's hard to think about trends without thinking about AI. So I think AI is really exciting. It's a very fast growing technology. Some of the other trends that I was really, you know, have been excited about is just this focus on learning analytics.

huh.

And there are some platforms that I've used that produce amazing analytics and it helps us prove and showcase that ROI. Folks that took these trainings or folks that opted into some of these micro learnings or courses ultimately performed better at the company. And so you can tie that in and showcase that. So I think the focus on learning analytics is really, important. And I've used vendors in the past that really weren't focused

focusing on that or not in a really easy way. And we ultimately ended up not using them, right? Because even though if it was a great platform, it was really hard if they couldn't give us those analytics. And then another one is micro learning.

Mm-hmm.

It is not, I think it fits a need. It certainly isn't, again, one size fits all. I don't think you can watch a one minute video like a TikTok style learning video and learn everything, but it is another great mode. I think you have to have kind of a multi-mode approach to learning. So it's another one that I think is great and really kind of starts fitting that one size fits one. So it gives people multiple options. And I think the optionality

when you think about what you're producing is really important if you really want to meet people where they're at and if you really want to make it relevant for different learning styles.

Yeah, I just think like with TikTok or YouTube or things like that, the way that we learn today is so much different than 10 years ago even. so having that as a part of your learning strategy just allows folks to immediately dig into something that is just super relevant to what they're working on right now in their day to day life. And also just something that they're used to. So, you know, if I need to

Mm-hmm.

Totally.

Yeah. Yeah.

like fix the toilet. I'm going to go to YouTube and watch like a two and a half minute video and go, okay, now I know.

Yeah.

Absolutely. Now, and the thing that we were really working on and that I've encouraged my teams to do as well is, you know, think about something that the whole company really needs to focus on. So if you're thinking about, say, end of year performance reviews.

Mm-hmm.

you everyone needs to think about feedback, right? You're writing, maybe you're doing a self-review, you're really reflecting. Maybe you're writing the review for your direct report. So it's a big time to do reflection and then also think about feedback and think about performance feedback. And so if you're bringing trainings, right, if you're helping to support those initiatives, then you should be, it really should be that like integrated approach, right? Again, people, you have to meet people where they're at. And so what I loved doing was giving kind of three different options. And so when we would, you know, send out

Mm-hmm.

notices we might say or send out communication we might say do you have two minutes? Watch this right and provide a you two-minute micro learning, you know have ten minutes Maybe read this maybe an applicable article and if you have 30 minutes or more here Here's a training that we're providing for all people leaders say so it's still scalable, right? We're still reaching a lot of people We have different options that folks can really opt into Depending on what on what their learning stuff

He

Mm-hmm.

And we'd also include, say, like a book, right? So if you're really interested on this, hey, dive in. And what you'd find is, newer managers who are really wanting to get into it and say reading a book was their mode of.

learning the thing that they connected with the best, great. I can tell you, it is tough for me to sit down and read a book start to finish that's nonfiction related to work. What I love to do is either listen to that book or listen to a podcast or that sort of thing. So I always tell people, that's okay. There's another way to do it, but find a style that fits for you. And that's what I like to serve up is a simplistic amount of optionality, right? Three options, here you go.

Mm-hmm.

Again, fit with that, it's simple and then it can be relevant to the audience. Yeah.

I love that because I think it's just so much more impactful giving people options because like you said, everyone learns differently and they have different approaches to it. giving those options from the onset just means that it is much, much more likely for them to take one of those options and run with it. So we've talked about some of the exciting trends on the opposite side of that.

Absolutely.

What problems do you feel we kind of need to solve for as a learning community?

Yeah. So I think it's just that. think it's, you know, businesses are ultimately, they're focused on their bottom line as they should be, right? Looking to scale, oftentimes doing more with less, more and more coming on people's plates. And so there's two things.

Mm-hmm.

It's one, helping folks make time for learning and development, for their own personal learning and development, because it's so important for the business. If folks keep learning and growing, they'll only get better at their roles and their jobs. They can move on to bigger things within the company and ultimately help the company succeed and help the bottom line.

And then I think as a part of that, it's helping or getting leaders to buy into this idea and signaling the importance of growth. And I think signaling what is important to a leader is crucial. You can do that in many ways. So a leader signaling the importance of growth is at an all hands, maybe listing the folks who took advantage of some of the trainings and saying, hey,

Mm-hmm.

I saw that Doug completed this training or completed a few micro learnings or whatever it be. It could be any of the modes. And again, that's why the analytics are really important. And this is really important. We really value learning here. And we hope you all take.

Mm-hmm.

two to 30 minutes this week for your own personal growth and development. And so that consistent or maybe rewarding, right? You could even do something like having, you know, the CEO or some of the executive team recognize maybe through your recognition platform, you know, in a town hall, in a company meeting, whatever it may be, and just recognize folks for their accomplishments who are doing it, right? And so again, in doing that, you're signaling

this is what's important. Now have to be careful you can't signal everything's important but in doing that it can really help and most...

Sure.

executives won't disagree with you that learning and development for their folks is important, right? In some capacity. So I think that's really important is one, just making sure that leaders are seeing the importance in signaling it, right? Not just thinking it, but actually signaling it to their folks in some way.

Mm-hmm.

and then also getting folks to take the time for it. And that's where I think the multimode approach is so important. People need to have options, different ways to consume, and in different amounts of time.

100 % agree. Off the top of your head, was there like a great challenge that you've had to overcome with your previous team or like a big learning initiative that you were putting forth in the past and how did you overcome that?

Yeah, so I think one.

important thing to overcome and make sure you're really focusing on, again, is that collaboration and the integrative approach. And what I mean by that is, again, it can get really easy. And this is what I mentioned earlier. My own learning curve is to say, OK, take the L &D team or talent team and together in a bubble as these amazing L &D professionals create something. And when you're done, serve it out into the world, into the company.

That's not effective, right? So sometimes we can have this mindset like we don't want to bother people or you know, know, people are busy so we'll create this thing and send it out. And I think the miss there is the iteration, the collaboration, the understanding the requirements, right? And from many different people. So for example, if you're creating a people leader training, right? Understand from say the HR business partners who are partnering directly with the business.

you

What do you think people leaders need? Maybe if you have folks in employee relations that are dealing with some of those sticky scenarios, say, what do you think people leaders need? Take a look at some of the data, the engagement surveys, reach out to the business, to leaders.

and ask them, hey, people leaders, what do you think you need? And maybe to the leadership team, what do you think your people leaders need? And when you start getting those requirements, great, you can create something, but then you need to keep iterating. So it's that constant collaboration, and it's more than you think, and it's earlier than you think. So what I noticed is I delivered something, maybe a program, and I realized, I didn't really pull folks in, right? So then the next time I pull

folks in, but I still didn't pull them in early enough. the programs that came out the best was when stakeholders were pulled in really early and felt like they were part of the process. And what happened there is natural change management and communication. People knew about it, but you didn't have to come up with this huge, robust rollout plan because you had enough champions already made through the iteration process that it felt really seamless. People could

start talking about it before it came out and start teasing it for you. it really is that focus on collaboration and true integration not only within all of HR, but within the business.

I think that's incredibly powerful because it really brings everyone together to, like you said, champion it and feel like they're a part of the change as well. And it's not just something that's being, I hate to say forced on them, but it's not something that's coming out of the blue. It's something that they can all be excited for. And then once it gets done, they're like, we did this. And I think that's incredibly powerful. Before we transition into some you questions,

Absolutely. Yeah.

Sure.

Let's go back to the AI thing. So what are your thoughts on the big transition of AI being used, seemingly every day in our lives and in organizations lives?

Nikki Ward (28:09.263)

Yeah, I mean AI is incredible.

Right. As one of the fastest growing technologies, when you look at the adoption of like a hundred million users, I think it was the fastest, you know, ahead of cell phones and all of these other technologies we've experienced over the years. And so my mindset around AI is it doesn't do everything, but we better stay ahead of the curve. We better understand what it can do. Right. And for it to be that, that strategic advantage and especially for HR teams. Right.

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

So as we think about, you know, as I've thought about my teams in the past, I've wanted my folks to be really fluent in AI and using it on a regular basis, but also being smart about it. And some of the best, I actually took a LinkedIn Learning Micro Learning on AI. LinkedIn Learning is a great source and shout out. Really, really love their platform. They bring great analytics.

Mm-hmm.

nice. Shout out to LinkedIn Learning.

One of the pieces of advice that this training gave is said, they said, think of AI as a really good intern. So I wouldn't ask an intern to create a deck that I'm going to provide to the CEO or the chief people officer to report out. But I could have the intern get me started on an outline. I could have them get me started on a deck and then edit it from there. So I think there's a lot of use cases. One use case is it

yeah.

Sure. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

make you much more efficient, it can get you started, right? But you have to make sure that you applying your own thoughts there. Sometimes references are wrong or some of the data. You just have to make sure you're really inspecting it. But then there's other use cases as well. I think it's really important. I like to go to the employees, the consumer base, the clients, whatever you may want to call them.

Mm-hmm.

you know, make sure that they know what they can.

use AI for, right? So I remember talking to some, you employees and saying, you know, you can use, you can use GBT to write reviews, right? Now you need to make sure things are secure. And so your company might have their own GBT system, which I think is really important, you know, make sure it's aligned with the, with the IT department. But it's a great way to get started. You know, something I did is I, tons of emails and notes and all of these things on feedback with my direct reports and I put them all into

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

and said, hey, can you help start off a review here? And then added my own thoughts and all of that. So was based off past conversations, based off, again, notes I had and all of that. So was really, really helpful and I added in 360 feedback. So it was just a great way to, again, start you off. The other thing that you can do is you can really, as a learning and development team, you can really leverage it as a tool to help, say,

people leaders or learners and serve up prompts. This is something that I really encourage is serve up prompts to individuals of what they could use it for. So maybe it's for people leaders, hey, this could be a great prompt you use when having a difficult conversation, when you're preparing for a difficult conversation. Or when you're looking to write a follow-up email for a difficult conversation, here's a prompt you can use. Or when you're having a career conversation.

Mm-hmm.

You know, here's a prompt I would use to come up with your initial questions, right? And really kind of fit that one size fits one, know, treat kind of each individual with based on the knowledge you already know. So I think supporting folks in the organization to say, hey, these are really helpful ways to do it, help them remain fluent. Again, we don't know where it's going to go, but my gut is that AI is only going to expand and grow. And so I think it's so, so important to remain fluent.

yeah.

figure out the ways to help yourself be smarter and more efficient and also be careful of ways to not over leverage, right? And so there's that sweet spot, but I found it incredibly helpful. I still use it and there's some great programs, you know, that are popping up. I there's a lot of options out there. One great one is called Admired Leadership. They have a leadership AI coach called Alex and I highly, highly recommend it. I've leveraged it quite a bit.

But it's really good, it's based in all of their research and leadership behavior. So it's just a little bit different than say a CHAP GBT, still built on the large language models, but really, really great. Yeah, no. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Very cool, I'm not familiar with that one, but I will definitely take a look into it.

Awesome. Well, now I'd like to get into some more personal things. Tell me about you, Nikki. Take me back to little Nikki days. What led you here to where you're at today?

Great.

You

Yeah. So, you know, interesting. I didn't know that I, you know, wanted to be in HR. I don't think I maybe knew what even HR was, you know, growing up. There's, you know, so many different professions you can look into. But what was really interesting is I went to UMass Amherst and I took classes that I just thought were interesting, right? I didn't know what to major in. I was a really good student, was a high achiever, but...

Yeah.

The classes that I ended up taking were things like small group communication, conflict mediation. And in my first role, I was in sales, but quickly became a people leader and really loved that part of the role. Some sticky things like having difficult conversations or helping people with their careers, helping to motivate them in a sales role. So I found those things really, really interesting.

And that made my way to my first role, which was an HR business partner, an entry-level HR VP role. So I got to kind of put those things into place. yeah, I really wasn't sure. was kind of like, just take, I really led with what am I interested in, kind of what gets me going there. And it was a lot of that.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

interesting kind of gnarly people stuff, right? And I learned that early on in my career as a people leader. was again, really lucky to be a people leader so early on in my career to notice these things. there was an HR business partner at the company at the time, at this company called EF Education. And this HR business partner was amazing. And she helped me out with some gnarly scenarios. And I remember looking at her thinking, you know, I want to be Sherry when I grow up. And so that was my goal, right? That was my aspiration.

And I always think it's important. was actually having a conversation recently with someone and I said who you know when you look up at your leadership team who Who do you want to be who do want to be in a few years? Right and I think that's important to do like pick the person at the company or you know a mentor You know and what are you striving for? What's your what's your aspiration? And and it can be a good guidepost right and I think when even when managers are talking to their employees and creating individuals

development plans. It's a great way to talk about it because you saying things like you know what do you want to do next, what's your next role, what do you want to be when you grow up. They're hard things to kind of imagine but who are some folks you really admire? What kind of role you know who would you what do you think what role might you want to be in or what person's role might you want to take in the next few years if you could. And yeah and that was kind of my guiding light and I still still talk to her you know and she was really an impactful person just by doing what she did best.

Yeah.

That's incredible advice.

Definitely. with advice in mind, if you could go back and have a chat with you just coming out of college, what advice would you share with yourself? So not advice for the younger generation, but just you, Nikki.

Yeah, so what advice would I give myself? So.

I would probably say you're doing great, right? Honestly, you know, when you're willing to work hard, when you're willing to work.

with people and you're easy to work with. You don't have to be agreeable. That doesn't mean being agreeable, when you're a team player, and again, you're willing to put in that hard work, good things will come. take on those new challenges. You're doing great and don't stress out so much about the next move. I remember even...

Yeah.

You

graduating high school and trying to choose a college and thinking, man, this decision is the biggest decision of my life. And really just the amount of pressure and anxiety I had over it was just overwhelming, right? But just to say, you're doing great. You're making those right decisions. Make the best decision with the information you have and just keep it moving. So yeah, that's what I'd say. You're doing great.

I love that. Well, lastly, before I get you out of here today, where can people connect with you?

Yeah, so people can connect with me on LinkedIn. name is Nikki Ward. I'm pretty easy to find there. And I love connecting with folks in the industry. Something that I did, this was actually during COVID, is I connected with the person that I wanted to be when I grew up, Sherry. I connected with her and many other.

folks in HR that I really respected and enjoyed working with and created kind of a think tank where we met pretty often. Actually during COVID it was really helpful. So I love talking to folks. If you reach out and meet LinkedIn, I'd love to find time to chat whether we know each other or don't. Love making those new connections.

Awesome.

All right, well, we will definitely have the link to your LinkedIn in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your incredible insight, Nikki. I really appreciate it.

Great.

Yeah, Doug, this has been great. I really appreciate you having me.

If you learned something new or had a laugh, share the show with someone you know. Thanks again. This has been another episode of Learning Matters. As always, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and do not hesitate to reach out to us here at TTC Innovations to see how we can assist you with all of your training needs. See you next time.