All Leaders Conference in Washington D.C. last week

I attended the All Leaders Conference last week in D.C. since I am on the board with the local Association for Talent Development (ATD) - formerly ASTD, Rocky Mountain Chapter. I've attended now three years and I always learn so many things about leading a chapter as a board member. That really is the purpose of the conference is for chapter leaders to share with each other what works and what hasn't worked so well.

I presented last year and this year on the virtual study group I co-host with two other chapters on the east coast. The study group is for the Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) which is a very rigorous two part exam. I earned my CPLP in 2014 and my study group is what was so instrumental in me passing the exams. That's why I want to give back to my community.

I realized that there is a real need all over the U.S. so we opened our study group to be national so we cover four time zones now. Additionally, for our current cohort, we have had an international participant from India and we worked out how she could join us, though not synchronously due to the time difference.

We continue to grow and now the participants who have completed both exams successfully are coming back to us and asking to help us and give back to the community. This has been the plan all along, that is, to create a sustainable study group. Often study groups fizzle after some time due to the amount of time and commitment required. Now with others joining us to help carry the load, I'm moving into more of a planning role and others are doing the execution by co-hosting the weekly study sessions.

This journey has been a very rewarding one in which I am able to give back to the Regis community. For example, I draw from what I learned daily in a much broader way now that I have the knowledge and skills learned through my CPLP journey. As an Instructional Designer, I have a deep knowledge for that aspect of the ATD Competency Model. However, now I have a broader knowledge base which covers all of the 10 competencies. For more information, please visit https://www.td.org/Certification/Competency-Model.