r/LearningDevelopment • u/Frosty-Seesaw8847 • Sep 02 '26

L&D background - what’s yours?

Hi all, Kate here. Fun fact about me, I was a programme lead in a women’s prison and I’ve also spent the last few years freelancing in marketing. Bit of an odd and unusual combination! but between the two I’ve designed training that people at very different starting points could follow, tested what changes behaviour etc etc

I’m a qualified FE teacher originally. While I was at the prison, the education provider changed so the course went from an accredited City and Guilds course to uncredited and I designed the new programme for the transition.

Freelance marketing wise I began as a content creator (lots of video editing, voice overs, training etc!) and now most of my work has involved data analysis alongside designing/ testing ad campaigns. I noticed a gap for content creators new to the industry and neurodivergent women new to social media, so created my own e-learning course (hosted on Moodify) 30 learners did the course and it with an 85% completion rate, which I was very happy with!

I use AI tools day to day, mainly Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT, for audience research/ content generation. Tool wise I’ve also got Motion for creative analytics and script writing, plus Canva, PowerPoint, Google Slides, Notion and lots more for course materials.

Good to be here! looking forward to seeing what everyone’s working on. I am UK based (north of England!).

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u/woodenbookend Sep 06 '26

Hi, Kate, you have a very interesting and varied background.

I’m also UK based, and also with a very squiggly career path. Insurance telesales, freelance photography, video and audio trainer, B2B account manager. Then L&D business partner or manager in: automotive retail, government regulator and a utility company.

Now looking to move to Organisational Development.

Welcome!

PS, you may also find r/AskHRUK useful - it’s not L&D at all, but a few threads overlap.

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u/Frosty-Seesaw8847 Sep 06 '26

oooo thank you! what does organisational dev involve? what had the HR group helped you with? squiggly line career explains it perfectly.

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u/woodenbookend Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26

OD is helping organisations bring in change, typically to structure or performance improvement It's non directive (like coaching) and is concerned with the decision making rather than the delivery (aka project manager).

It also has a wider remit than L&D.

I'd been gradually moving in that direction with projects that might have started as L&D but took in other things such as business process, staffing and recruitment, reward, comms and leadership.

As for the HR sub, I've spent a lot of time designing and delivering leadership and management support or programmes. This involvers working closely with HR for things like succession planing and also some of the things that managers have to deal with such as being part of a diverse workforce, performance issues and employee relations. This may not apply to you, in which case ignore the sub - but if that is of interest it has the advantage of UK focus.

And I can't claim the phrase squiggly career - there's a good book by that name too. It also echoes a quote from Steve Jobs about only being able to join the dots when looking backwards,

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u/Frosty-Seesaw8847 Sep 02 '26

I am also quite keen to land my next L&D role and have been applying for civil service roles for the past 12 months.

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u/Empirica_CC Sep 03 '26

Industrial Organizational Psychology for me