Teamwork Sandbox ™

How do teams stay connected and engaged during seasons of change? In this episode, Yolanda speaks with Fred Miller, an experienced consultant in organizational development and author of Safe Enough to Soar. Together, they explore what it takes for leaders to build trust, create psychological safety, and foster a workplace where everyone feels seen and heard.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Why interaction safety strengthens collaboration and innovation

• What it means to unleash agency rather than simply empower employees

• How leaders can show transparency, listen deeply, and model the change they want to see

• Why every role matters and how recognition shapes team culture

• Lessons Fred has learned from decades of consulting with companies like Apple and Oracle

If you’re leading through uncertainty or supporting teams during change, this episode offers practical insight and fresh perspective.

The future of work includes learning how to effectively manage hybrid teams, leading multi-generational employees and competing with other organizations for top talent. In this episode, I sit down with executive coach and consultant, Yanika Daniels to talk about best practices in leading teams, talent management, talent development, and recruitment.

About Our Special Guest: Yanika S. Daniels is an accomplished Executive Coach and Consultant with over 20 years of expertise in leadership development, talent management, and organizational transformation. Her career spans corporate giants like Dell Computers and IBM, where she honed her skills in engineering, project, and change management. Transitioning to the social impact sector, Yanika led talent strategies and leadership training at Fulton County Schools and Teach For America, coaching executives to drive strategic growth and impact. As the founder of Daniels Solutions, she has delivered over 5,000 coaching hours, placed top talent in nonprofits, and trained leadership teams nationwide. Yanika holds engineering and management degrees from Vanderbilt University and MIT, along with a master’s in education leadership from The Broad Residency. Certified as a coach and speaker, she empowers organizations to cultivate effective leaders and achieve transformative results.

In this episode of Teamwork Sandbox, we dive into the evolving role of AI in the workplace with Jeff, an educator and AI researcher whose journey began with GPT-3. Jeff unpacks how leaders, team managers and anyone in the workplace can benefit from understanding AI's disruptive potential in both education and industry. He stresses the importance of mastering large language models, such as ChatGPT and Claude, and offers guidance on prompt engineering and data security—key skills that leaders can bring to their teams to encourage responsible AI integration.

Jeff also sheds light on the surprising fact that over half of today's workforce uses AI without openly discussing it, presenting leaders with an opportunity to foster transparency and ethical usage through clear policies and training. Whether you're setting up AI processes or easing your team’s anxiety around emerging tech, this episode equips leaders with actionable strategies to harness AI effectively and responsibly.

About Jeff Foulkes: Jeff Foulkes is an educator and consultant in the Los Angeles area. He teaches Education, ESL, and Linguistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His research is focused on how generative AI is changing the writing-based classroom. His consulting is focused around supporting educators to responsibly incorporate generative AI into their practice.

It seems like everywhere you look, people are talking about artificial intelligence or AI. Kirk Perry has been teaching people how to implement innovation and technology in infrastructures for the last 20 years. Kirk has worked in advertising, marketing, and product development.

How might we learn to leverage AI as a tool or resource? If you use Siri or Alexa, you've already been using generative AI. In this episode, I talk with Kirk Perry about generative artificial intelligence (AI) and the role that it is currently having in the world of work, and how it's especially impacted those in the creative industry. In this episode, I talk with Kirk Perry about his recent work that has led him to embark upon his new venture, Make Believe LLC. Want to learn how to use AI as a resource or tool? Kirk is creating an online course that helps others learn to leverage AI. His favorite AI is Midjourney.

This Fall, Kevin has been a keynote speaker at the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Symposium and LTEN Learning Executive Series, a DevLearn panelist and more, and now, he's gracing us with his presence in this episode! He's a "Learning Detective" and he solves measurement mysteries. But, he's not only measuring impact, he's making an impact (in our global community)!

Do you need to measure the impact of learning? He has 25+ years of experience doing this work! Check out this episode that talks about measuring the impact of learning, and making an impact in the community.

About Kevin M. Yates:

Right now, do you feel like your best self, personally and professionally? What's holding you back from becoming your best self yet? What are the barriers to being well? In this episode, we celebrate World Mental Health Day by bringing on a corporate wellness expert and therapist who will discuss some of her personal and professional tips for achieving success. Whether you are a senior leader, individual contributor or people manager, your role requires that you be "well". Let's not just survive, but thrive! We chat about becoming more aware of your needs, redefining your identity and how you view success as well as your expectations of yourself, and others.

In this episode, I talk with career development expert and learning leader, Kason Morris. He's been in the learning field for over 15 years now, and is passionate about helping fellow learning professionals to drive their own career development journey. We talk about practical ways to get in the driver's seat and find career success.

About Kason Morris:

Kason [kay-sawn] Morris is a seasoned culture-driven, Learning, Talent, Organizational Development (L&OD) strategist and executor with an entrepreneurial spirit. He spends his days partnering with executives to make sure talent has the skills, support and drive they need to be the best in the industry - currently helping transform a hyper-growth SMB SaaS company with a $75MM ARR into an agile learning organization. He takes a practical approach to help companies optimize leadership and employee talent with relevant skills, using the latest in science & design, technology, storytelling and pure common sense to enable people at every career and business level to improve performance and drive business results. Over the past fifteen years, he has successfully trained tens of thousands and executed learning solutions for fortune 500 global organizations, including Accenture.

In this episode, Jonathan Carbin and I sit down to discuss the news and information that we absorb, and how it influences our thinking about learning and development, and our overall, worldview. Do you feel like you're in a L&D (learning and development) bubble? Are you only taking in news and information about learning and development? How do we expand our thinking, so that we cultivate diversity of thought in our personal and professional lives? Do you feel like it's a bit "noisy" on social media and in the news, with content coming at you from all different places? How do we cut through the noise to focus on what's really important in our field, in business, and in our world? 

In this fun episode, I sit down with one of my favorite people to talk to, Shannon Tipton, owner of Learning Rebels. She's headed to ATD ICE 2021 and I'm thrilled to be able to give you, the listener, a sneak peek from her upcoming conference session, "Drips, Bots and Blogs". If you're wondering what that unique title is all about, be sure to press that play button! This episode is power-packed with gems on how to move from traditional to non-traditional training.

About Shannon Tipton and Learning Rebels: 

This episode is for anybody out there who is a leader. A leader is simply anyone who influences people, anyone who has followers. We're going to mix things up and give you a fresh, new way to rethink leadership. We're talking about the importance of love in leadership. You might be saying, "Huh, love in leadership?" That's right, love is needed in our workplaces, now more than ever! We're in the midst of a global pandemic, racial injustice, natural disasters all over the world, and we all need folk to show a bit more love not just at home, but in our workplaces. Let's start inward with self-leadership, then we'll look outward, to people leadership.

I'm a former elementary teacher. Sara Stevick, founder of TEACHING: A Path to Learning and Development is a former high school teacher. The community that she founded provides FREE support to teachers, to help them transition into learning and development (L&D). In this podcast episode, we talk about how teachers can successfully transition into learning and development. Sara provides practical advice based on her personal and professional experience making the leap! This episode is also for folk who are not teachers, but are looking for tips on how to transition into the field.

A Bit About Sara Stevick:

After 9 years of teaching high school, Sara left the classroom in 2020 and landed an amazing job doing corporate training. She leads a volunteer-based team of learning and development professionals who provide free, ongoing services to transitioning teachers. She has a generous heart and is passionate about helping others to successfully transition into learning and development.

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Britt Andreatta about the Hybrid Workplace report that she recently released with Voodle. Our conversation leads us to talk about how we've had to navigate workplace changes due to the pandemic and now, how we successfully return to the workplace.

Join me in celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! But, let's remember that we should consider ways to support Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC's) year-round, not just during certain months, or on holidays. What's your role in supporting BIPOC's? What's your organization's role? Join me as I welcome Cynthia Pong, an award-winning career strategist, author, and coach to discuss practical ways that you and your organization can make this a conscious, year-round effort. Let's go beyond just requiring folk to attend DEI or Unconscious Bias training! No more check the box training!

About Cynthia:

Wow, y'all, it's been a year and a half since the pandemic started! Many of us have been facilitating virtual training throughout the pandemic, the work has not slowed down, if anything, it's ramped up as we looked to find creative, meaningful and effective ways to continue to deliver best in class learning experiences. In this episode of the L&D Lounge, I sit down with virtual training expert, Cindy Huggett to discuss virtual training burnout. Join us as she gives us tips, tools and strategies for preventing and managing virtual training burnout for you, and your learners

About Cindy:

What is virtual production? How do you know when you should have a virtual producer? Should you be your own virtual producer if you're a learning team of one? In this episode, I sit down with Kassy LaBorie to answer these questions and chat about her new book, "Producing Virtual Trainings, Meetings and Webinars" that focuses solely on virtual production. Whether you choose to be your own virtual producer, or to hire one to support you, this conversation will leave you with lots to think about and work on. 

About Our Kassy:

Kassy LaBorie is an live online facilitator, producer, instructional designer, and virtual training platform expert. She is also a frequent and popular speaker at ATD, Training Magazine and other learning and development conferences and events. In her role as director of virtual training services for Dale Carnegie Training, Kassy leads the development of the live online training events focusing on program design, trainer and producer development, and overall participant experience. Prior to joining Dale Carnegie, Kassy held positions as a master trainer for InSync Training, where she delivered online programs using the many platforms available, and as a senior trainer at WebEx helping to build the WebEx University. She started her training career as a software trainer for which allowed her to develop the necessary technical agility to effortlessly run online events.

What does it look like to be a Black or Brown learning and development professional in this day and age? Why do so few of us have a platform or voice in this field? In this episode, I reconnect with an old, familiar face, Deadra Welcome. I met Deadra while serving as the Director of Events with the Association for Talent Development's (ATD) Maryland chapter. Deadra is now on the board of directors with ATD Metro Washington D.C., where I'm currently a member.  

About Deadra:

Deadra Welcome is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Concerning Learning, LLC. She brings over 25 years of experience as a learning strategis and business partner to help you and your organization achieve higher levels of performance and reach your desired learning goals. Deadra spent 27 years working in the federal government as a training program manager. She is a Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD) and has many other credentials behind her name. 

Based in the United Kingdom, the award-winning, John Hinchliffe joins me in our virtual lounge to talk about how he's used this devastating pandemic to uplift learning and development professionals. Have you ever wondered why you take to binge watching Netflix shows so much? Perhaps, it's the user experience, and what can learning and development professionals do to create meaningful and engaging, binge-worthy learning experiences?

About John:

Nominated for a COVID Champion Learning Award for his efforts during the pandemic, silver Learning Professional of the Year awardee by the Learning and Performance Institute and former board director of the eLearning network, John's currently the Head of Talent at Jam Pan.

In this episode, Yolanda Fraction, M.Ed. talks with Nicole Papaioannou, PhD about the importance of a strong needs analysis, reflects on overcoming virtual training hurdles at the beginning of the pandemic and discusses the importance of partnering with your internal and external client to create an engaging learning product. 

About Nicole: 

Nicole Papaioannou, PhD is an instructional designer and performance-focused, training consultant. Her entire professional career has been focused on empowering others to achieve their personal and professional goals. Over 250,000 users have taken courses that she designed or were designed under her leadership. Her work has been recognized by Brandon Hall and Chief Learning Officer Magazine. 

What do your learners need right now? What do "you" need right now? Is it human connection in this new normal, and mostly virtual environment? This episode is all about tapping into the power of human connection. Dr. Marisa Franco, Ph.D. will help you to think about ways to navigate this virtual environment, though you may be physically apart, you don't have to be socially apart. You'll also be able to use these "golden nuggets" to help your learners stay connected, while building successful professional relationships in the virtual space.

About Marisa:

Ever meet someone for the first time and feel like you've known them all your life? Yep! That's how I felt when I met Kassy LaBorie. She's a virtual training expert for many reasons. With over 20 years of experience designing, developing and delivering virtual training, she has a wealth of knowledge in her toolbox that she's happy to share with me, her new L&D (learning and development) friend and with all of you! Come join us as we sit on our virtual couch and talk about what's on our minds. 

About Kassy:

Kassy LaBorie is an live online facilitator, producer, instructional designer, and virtual training platform expert. She is also a frequent and popular speaker at ATD, Training Magazine and other learning and development conferences and events. In her role as director of virtual training services for Dale Carnegie Training, Kassy leads the development of the live online training events focusing on program design, trainer and producer development, and overall participant experience. Prior to joining Dale Carnegie, Kassy held positions as a master trainer for InSync Training, where she delivered online programs using the many platforms available, and as a senior trainer at WebEx helping to build the WebEx University. She started her training career as a software trainer for which allowed her to develop the necessary technical agility to effortlessly run online events.