ATD Announces 2025 BEST Winners

During its 2025 International Conference & EXPO in Washington, DC, the Association for Talent Development recognized organizations and individuals for their excellence and contributions across the talent development field.

Of the 57 BEST Award winners, seven earned Best of the BEST recognition, meaning they have won a BEST Award 10 or more times. TELUS—ATD’s first-ever Best of the BEST winner—has won the award for 20 straight years.

Although ATD announced the companies in contention earlier in the year, the ranking remains a mystery until the annual conference. Here are the top 10:

1. Panda Restaurant Group, Rosemead, California

2. Apple Federal Credit Union, Fairfax, Virginia

3. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, Columbus, Ohio

4. Chailease Holding Company Limited, Taipei

5. Kuveyt Türk, Istanbul, Turkey

6. Indian Oil Corporation Limited, New Delhi, India

7. Suzlon Energy Limited, Pune, India

8. Busey, Champaign, Illinois

9. Fisher Investments, Plano, Texas

10. Amazon India Operations, Bengaluru, India

The awards ceremony also honored recipients of the Advancing Talent Development Awards:

• One to Watch Award: Stephen Scheib, Merck & Co.

• Dissertation Award:

  Amber S. Barger, Columbia University Teachers College

• Talent Development Outstanding Professional Award:

  Myra Roldan, UnDesto AI (external practitioner) and author of

  Unlocking the Power of AI; and Tim Wu, Chailease Holding Company Limited (internal practitioner)

• Talent Development Champion Award:

  Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, Wharton professor, and author

• Talent Development Thought Leader Award:

  Whitney Johnson, an award-winning author and frequent article contributor to the Harvard Business Review

  and MIT Sloan Management Review

• TD for Good Award: SprintRay

• ATD Certification Institute Champion Award: Saudi Aramco

In addition, ATD recognized the 2025 Excellence in Practice (EIP) Award winners for results they achieved using practices and solutions from across the scope of talent development. The association presented awards to 39 companies for a total of 49 winning practices.

The practice categories are career development, change management, coaching and mentoring, customer service training, diversity and inclusion, integrated talent management, leadership/management development, learning and development, learning technologies, managing the learning function, onboarding, performance improvement/performance consulting, and sales enablement.

To read about the companies and awardees in full, see the official BEST Award ranking, and to gain insights into how you might implement their award-winning practices, read the special edition of TD magazine, publishing in June.

Read more about ATD25 at conferencedaily.td.org.