ATD23 News has conducted impromptu interviews with ATD23 attendees in San Diego. In this installment, hear from Sikelelwa Mbuyi, learning and development manager at Momentum Insure.
On her role: Basically, during the whole planning [phase] and the strategy [implementation], the team that I work with—the facilitators, the designers, administrators—looks after all our learning objectives. [We put] together our plan and strategy and how we’re going to close learning gaps in the organization.
On this being her first trip to ATD’s International Conference & EXPO: [It’s been] awesome. Look, it can be overwhelming, right? Because there’s so much. And because my role also sometimes overlaps into the leadership development side, and that’s the OD component, so there are some sessions that run concurrently.
There are some sessions that I have to prioritize. OK, let’s prioritize the L&D stuff that I want to go to, the OD stuff as well. […] So, then I select two sessions, then three sessions. And then, before the sessions, I decide. OK, which one do you think will make the greatest impact for you? But it’s been really, really awesome.
I think the orientation session, also, that we had this morning really helped us understand the different creative learning parts. And to decide also if I want to follow them or rather structure my own process. That has been very, very helpful.
On learning about the conference: I learned about the conference years ago because I’ve been a learning professional for more than 14 years now. So, it’s been an aspiration of mine to actually attend one of these.
And so finally, this year, I got an opportunity to. Someone mentioned something about, you know, COVID-19; how we’re not allowed to do things. And I think afterwards, we became aware. What are the things that I would love to do that I’ve been putting off? And so this was one of them. I said, “OK, I have to do it this year.” And fortunately, I was able to do that.
On what she’s looking forward to during the conference: I’m looking forward to hearing Adam [Grant]! I love him. As an OD leader, I think he’s very inspirational. I follow him and everything.
Strangely, when I registered for the conference, I actually hadn’t even checked out that [Grant] was going to be here. I didn’t know he was gonna speak! I just wanted to be at the conference. And when I realized that he was, I was like, “Oh, bonus for me! I’m definitely going!” So, that’s gonna be the highlight of this for me. Definitely seeing him and hearing from him in person. And I look forward to hearing the rest of the other people.
So far, it’s really, really been quite informative. Very, very helpful. Because when I decided to do this, I created my own personal blog just to give a debrief of every day. So when I go back later, I’ll definitely have a lot to report about from the [sessions] I managed to see today. So really, really, it’s been quite informative.
And the international attendees lunch was also very awesome. And I got to discover other, well, one other African. [laughs] When I saw the flag, I said, “Ahhh, hello!” And she was like, “Ahhh!” We don’t know each other, but the flag meant we knew each other. That was actually quite awesome to really bump into someone else here from where I’m from [in South Africa].
