The world of learning and development (L&D) is always changing, but nowhere is that more evident than in the energy sector. With new technology emerging every day, governments investing in clean energy, and a new generation entering the workforce, training professionals have a lot on their plates. Anne Campbell, founder of Campbell Training Solutions, is someone who has embraced these challenges head-on. Her journey into the field of L&D is a reminder that sometimes the best career paths are the unexpected ones.

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Welcome back to learning matters. I'm Doug Wolter. It's your host. And today we have on Anne Campbell, founder of Campbell training solutions on the show to discuss her journey in L and D as well as how she keeps up with the ever changing energy industry and much, much more. Let's get to the interview. I'd like to start with how you found yourself in a career in learning and development. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question, Doug. I,

When I was little, I wanted to be an archeologist playing in the dirt and discovering things and total national geographic style. And, and then I went to college and didn't pick it. I picked human performance and PR and got out. And then I had to find a job and it was really hard to find a job. And I was swimming at a pool and doing laps and taking a break.

chatting with the person swimming in the lane next to me and come to find out she was a university professor. And they had just started a new program in their department. was occupational training management, OTM. And she said, and we have a graduate assistantship that we need to fill. And why don't you apply? Wow. Talk about happenstance. I know. And that chance conversation really changed my whole trajectory of my life.

And I thought, what, training? why, what is training? Like in managing training, like I never heard of children departments in companies and found out I really liked the coursework. And then I got this internship with the department of energy site and found out I really liked working in the seal. One that I ever thought I would, and honestly, I thought, well, it's free education. Why not just take it you're going to get a degree and you don't have to do anything with it.

Really here I was. so I got lucky again with the jobs that I got right out of grad school was working for the department of energy, developing training courses for the Addy model, the analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation, literally developing 40 hour courses in each one of those topics.

each one of those phases. then we would go to different DRE sites and then do train the trainer courses so that they could teach their guys. And up to then there was really no standardized training, official training for those sites, which were really kind of important. so that just, right. So by circumstance, I

I got the opportunity to work with some really smart people who provided such a solid foundation in training methodology, but then had just catapulted me for the rest of my career. And I just feel lucky that that was the opportunity and the first job I landed out of college in it. And interestingly enough, my boss was just this fabulous, brilliant man, Lauren Peterson. And 20 years later, we got

Invited to the same meeting. It was, you know, consolidating on training. that's awesome. The DOE complex and, and I laughed. I saw him I'm like, I'm still in training. And he said, me too, because you just don't know where you quit or some, your life is going to take you. And initially I thought I'm never going to use it. And 30 years later, this is still where I am. So happy to be here. Love the training world.

That's awesome. And what led you to start, Campbell training solutions? Well, you have to working in several different industries and, and having some really good experience under my bell. I was working for a safety train, the belt wind training company that created off the shelf training courses, which is great model, right? Build it once, sell it many times. And when we were,

Definitely. And, but he was kind of templated and it was all due to the regulations and safety training is a great field to be into because it's regulatory driven and you have to, if you have, you know, over 150 employees or whatever it is, you have to provide certain training depending on your hazards. they, the modern shifted to where they didn't do custom and my passion is custom. I love working with a client. love

finding out their needs. love fitting and finding solutions to their needs. And so when it, when they shipped it, I just said, Hey, I love to do my passion is when custom, I'm going to keep going along that path. And, the CEO said, great. So that's where Campbell training solutions, LLC was founded. so here we are.

Awesome. And can you tell our audience a little bit about what solutions that you guys offer? You know, we are a content development company like TTC. We're small.

into development. Okay, we need a video produced, we need an animation created, we need photography done. Like, you don't need an animator 40 hours a week. least I don't. mean, big companies might, but we don't. Right, right. So we, we all have our own business, and we just help each other out, which is great. And they're so talented. And they come up with the most creative solutions. And we just, we do good work.

And so we offer engaging in training and we all, we all like to push the envelope and we all like to think what I want to say to this. And you know, that's our limit test. And if it's training, that's really super boring. That's a great question. Yeah. And this little budget will, how can we push the envelope enough to really offer a good learning experience for that learner and make it engaging? then, know, it's all about retention.

how can we help them remember this later on? Exactly. And I mean, that's really just the whole importance of the job is to set them up for success so they can move on, be quick in their learning and, and then execution of it so that they're not left sitting there, you know, two weeks into their actual new career being like, my gosh, I don't even remember what we talked about because I was just reading.

content after content after content and can't quite exactly remember what the answer for this situation is. yeah, having something that really impacts them and allows them to easily remember it later is imperative. So how did you decide to focus? I mean, obviously you started kind of in the department of energy, but how did you decide to focus on the energy sector for learning solutions and what unique challenges

or maybe opportunities does that industry present you? Yeah, I think that's a lot to do with geography, a lot to do with mentors. I have amazing mentors and, yeah, Andrew Skiboli, it's been a great mentor. He's the CEO of ELB. he said, I don't even know if I should say this. He said, you know what, I'm a dozen. no worries.

that you know, diamond doesn't, there are a lot of content developers out there. Brutal. no. So that's going to make you unique. Sometimes the harshest truth can, can, can help. And sometimes it can be crushing or maybe a little bit of both. Yeah. I needed to hear that. And I said, well, you know, I started with energy. Most of my client, our clients are with energy. Why don't I specialize in energy? And he said, great idea. Like that's.

That's the logical solution. So, that was good insight. I just really, Sherlock is sheer geographical location, have had the opportunity to do amazing work with just really great companies and work with amazing teams. And we just got, this is exciting, a Brandon Howell Award for one of the projects we're working on.

an energy provider. awesome. Congratulations. and you know, yesterday we presented in front of their board, the ward and told them a little bit about it and why it was just a great thing for the train for this whole training curriculum that we created for the company was when he sitcoms and all into each of the episodes and really establishing influencers that then can go into the community and teach the community.

And the nation at large, the real issues with energy and energy literacy is going down. Like just basic energy, really questions like where does it come from? How is it produced? Who's your energy provider? Yeah. Yeah. The over generation aren't, don't know. So it's been really good. And one thing I said is, you know, these, these guys are, they partnered with Campbell training solutions, but we have become friends. And I think that that's what I love about

you know, working with people is that relationship. It's all about relationship. It's what it all comes down to. And so, that's been super agree a hundred percent. And what type of trends are you seeing as far as the way energy companies are approaching learning and development?

that we have recently pumped in $400 billion into the energy sector through the couple new laws like the Infrastructure Recovery Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. just last week, they just sent out a notice saying, you know, we want to invest $100 million into workforce

training and development for the nuclear industry. They'll said, we're going to the next five years, we're going to need 375,000 jobs to replace the coal that's the plants that they're shutting down and the nuclear plants that they're bringing on. literally, they're investing a lot of funds right now into, into the energy training world. And, and

It's exciting to be part of it. We just got a hydrogen grant to work on responding to incidences involving hydrogen EV cars. if there's a- Yeah, yeah. You cannot respond to a fire of a hydrogen fuel and self car the same way you can to an EV car. Because- Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. has this, you know, some health for you. So we have this 10,000 psi tank where they keep their hydrogen in the car. And it has a PRD, a pressure release valve. And if the car's on fire, that's going to release and it's going to let out the oxygen, the hydrogen, and it's going to make a lot of noise. And if you put water on it, because hydrogen is a cryogenic, you will freeze that.

pressure release valve and it won't release the hydrogen and you know, bad stuff could happen. So just look at those like that. So we get to develop training courses that help first responders when they come upon a sea of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. So those kinds of things are exciting to me. Wow. That sounds awesome. Yeah, no, that sounds super exciting and always changing. So that's very exciting. It seems like a lot of focus for TTC has been on

financial sector and stuff like that, as well as, as well as like a little bit of manufacturing and things. While those regulations do move fairly quickly, it's not quite the same thing as the energy sector going from, okay, we're using this one type of energy creating device, and then we're now going to completely change it to a whole different process. So I think that's

very exciting and I would imagine it keeps you on your toes. And just locally we have a Nutilli Paraplan in our backyard and they're going to announce next week a new SMR, a small ladular reactor, which uses totally different technology. And the whole cool thing about SMRs is that they are small and they are mobile. Like you can set one up.

in a semi truck can bring everything to your really remote location and set it up. And because of high voltage transmission lines, you know, that you see the huge towers that are bringing the high voltage transmission lines to you, they take 20 years to develop because they have to pass through so many lands and to get all that approval. so bringing in an SMR, small modular reactor to remote facilities is a great option because it bypasses

the transmission lines and you get the energy to the source, closer to the source that's needed. And so that technology is coming on and especially with the data centers and with AI and the increase of need for electricity, because those, you know, what is the, there's just some crazy like our need for energy is going to increase by like 30 % in the next five years because of the data crunching with AI. So the local Oracle,

just signed up for three SMRs because they're creating these data centers in more remote locations. And they only need power, a lot of power. So energy solutions are coming online soon. They're also using VR inside the core of nuclear reactors. And when they have downtime, every two years or so, they need to refuel. And they come in with this one team, this one

person I met on a trade show and he comes in with his lasers and he sets it all up and he 3D maps the whole core of the reactor so that on their next refueling, the operators and the main networkers can literally put on the VR headset and virtually perform the task that they need to do. he said that, I mean, his case is one time he came in, he mapped the whole core of the reactor and then

They were going to perform some capital improvements and they were performing it. And then they realized that there was a metal bar totally in the way of where they needed to work. had that, had they not met and figured out and performed practice performing that task, they would have been down for like another week trying to figure out now, how are we going to remove that? That being that we need.

to remove to get this equipment in. he said that every day nuclear power plant is down, it is a million dollars. that had been a huge, know, mapping it was a huge cost savings to that company. VR is another new trend that we're seeing in the energy sector as well. Just practicing before they go into those high risk environments. It definitely seems a lot safer way to practice.

So with all the rapid technology shifts within the industry, how are you able to keep the learning solutions just as relevant and up to date as the new technologies? Well, that's a question.

I think that continually learning and for instance, I go to, I probably attend three or four webinars a week that are offered free for different companies coming on board, selling their training wares. And we'll probably do as well. Like there's always something new that I'm getting, you know, hit up for, and I like to attend them because I want to know.

What's on the latest? And I encourage my team to attend them so that they can know what the latest and greatest is out there. Why am I not always subscribed to it? But just that knowledge of this is what's happening, especially with AI. It's amazing how cool it is that these companies are jumping on it, are producing a product, are getting it out there, and we get to demo it and play around with it.

really exciting. So I guess it's, it's a time when the webinars, it's definitely very cool. speaking of AI a little bit, I'd love to hear your thoughts on utilizing AI for learning and development. would imagine it's a little difficult to utilize some portions of AI due to the restrictions of working with the department of energy occasionally.

you know, we, we have subject matter experts that we use and I do encourage them, you know, sometimes it's easier to critique than create. And it's often hard to start with that blank slate. So I say, you know, go to chat, GBT, enter in some content that you want to, you know, that, that we want to know about and,

They use it as a jumping off point sometimes and our instructional designers use it that way too. But then the subject matter expert really is the end all be all. Cause I have that knowledge. I kind of want to switch gears just a little bit to the younger generation, Gen Z. So with the growing amount of Gen Z folks that are coming into

the workforce, how do you design learning solutions that are geared a little bit more towards them?

Never not had technology, world wide web, the internet of things. They don't know the world like we know without a cell phone or a handheld device or the internet. They really are a unique generation. If we don't understand their motivations and their interests and things that drive them or that they're passionate about, I think we are going to be in trouble.

And the literature is out there. like, here's the millennials and here's Gen Zers and there is a gap. So how to bridge that gap is really, is really important for us to understand if we want to be successful as learning and development professionals. And they grew up and you know, if they have a question, where do they go? Tick-tock YouTube, right to YouTube or Google and Google. Right. And, and they don't.

And they don't think to ask somebody or to call somebody like we used to, like we used to have to do. So that's their, that's their learning in it. And I think the more we can align ourselves with the way they learn and we use their platforms, the more successful we'll be. And they said that their attention spans like eight seconds and millennials are supposed to be 12, but I do agree. I disagree with that a little bit.

Really, they will listen to two to three hour podcasts, while they're tasking, but still, they want to learn about something, they will. And they have hyper focus. So I think that we can take that into consideration as well. And things that motivate them are a little different. They want to really align with a brand that aligns with their worldview. And the closer

the brand is definitely, I mean, you probably have heard it too. Business owners complain like I cannot keep my employees. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And well, some of the is they can, they have that luxury of, of job hopping and they really want that work life balance. And the more we can offer that to them, you know, the, longer they'll stay probably, but how do we train them? I think really is yet to be discovered. And

and yet to be tried and tested. I think the closer we can align to how they natively learn, the more successful we'll Micro lessons. Yeah, I would say that I think you're, you're a hundred percent correct on that. Yeah. I think, I think, like you said, the more that we, align them to a learning process that is much more similar to how they learn, there's the, there's less pain points, less frustrations, those types of things, because

it just makes more sense in their mind to be like, like you said, go to tick tock for this. go to YouTube, go to Google instead of having to slosh their way through a, extended amount of point and click type, type of learning that we're so used to. I would love to, yeah, I,

I would love to hear maybe some resources that have been influential to your path as an L and D professional and books and those types of things. Well, I definitely love podcasts probably because of the multitasking aspect. And I think learning matters is amazing. I have totally enjoyed your podcast. So thank you, Doug. Yes. another shucks.

I am sort of critical on L &D books. And it was when I feel like the design thinking is really innovative to applying it to the learning and development. And you would think, well, that's common sense, right? That just makes sense. But to first put that learner first, and our step one is empathize.

And as you empathize, you really get to know who you're designing and developing that learning for. And if you don't get that upfront, you probably won't hit the mark and be successful in that training. And unless you understand what motivates the learner, what hobbies they do outside of work, develop personas, that you're literally sitting in

the seed of them taking it and wondering, okay, how do I create that lean forward moment right at the beginning to capture their attention? And what's the next question they're gonna be wondering as I'm presenting this? And really, really developing from their focus of interest is so important. And when we say, you know, do interviews, really gain perspective of that.

learner. then you're going to develop and then prototype, test it out, see how it works. And then iterate and then you're going to finally get to a really good product. the projects where the client was willing to invest that time upfront has produced such a better product in the end. it has been.

such an exciting process along the way because they are invested and they want this to be successful at the onset and to work with companies that are interested in that is just really exciting. That's where we get, we get excited as a team to know that, you know, a solid analysis has been done. Yeah. Well, you speaking with you today and it has been wonderful and

You have a lot of passion towards the learner, towards the industry as its own. How do you keep that fire burning? Well, to be honest, I think it waxes and wanes just with everybody. to keep it exciting, you have to challenge yourself. Like you have to say, what is it that I'm passionate about? And really right now I am passionate about

solving that question of how do Gen Z-ers learn? And I have dove into the research right now and I'm starting to write a book on how to train Gen Z-ers. And it's not like I have the answers now, but my curiosity is there. And I'm not a Gen Z-er. So it's a matter of really talking to a lot of Gen Z-ers and figuring out how they like to learn and what motivates them and.

what they're passionate about. And it's so different than I think what we think it is. They want community. They want to be listened and heard. They want to be respected. And if we get to provide that and infuse that into our training, we're going to be much more successful. And an interesting comment, they said they don't like the term training. They like the term conversation. They want conversations. don't want to... Training, I think, has a connotation of being...

let's train you to do your job better to make us more money. And that doesn't motivate them at all. But hey, let's have a conversation about why this is important and why this job is important and why you respect me and, and, and help me, you know, so I can respect you and what community are we going to start forming and, know, give me a reason to buy into this company. And I'm all, I'm all there. So I think if we can,

understand where they're coming from.

That will help us. So back to your question of what keeps the passion. think it's, it's asking those hard questions. What's coming around the corner. How can I be prepared and what do I need to do? And what questions do I need to ask to help me be prepared for that? Last question before I get you out of here today, why does learning matter to you? Ooh, that's a good one, dog. Why does learning matter to me? You know,

think that that quest for knowledge and that human improvement and continuous improvement models, I think there's something to it and our ability to inspire others to want to do their job better and to perform, to operate that piece of equipment better or to understand the corporate culture better or to be a better

citizen in our society and learning especially in the energy literacy field is important because back to probably digging in the dirt and wanting to make discoveries, Corianne wants to be a good steward and help communities.

grow and be successful and help individuals grow and be successful and provide a good, clean environment for our next generation. That was just, that was lovely. And I think with that bit of wonderful insight, we can close today's podcast. So thank you so much, Anne, for jumping on the podcast with us. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

Well, thank you, Doug, for this opportunity. I appreciate it. It's been great talking with you. Thanks for listening. As always, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter, The Buzz, to keep up with all things L and D. See you next time.