Staying Ahead of Change: How the 4As Elevates Advertising Agencies

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The advertising agency business is rapidly changing, making learning and development more essential than ever. In this episode of Powered by Learning, Sean McGlade, Senior Vice President of Talent and Learning Solutions at the 4As, shares how the association provides agencies of all sizes with innovative learning experiences that keep their business leaders, media strategists and technical and creative teams ahead of the competition.

 

4As Sean McGlade explains how his organization equips member agencies to upskill talent, embrace AI, and build future-ready teams. Here are some of his key takeaways.

• Learning is a stabilizer during change. Communicating and investing in L&D helps employees feel supported and confident as industries evolve.
• AI is reshaping roles—and training must evolve too. The 4As is using AI to personalize on-demand learning and enhance creativity while keeping the human element central.
• Cohort and community learning strengthen culture. Bringing learners together fosters engagement, inclusion, and real-world application.
• Subscription models reduce barriers to professional development. The 4As new approach simplifies access to learning while meeting agencies where they are.
• Partnerships and curation amplify impact. A small but mighty L&D team at the 4As collaborates with subject-matter experts and members to deliver relevant, high-quality training at scale.
   

Learn more about the 4As

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Transcript:

Susan Cort: [00:00:00] As ad agencies navigate nonstop disruption, L&D can steady teams and help them stay ahead.

Sean McGlade: It is massively important, especially now that we have so much change happening, right, and communicating around learning and development. Actually, a really nice way to also make your people feel. Safe amidst all of the change, right?

It's acknowledging, hey, there's a lot of change that is taking place right now. The industry is being reshaped. People are really concerned about their jobs, their roles, and what that means, and saying that, Hey, we are invested in helping you not only keep pace with change, but stay ahead of change and evolve your work is really, really vital.

Susan Cort: That's Sean McGlade, Senior Vice President of Talent and Learning Solutions at the 4As, a nonprofit member organization providing leadership, community advocacy and guidance to the advertising industry. Sean explains how thoughtful [00:01:00] L&D can calm the chaos and push teams forward - next on Powered by Learning.

Announcer: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d’Vinci Interactive. d’Vinci's approach to learning is grounded in 30 years of innovation and expertise. We use proven strategies and leading technology to develop solutions that empower learners to improve quality and boost performance. Learn more@dvinci.com.

Susan Cort: Joining me now are d’Vinci, CEO Luke Kempski, and our guest, Sean McGlade, senior Vice President of Talent and Learning Solutions at the 4As. Welcome, Sean.

Luke Kempski: So great you could join us. Sean,

Sean McGlade: Thank you. I am really, really excited to be here with you today.

Susan Cort: Oh, Sean, we're glad you are with us as well. First of all, tell us a little bit about the 4As, and then share about your background and your role with the 4As currently.

Sean McGlade: Sure. The 4As is a member based trade association for the advertising industry. Uh, in fact, the [00:02:00] As in the 4As stands for the American Association of Advertising Agencies. Uh, and it's been around since 1917, which is quite some time. Um, despite that, our, our new CEO, Justin Thomas Copeland really likes to talk about us as 108-year-old startup, uh, because working in the um, media and strategy and creative industry, you've gotta be nimble and always changing. So we've been around for a while, but we haven't always been the same and we're gonna continue to evolve with the industry as well.

Susan Cort: That's a great mentality to have. Tell us about your background and role.

Sean McGlade: My own background is actually in education and in learning experience design.

Before I came to the 4As I spent a lot of time in academia, I was teaching college literature. Um, I transitioned from that into the corporate space, did a lot of corporate learning design, uh, in a number of different verticals. Would always go back into the education space. So I really [00:03:00] oscillated back and forth between different industries.

Um, I think with the kinda the consistent focus around how are you creating just really great and impactful learning experiences for people. And I think the biggest through line in some ways and when people hear that, oh, you are a college literature professor, that sounds fancy. Really what that means is I just spent a lot of time and love thinking about stories, um, across cultures, across formats and how they connect us and impact our behavior and our perspectives and outlooks and, and ways of communicating.

And that's not actually that different from the core of learning design, uh, and even the work done that's done in the advertising industry.

Susan Cort: I'm sure that's served you well in your current role. Tell us a little bit about what you do at the 4A's.

Sean McGlade: Yeah, it certainly has because the demands, uh, of working at a trade association with member agencies that really [00:04:00] run the gamut in terms of size, in terms of focus, in terms of capabilities, uh, is very, very broad.

And so having a background in which I've worked with people in a number of different industries, um. Students, even when I was teaching, who were majoring in art and architecture and engineering, and would all be together in the same room. You work with people who try to solve problems in really different ways, and you try to create experiences that bring them together so that they can do that effectively, and having a pretty broad basis for what that application looks like and that range of audience.

Is really, really helpful I think, in working with my team and partnering with all of our member agencies to really figure out what the different challenges are and the different ways that we wanna address them.

Luke Kempski: Uh, for sure. And I, like you mentioned that there's a broad range of agency types and, and then within each agency there's a number of different roles.

Talk a little bit about different roles, [00:05:00] roles in your member agencies and the different topics that you, uh, are creating learning experiences for, to teach, um, those different roles?

Sean McGlade: I'm happy to, and I will caveat it that. Of course with like everything else with ai right now, just as I talk about roles, everything is rapidly changing and evolving as well.

Um, but we do, so to start, I think with just the, the types of agencies and the breadth of agencies that we work with as well. Uh, it's everything from the large global holding companies that have numerous subsidiaries to the small, independent, as well. Um, that means that the personnel, the number of employees and the resources that their learning and development teams have really vary pretty widely.

As well in those cases. Um, so what we try to do is I always talk with my team about, you know, we can do anything, but we can't do everything. And we've really gotta choose our spots to help support our member agencies in the most effective ways [00:06:00] possible. Um, so the areas that we tend to focus in right now, of course we're doing a lot that's around ai.

Um, that's just really necessary. And that's everything from strategic business implementation and strategy at the top. So at the executive level, down through AI fundamentals and basics to make sure everyone is kind of speaking the language. And then within role-based or craft skills, working with everyone there on kind of what implementation of AI in workflows looks like.

Um, so that's just within the AI bucket itself, and that's, we're finding really cutting across all of the different levels. More broadly speaking, what we do is when it comes to job roles, we work a lot with account management or client business leadership teams. That's obviously a key part for agencies in terms of the relationships they have with clients.

It's really what drives their business in so many ways. Uh, we do work with strategists of course. We also do work with [00:07:00] creatives and then a lot of work on the media side. Uh, media is rapidly evolving and so that's everything from media strategy and planning to understanding the different channels and all of the other changes that are basically taking place when it comes to getting people kind of the right messages in the right places at the right time.

Luke Kempski: Yeah. And you mentioned, uh, learning experience design, uh, and in your background, and certainly it's what we do at d’Vinci. Talk a little about how you decide what learning experience design to match up kind of with different roles and different types of training that you're doing.

Sean McGlade: It's a great question and there's, there's never just one format necessarily. Uh, that is right. That's something I learned kind of early on in my instructional design career. Um, but what we do is take a lot of time first to think about the kind of thinking work that we're trying to help people. Go through. Is it creative? Is it experiential?

What, [00:08:00] what exactly are we trying to, uh, where are we trying to move the needle? What are the best ways, of course to do that. Um, I know in a previous podcast you had someone on talking about kind of action first, uh, training and that idea of kind of action mapping and really focusing on. The work that you want people to be able to do after the training and what those behaviors, what those actions look like, that really influences a lot of our design principles as well.

And we do a lot of work with the agencies to understand all of that. From there, we'll then kind of go into formats and when we're thinking about those formats, we take into consideration time that's available, uh, which. In any industry, no one has enough time. I have no one, never had anyone come to me and say, oh, we've got extra time for learning.

Can we stretch this out? Can we do more? Uh, they have heart for it, but they don't have the time for it. And so we look really closely at time constraints. And in the agency world, things move at an [00:09:00] extremely rapid pace. And so time there doesn't just mean the time of an event, of a particular training event.

It means how it gets, uh, followed up on afterwards, how it gets built into things like agency culture, if it can do that. Uh, it also means flexibility because people do get pulled into various fire drills at all the times too. So all of that factors in, in different ways to program design.

Uh, and those will be, I'm not gonna call them mitigating factors, but they're things we keep in mind when we're saying, Hey, what are the outcomes we need? What are the learning experiences that are gonna help us create those outcomes? And then what are those constraints that we're dealing with in terms of time, in terms of access, in terms of everything from time zones and locations and those, those kind of other considerations that you always want to keep in mind so that you can keep the learner centered.

And create those meaningful experiences, uh, but do it in a way where they can be really kind of present and active the whole time too.

Luke Kempski: And, and what formats are you and your team most involved in [00:10:00] right now?

Sean McGlade: Right now we do, when we do open enrollment programs, so when we have people kind of joining across a number of different agencies, those still tend to be held, uh, live virtual formats.

Uh, those are kind of the most common when we're doing work specific to agencies. The trend that we've noticed there is a lot of times those, they like to do in person, they like to do workshops, and they're really starting to build those training moments into kind of larger agency cultural moments or to kind of get people together because people are still distributed, right, and dispersed in a lot of different ways. A lot of them are kind of tying those learning events in person to kind of those larger, um, pushes for inclusion and to get everybody together basically on the part of the agency. Those are the two, um, most frequent formats.

We also, of course, create on demand learning, and right now what we're also doing is starting to build in. Utilizing [00:11:00] AI in a number of different ways, um, different ways that we can personalize elements of that on demand learning as well, because that's always, of course been the challenge, right? If it's on demand and it's produced, it's usually in a bit more of a broadcast format.

And so we've been playing with AI to also say, Hey, how can we keep this personalized and really. Help each individual get where they need to be.

Susan Cort: Sean, I know when our team has gone through training for, uh, with the 4As through our parent company, JPL, that whole sense of coming together as a community, that cohort-based learning, it really does make the learning more engaging and you do really build that sense of team through the learning.

Sean McGlade: Agreed. It's, it's an absolutely essential part. And we actually are about to put out a case study with one of our member agencies who went through a manager training program with us. The case study doesn't so much focus on our program, which we think was terrific. It's really about what they did after the program and around the program.

I think made the most [00:12:00] significant difference. Um, I think what's partly interesting about that is, and I'm not trying to give away too much before the case study actually comes out, and it will be available, uh, on the four a site as well for anyone to take a look at. They didn't fully plan for that kind of integration into the agency that they wound up getting.

It came about, uh, somewhat serendipitously, or we can say organically, um, just by the way that people engage with the material, the way that it kind of sparked their ideas, their thinking. The extent that since then they've really incorporated into their daily workflows, into their agency culture and really made it a kind of community-wide initiative across the agency, which when it comes to manager and leader training, that's huge 'cause you absolutely need that buy-in on all levels, right? Because it is ultimately all about the team.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, no doubt. And, um, you know, you mentioned how, how time is such a big factor inside agencies. They, you know, client [00:13:00] demands all kinds of different demands coming from different directions. How do you communicate to your member agencies, leaders and your member agencies about the importance, especially right now to prioritize learning and development, both for their culture and for their team members?

Sean McGlade: It is massively important, especially now that we have so much change happening, right, and communicating around learning and development. It's actually a really nice way to also make your people feel safe amidst all of the change, right? It's acknowledging, hey, there's a lot of change that is taking place right now.

The industry is being reshaped. People are really concerned about their jobs, their roles, and what that means, and saying that, Hey, we are invested in helping you not only keep pace with change, but stay ahead of change and evolve. Your work is really, really vital. We try to communicate that out to our members at the leadership level, right?

To CEOs that we speak to as well. [00:14:00] Uh, it's actually a big initiative now that, uh, I mentioned our new CEO, uh, Justin Thomas Copeland, who's come in and people, talent and upskilling is, is really at the core of what. We support and it's at the core of a lot of what the 4As is trying to drive across our member agencies as well.

Um, we do this through conferences that are focused on it through all of our committees, uh, through white papers, guidance that we put out as well just to really kind of hit home, uh, to drive change, to get the business results that you need, you have to put people at the center and supporting them through learning opportunities is the key way to do that right now.

Luke Kempski: Yeah. It's so great to hear that, uh, that you're encouraging your agencies to invest like that and that it's a way to connect employees with the change in a way that shows support as, you know, the employer of the talent to empower them to take the next level and to adapt. Really lead in, in the changes that are happening, how are the changes kind of impacting how you design [00:15:00] and develop learning experiences?

You, me, you mentioned, um, using AI to personalize. Talk a little more about that and anything else that you're doing too, to really connect the learning experiences with the learners.

Sean McGlade: Yeah, I think there's, there's kind of two, two sides to that that we try to balance, right, and there's not necessarily a, a tension between them, but it's always something to keep in mind.

There's what we can do with technology that really enables additional personalization and customization. Then there's the, the human element, right? That human touch that is so vital throughout it as well. Every time I talk to people about AI and training people on AI and upskilling, the aspect of kind of mindset and again, psychological safety and play that we all know is so critical to learning has to be in place and it's often in place in those conversations too. And so what we are doing is everything from sure custom GPTs, right [00:16:00] chatbots that are there as kind of personalized learning assistance to help you through courses. Um, and through content material like that. We we're incorporating those.

We, we use AI avatars. We're always really transparent about that, and we actually tend to use those also as kind of these metacognitive reflection moments too of, Hey, this was an AI avatar. Think about the impact it just had on you, right? As you are thinking about incorporating one, for instance, into your own work and your own workflow.

So we try to really use the technology, but also reflect on the technology. And then on the other side, balance those personal elements, those personal moments for connection. I think that's why there's so much of the, the live training still, whether it's virtual or uh, whether it's in person, that also just seems to be such a key element of what we're doing.

So we're playing with technology, but we're trying to keep people and their needs and the, the kind of empathy and perspective and ultimately the, the thinking frameworks behind all of this [00:17:00] at the center of everything that we do too.

Luke Kempski: Absolutely. It's the, it's both the same with, uh, marketing and communications, trying to, you know, use the technology, um, be more transparent about what play, you know, the most successful campaigns that are using AI are more out front with it. Not trying to like slip it in to save a budget, but more using it to empower a message and to, um, do something that might not have been possible otherwise.

Sean McGlade: It's vital in client conversations too, for agencies right, to be able to talk about. One, how they're training their people and upskilling their people, but also how the use of AI is, is enhancing the work that they're doing in their creativity, how it's making new things possible. But ultimately what the clients care about is how it's forging stronger connections with the audience.

So that's the other vital kind of skillset that comes into play that we're trying to work with agencies on. But I think that carries [00:18:00] throughout all levels of how we train and what we train on. That transparency around it in order to foster authentic connection is really, really pivotal. Um, right now, for the most part, fortunately, you kind of still can't quite slip AI by everybody.

Uh, and if you try to, they're gonna call you out on it and you're just gonna lose a lot of goodwill and, and credit with them.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, it's definitely the, the, the human and the, and the AI together, which make the, the learning experience or the other kind of experiential marketing approach or, or advertising approach.

That connection is ultimately which, what has the impact. I guess just step back for a minute, um, talk a little bit about your team and how you, uh, accomplish all that you need to accomplish to serve your members. I know we have a lot of, uh, audience members of Powered by Learning who are in training in associations where you have variety of members and a variety different types, and generally a slim [00:19:00] team.

So how, how do you accomplish that?

Sean McGlade: We are probably like many others. We are a small but mighty team, and so we try to leverage as many of the unique benefits of being a trade association as possible. Um, the, the roles across my team, just to kind of start with them and, and lay that out, uh, everyone has a background in.

Facilitation and training in some way. So no matter what their area of focus is, we do have some cross-functional skillset. That also means, hey, if somebody needs to hop in and, and, and pitch in in different ways in terms of events and production and interviews, facilitation, we always have a, a pretty nimble approach to that.

Um, that said, we have people who are really dedicated to learning experience design, uh, to specifically to facilitation and member engagement. Uh, we have a specific member engagement role that works kind of across the trade association to connect with members to make [00:20:00] sure that they know about the programs that we have, that they know about the opportunities, they know how to connect with us, uh, especially about kind of custom and, and bespoke needs that they may have, so that outreach and connection point.

Is really important too. And that, to be clear, is that's not just us. That's a person who's connecting in with our broader, um, member engagement team as well as with our Marcos and, and communications teams as well. So we really need to leverage those other aspects of the organization to truly reach out and get the, the information and messages and engagement across.

So that's a key part. We have someone else then, who's really focused on kind of the production of, of our events, of the logistics of that member experience, that learner experience coming in from, basically from registration to attendance and covers off on those details. Um, so that's, that's our team in a nutshell.

And of course, we're plugged into all of the, the other aspects of the forays. [00:21:00] Another part that's really vital for us is the way that we connect with. All of the various committees that the 4As runs and the teams that lead those committees, because that's what enables us to do a lot of listening and a lot of understanding and getting that intake of member needs of understanding where the challenges are across the industry and for specific types of agencies.

It's absolutely vital to us determining what and how we're going to be able to support. So the 4As has a number of committees and we will sometimes attend those committee meetings. We will always talk with the heads of those committees about what they're hearing, what they're seeing, what the needs are as well.

So being plugged in on that level from a, a listening and kind of a needs. Assessment and awareness standpoint is massive for us. One other part that I'll throw in is the forays does a fair amount of work with surveys broadly across the industry. Um, [00:22:00] we've actually just launched a survey, or sorry, we're just about to release.

A survey, um, that is all about, um, member and employee satisfaction and engagement across the industry. And this, the results from this are, I've seen a sneak peek of them. They're pretty fascinating, uh, in terms of what really makes people feel great about their work in the industry, uh, where there are shortcomings that the industry might wanna address, and then what it looks like to parse those things across.

Different levels. So whether we're thinking generational, if we're thinking about job roles, if we're thinking about agency type. Um, so we also do surveys like that that give us a snapshot and a perspective off which we can build some insights. And then the insights can lead to the trainings that we develop so that they're really focused on what those needs are.

Luke Kempski: Excellent. And are you using any partnerships? Um, are you getting learning solutions [00:23:00] from other sources outside of the 4As? Any kind of partnerships that you're doing to kind of help be able to create more from your small and mighty team? Hmm.

Sean McGlade: Absolutely. We cannot do this alone. And so our partnerships take a number of different forms.

We will bring in outside of the, the internal expertise across the, the broader forays. We will also bring in subject matter experts with rich industry experience sometimes to consult with us on program design. Sometimes they have programs that they've been working on thinking on that we collaborate.

With them, for them to then put together and that they may deliver as well. Um, we talk with third partners. Part of part of what we look to do and I think the service we provide to our members then is a fair amount of, of filtering and curating of the content that's out there 'cause there, there is so much and that is wonderful.

It's also overwhelming and being able to find quality that's [00:24:00] really specific to the industry and really helpful for those particular needs that we're finding is I think a big service that we can provide. So we work with a lot of different partners in a few different ways, ultimately to say, Hey, these are the needs, and how can we help to meet them and deliver against them.

Luke Kempski: No, that's great. I know, uh, when we've talked to other, uh, training leaders, learning leaders inside member, professional member associations, um, they're always kind of challenged with too, what's the right business model? You know, how do, do, is it just included in the membership fee? Do you charge per course?

Do you charge subscription models? Is it kind of all of the above? Talk a little bit about your approach and kind of how you arrived at that.

Sean McGlade: Yep. We have evolved that approach and we are continuing to evolve the approach. Um, what we've done most recently is launched a subscription model. And the reason we did that, I would love, I will just say this, first and foremost, [00:25:00] I would love for everything to be included in membership, for it to be really simple and really easy.

Uh. That's not always what works best financially for different members, just because of the impacts then that that can have on membership costs and, and things like that. So in the past, what the 4As has done is a bit of a balance, right? Tried to say, here's a, an amount of content that is included in membership, and then here's content that.

You have to pay additional for, because we've found that that gives members flexibility where it keeps that, that baseline low. And then if they have specific needs, they can invest there. Um, we've, we're trying to improve upon that though, and we've done that most recently with this subscription model, uh, that we've rolled out.

And with the subscription model, we did a lot of talking and listening with agencies before we put it together to understand what were the barriers and obstacles for them to enrolling people in programs. We've had really, really [00:26:00] great feedback about our programs across the board, and yet we've looked and talked to members and said, well, why aren't you sending more people?

What does that look like? You talk about these needs, we know you're struggling. What can we do to, to help with that? And we were a little surprised because what we found was the biggest obstacles. Well, the first of course is time and that that one was not a surprise. Uh, the other was budget, and then the other was process.

And on the budget side, again, that's probably not that surprising in that, once again, rarely does anyone say. I've got enough or too much money to invest into learning on behalf of my team. Right? We usually have to kind of fight for those dollars. Um, but the other part, the process was part of what surprised us.

We found that a lot of agencies, particularly the larger ones, have established processes for professional development that. They tend to put a lot of bureaucratic steps in between connecting the [00:27:00] people with the learning that they need. Uh, and this comes about often for really good reasons. They're trying to be fair and equitable with dollars to make sure that they're distributed equally, that everyone has an opportunity.

Um, but sometimes that comes through managers. Sometimes it's managed at a department level. Sometimes there are. There are other structures, particularly then within holding companies and larger groups too, that basically get in the way of the efficiency of like, oh, hey, here's something my person needs.

We just came out of, let's say, uh, our performance cycle. Or we've got somebody who's phenomenal, who I'm looking at to, to move up to the next level and I wanna support them in this way. And. It's not always easy for them to say, okay, here's the program for you. Go get it. And so we came up then and evolved this subscription model.

To remove those barriers in terms of, of basically price and process and time is the one of course that still remains. And so we work with the agencies in other ways in terms of that. [00:28:00]

Luke Kempski: And how's the subscription model? Is it being adopted?

Sean McGlade: It's been adopted really, really nicely. Uh, we just fin, we piloted it for six months.

We then did a, a full year subscription. Uh, we just finished getting in our. Surveys and feedback from all of our members who are member agencies who have been going through it. Uh, the engagement rates have been through the roof. The satisfaction is overwhelmingly positive. And what we're really doing now with those members is looking to say, great, how do we now evolve this model moving forward?

Both in terms of content, in terms of access, uh, in terms of scale and what that looks like. So that's something that we're actively doing right now. Really, really looking forward to kind of coming out with our subscription version 2.0 based on what we've been hearing from our members.

Luke Kempski: That's great. Uh, so, you know, to wrap us up, I was gonna ask about what's next.

So tell us a little bit about 2.0 and anything else that you have going on that you haven't talked about yet that, uh, is [00:29:00] kind of in the works, um, that you're able to give us a sneak preview about.

Sean McGlade: Yeah, happy to. Um, we have, let's see, in terms of the subscription 2.0, what we did with the first version of our subscription was really looked, and we called it the Agency Essentials subscription.

What we did was looked and said, what is the content that really is essential to agencies? Particularly to support some of the newer people to the industry and as they're coming in. And so we have a lot of content in there. Our, our programs and certifications around things like strategic and creative, thinking about just understanding the agency world and how agencies.

Make money, how the agency client relationship looks like. Um, agency communication. So really some of those foundational skills, essential skills, how to think about media and the evolving landscape. Um, we also include in that, uh, our, our manager training program because we know it's essential. That's really focused.[00:30:00]

That version for newer managers who are kind of shifting from being really, really great at their craft, to now having to be really, really great at people and leading people, uh, we know that's essential and we included other components as well to really help with that, those core needs. Now, what our focus is as we evolve is really helping practitioners.

To evolve their skill sets, particularly with all the changes due to AI and changing agency infrastructures and helping them get, not just kind of stay with the change, but get ahead of the curve wherever possible. Really help them think not just how they use AI to, to make their jobs. Better, um, or to make their jobs more efficient, but how they can use AI to evolve the jobs, the work, the output itself, and really elevate that as well.

So working with agencies to get ahead of that and, and coming up with content that's going to help, uh, that's all of what's in the works. [00:31:00] It's what we're looking to see, how much of that we can include also then in this subscription 2.0. So it just continues to reflect where agencies need to be, um, and how it fits in.

Then with the broader kind of 4As dues model and, and all of those other pieces, because we know with all the training that we create, we are, we're not operating in a silo, we're just kind of. Part of this much we're, we're one puzzle piece, right? And this much larger puzzle across the 4As in terms of all of the different changes and evolutions that are going on.

So that's kind of all stuff that's in the works. And one area that we are really closely looking into again, is, is kind of the further development of personalized learning through ai, which I think is essential not only for good learning experiences. Also because people's jobs are gonna be shifting and the skill sets that they need are gonna be shifting.

And those, those kind of standard career paths and frameworks off of which you normally can [00:32:00] hang training and have been able to kind of hang training frameworks for a while. Those are shifting too. And one of the things I'm just really curious about and that we're exploring is, it's almost like in, in colleges that allow you to design your own major.

Right, well, we're kind of like, Hey, what does it mean as you're designing kind of your own skill path and navigating through all of these different evolving technologies and changes and skills that you need now to, to kind of lead your agency into the next place. So that's something that we're really actively exploring and working with our technology teams and with a lot of partner member agencies around as well.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, that's so great. Um, it aligns perfectly with kinds of things that we need at JPL and at d’Vinci in terms of, you know, evolving roles. A lot more integration. We wanna be able to allow team members to apply their talents in different ways and to, um, evolve with all the changing technologies and delivery methods that are out there so that their skills and their talents can align with that.[00:33:00]

So continue the momentum you have going Sean, and um, definitely we're excited to continue as a member and part of the subscription program and to, um, certainly really empower our people to, to participate more and more in that learning.

Sean McGlade: Thank you.

Susan Cort: So many great things going on at, uh, the 4As and, and certainly with the training that you're offering, continue to have that start up mentality as things are continuing to evolve.

And, and I know, you know, in a very crowded space, uh, there's a North Star at the 4As for, for training that that helps ground us all who work in, uh, in agency work. So thank you for what you and your team do to provide that quality, relevant, timely training.

Sean McGlade: Thank you so much. We're thrilled to be partnering with all of our agency members and thank you so much for having me on.

Susan Cort: My thanks to d’Vinci CEO Luke Kempski and our guest Sean McGlade from the 4As. If you have any ideas for topics or guests, please reach out to us at Powered by Learning at [00:34:00] dvinci.com. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you get your podcasts.