Success Stories: Teacher to Trainer with guest Alison Sollars

Luis Malbas  
Hello, everybody, welcome to the training learning and development community. Thanks for joining us today. We've got another episode in our success story series teacher to trainer. In this episode, our guest is Alison Sollars. Did I pronounce your last name correctly?

Alison Sollars  
It's Sollars. Sollars. Okay,

Luis Malbas  
okay. Sollars Alison Sollars. Thanks. Yeah, so this series is actually for, to kind of like promote the event that we have at the end of this month, which is are transitioning to lnd event, you can go to www.T2LD.com. Let me type that in chat. T2LD.com. If you'd like to learn more about that about that live virtual conference, it is free. There are two ticket types available. There's a free ticket, which you know, help yourself. Absolutely. There's also a donation ticket, which is totally optional. I use that just to kind of pay the bills around here. I only mentioned it because there was a conversation on LinkedIn about it recently. So I just want to make sure people, make sure people understand there's always going to be that free option for these types of events. So please sign up if you can, it's going to be fun. It's an entire week, August 29 to September 2, we have like session plan for every day, like at least one or two sessions planned for every day, and then some virtual tables will be set up. It should be really, really fun. And with that, I'm going to move into asking a few questions to our guests, Allison, about her experience transitioning from being a teacher to a to an l&d professional. And I have a set of questions that are down in the at the bottom of the screen in the Ask a Question area. And let's start out with Allison. Your career in education, where did it begin?

Alison Sollars  
So I was actually an accidental teacher, I worked in marketing during the great recession. And I got laid off. I was in like really early in my career, my first couple years of my career, and there were no marketing jobs in 2009. So a friend of mine had been teaching overseas and was leaving her job in South Korea. And my first teaching job was actually in South Korea teaching at an elementary school and international elementary school that did a primary International Baccalaureate curriculum. And that really got me interested in pedagogy and really interested in like human development.

But that was not what my degree was, in my degree was in English, but in writing, specifically and in marketing. So that was kind of a new direction for me, because I work or because I live in Florida when I returned, it was really easy for me to get all certified. Florida sent alternative certifications for decades now. And because I have an English degree, it was easy to get like highly qualified certification with a few courses. And I started in middle school reading, and I taught middle school reading Middle School, Esau and English and yearbook and creative writing and a few other things. And then, the last six years I've been at an International Baccalaureate High School in the same public district is all the same district. And I've taught like IB, English, AP English, and an IB career elective. So I've kind of like bounced around and done a lot of things. I did an educational leadership masters in there too, just kind of looking for what do I want to do next, like interest in gifted education and just in like, organizational leadership and education, but none of that really kind of gelled with me in my district. And so that's how I kind of wound up getting into lnd. I've just always been really interested in like cognitive science and like research based practices and been kind of a nerd, I guess. So Yeah. Kind of falling into different situations and opportunities all throughout.

Luis Malbas  
That's a potent mix, you know, with the English degree and, and the marketing background. And now education and then moving into instructional design, it seems like all of those things like kind of apply to what you're probably doing now. That's, that's, that's, that's a good, good background to have.

Alison Sollars  
Yeah, I used to do like a little technical writing and like web design on the side and stuff. I didn't know instructional design existed until, like, no curriculum design existed for like K 12. And I knew training existed because actually in between coming back from Korea and going into my school district while I was getting all my requirements in a row, I worked as an operational manager and I did like training through HR in for an event management company, and I trained and hired staff and conducted workshops and so forth, but like nobody really thought about, like learning design and the design of those courses. I mean, maybe I did but not consciously, you know. So I knew that like companies trained people, but I just didn't really know, the mechanics of it and how intense it could be outside of like government work.

Luis Malbas  
Right, right. So talk about the shift, like, what exactly like when did you find instructional design? And why? And how did you go about like, Oh, this is what I want to, this is what I'm going to jump into.

Alison Sollars  
So I've always done kind of side stuff, like I said, and I was looking for I was like, looking to replace some income, because we lost some stipends, and so forth. And I was like, well, I could do some content development, like everybody needs curriculum stuff, I could do some English content development, I do some for APA. Now for my district, like I do some other stuff, I make resources that people use all the time, somebody will pay me to do this. But I didn't want to make stuff for Teachers Pay Teachers for the same reason that I don't like charge for anything now and that I work with Sarah at teaching as a pathway to learning and designers, I don't want to charge teachers money for anything. So I kind of looked into like contract work with like curriculum development and English. And then as I was looking into that, I found storyline and I like got a trial and played around with it. I spent like 100 hours in it over winter break, just like making stuff and doing like elearning heroes. And then I was like, this is an actual like, career, like you could go into learning and development and like be a learning professional and just help companies train people and improve human performance. And that was, I guess, how I found it. And then when I started looking at it more I was like this is a lot of this is what I learned in my educational leadership masters, because educational leadership is for K 12. But it's kind of like, it has some stuff that they pull from MBA programs for leadership and a lot of stuff that they pull with human performance development, because the main kind of resource in schools is staff and staffing development is I was like nine of my 14 courses, and educational leadership. We're focused on improving staff performance. Um, so like we did a whole Capstone that like went through Kirkpatrick we didn't call it Kirkpatrick but like when I read about that, I was like, Oh, wow. So I kind of just found it. I had never been on LinkedIn. I had never, like looked for anything like this. And then I found like, I was like, Okay, well, there's not very many jobs near me. So I guess this isn't really a viable option. And then somebody mentioned, like, oh, but there's a lot of remote jobs. And like, when I switched the LinkedIn to remote, I was like, oh, there's a lot of options. My husband also works as a faculty trainer for a local university. So like, my first thought was like, maybe I could do something like that someday, like if there's an opening, but there's like three universities, you know, not a ton of openings. I don't want to work in his department, you know. So I think that was just a big explosion in January. I just found that out. And I was just like, well, this is, I guess this is what I want to do now.

Luis Malbas  
Right? Right. So it's relatively recent that you've made kind of formally made this switch over?

Alison Sollars  
Yeah, I started looking in January, and I got a job that started in March.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. Wow. And so now you are actually working as an l&d Professional now, right?

Alison Sollars  
Yeah, I'm an I'm a learning experience designer for landmark health, which is a part of UnitedHealth Group.

Luis Malbas  
Okay. Excellent, excellent. Anything about your experience so far? That has surprised you.

Alison Sollars  
I think what surprised me is how much especially like in healthcare, how much aligns to education, especially like thinking at the organizational like leadership level, like, because I kind of wear wore that hat and education to not just the classroom. And so like, when you think about like mentoring, and like training new teachers, which I did a lot of, like training staff that I do we do you do the like, Preceptor programs, and the like, coaching programs are a lot like student teaching programs. There's a lot of parallels that I didn't expect to be there, like, everything's got different names, right? Like, we call everything by a million different names in education, even like between districts. So I'm used to that. But being able to see those connections, I think healthcare was a good choice and a good field for me in that way. Because it does have that like, you know, I work with clinical educators who do have a kind of similar feeling and backgrounds that I had, and like, maybe we're nurses and nurses and teachers have a lot in common. Um, so that's been really surprising, because I felt like it would be more I felt like it would be more different in the mindsets that people have. But I feel like the mindset is very similar. I think that also is because I come from a really big district.

Luis Malbas  
But what has been kind of like the biggest adjustment so far, you think

Alison Sollars  
the biggest adjustment I think was just so it's a completely different way of working right like remote work compared to like the day to day schedule. So just to like getting your footing in a new institution remotely and like figuring out like, who to ask for this. Like I had a lot of institutional knowledge even moving from school to school. I've been in the same school for six years in the same district for 10 years. So like I knew Where to go for everything like I was the person people came to, and going into a new situation, a new field, a new role, a new company, my original manager left after a month, and we had like a little bit of turnover too, which like, kind of probably exacerbated this for me, but like knowing and being able to, like reach out to everybody, and just being willing to, like, admit all the stuff you need to know and that people need to give you and you don't know, I think is is a new adjustment and having to kind of, like find all that institutional knowledge like acronyms when people are saying it and things like,

Luis Malbas  
right now that's interesting. And in fact, I'm, there is one session in particular, I think it's Matt Wozniak, who's who's in the audience right now he's going to be talking about that kind of going from academia and higher ed into kind of more of the business oriented side of instructional design and being able to speak that language instead. Was that hard for you to pick up? Or? Or did it take a while.

Alison Sollars  
Some of it was hard, and some of it wasn't. So I would say the healthcare specific jargon as is a little bit tricky and challenging sometimes that like, I'm still getting used to the instructional design stuff was not as hard for me when I started seeing it, because I could see the parallels really clearly. But some of the some of the like businesses stuff, like the organizational stuff is just it's hard to change that mindset a little bit. When you think about learners, like the teacher mindset of thinking about learners, even in staff training is a little bit different than I would say, the business mindset and think about learners. And what is the goal of learning and kind of that problem solution? I think it's really satisfying because you get closer to the problem solution that you do, like education is so broad, and like you don't get to see the solution, usually, you know, or, or you see the solution, but you don't see the initial problem, because you taught people at the end, or you're at the end of staff training phase. But getting to getting to be really close to that problem. Solution is definitely an adjustment that is both exciting and sometimes scary. Because I mean, the problem has to be solved. And if you don't, and sometimes people want you to solve problems with training that can't be solved with training. Yeah, um, which happens in schools too. But you know, I think that it's a different sort of world and mindset, right? For sure. Yeah, no,

Luis Malbas  
I think I see like Danny's in the audience, he would be able to definitely speak to that. There's a question in here that I kind of want to, I want to ask you that Cindy has posted? It's a great question. What do you wish you would you would have known before starting your teaching career, that may have changed your career choice.

Alison Sollars  
I wish I had known instructional design was a job because I probably would have gone into lnd, or instructional design rather than teaching. I did like teaching. It's not like I didn't like teaching. I enjoyed it, especially the past six years, like being an AP Lit teacher was like one of my goals. And I got to do that. And I got to work with amazing, amazing students in my IB program. And like, the career program, I run, I got to work with students, like for three years in a row, sometimes like, you know, the same students and build those relationships, which was amazing. So those experiences were great, but I think I could have also had great experiences in l&d, and it would have been maybe a smarter career move both financially. And like for my ultimate goals, I think, just because I didn't really have a goal and floated along a lot in education. I did really like I did a lot of things and a lot of extras. But it wasn't like for myself, it was just like, this needs to be done. So I'm going to do it. And taking more control of my career and being like, this is what I want for my professional development. This is what I want for my skills is something that I really didn't start doing until I made this transition.

Luis Malbas  
Right. You know, when I think about it, like when I was in high school, whatever, forever ago, there was a career that you know, that we had career days where we wanted to kind of explore what careers were available to us. But there was never any, you know, option for like, anybody like a guidance counselor saying, Hey, have you ever thought about instructional design or a career and learning and development, there was never anything like that? You know, there were definitely things like here learn how to be an engineer and learn how to be a teacher and all of these things. But instructional design almost feels like it was like hidden away. Or I don't know, I wonder why that is.

Alison Sollars  
And I want it to be I can tell you like when I told people like what I really wanted to do when I was like laid off from marketing because I liked marketing, but I wasn't like my Adobe, I was like, what I really want to do is be a professional problem solver. So like I really feel like that's what instructional designers do. At the heart of it like yes, it's about learning science and human performance, but at the heart of it, we get to be professional problem solvers.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. I think I have a feeling you're going to be an incredible instructional designer, you can already tell just the way that you talk that you're going to do really, really well at this. So I'm As far as your career choice is concerned, any like lessons that you've learned that you'd like to share, like any teachers that are transitioning into this field, is there anything specific that you could share about that?

Alison Sollars  
I think the biggest thing is to start looking at the problem solution and your day to day and like, look at what why you're actually doing what you're doing. I think design at every level, any kind of design, like even if you want to go into UX design or something else, design is about the why. So why why is this the way that it is? And is it working the way that it is? Or if we need to change it, what needs to be changed? And why? So looking at your why's and looking at like your pain points and your problems? And how did you work to solve that and capturing that data? Data analysis was huge in my district, because we are so large and so businessy, almost like in Florida, there's a lot of emphasis on data and the large districts especially. And I was always able to like win arguments with data, kind of like I don't mean to say like arguments, but sometimes there would be a disagreement on what would be the best path. And I would know my path was best. But I wouldn't. Teachers don't have the benefit of people taking their word for it, you have to prove everything basically. Right. So I think that data analysis piece was really helpful. And I know a lot of teachers who can do that, but they don't realize that's a useful business skill to write, and how do I translate that into business, they're not capturing their metrics, so capturing their metrics and looking at the problems that they're solving. From that problem solution, that's really hard for teachers to do a lot of the time. Because you want to be student centered, you want to be whole student centered. And I very much believe education should be that way too. Like when I taught in my classes, and I pulled that data, I had to put on like a separate hat almost because I know that kids aren't data. They aren't data, they're kids, and they need to be nurtured, like kids. But at the same time, if you have to convince somebody for levels of the pain that they need to do the thing that's best for those kids, you have to separate that out. And I think that compartmentalization is what helped me a lot and what teachers often struggle with, but can do if they just wear the different hat on like, you know, except that you're in a different role when you're making that conversation.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. And it's always so satisfying to when you actually have the data to prove something that you get done. And you get to actually present it and show everybody. Now I want to, I want to give you a little time to talk about teaching a path to learning and development, Sara's group. Talk about your role there.

Alison Sollars  
So I've done a couple of different things there. I mean, my role has kind of evolved. I'm the community manager there. So I post daily. So you'll see me that's why I'm so active on LinkedIn, as people will see me posting, because I post daily, almost daily in the group. And we have like different themes for the days that Sarah developed years ago that are still going like to today's Wednesday. So it's like what you working on Wednesday, and people can go and get feedback. And we have other people who come in who are in field who give feedback. That's great. And then there's peer feedback. And I try to give feedback on things that people have. You know, we tried to give tips on Thursdays different things that we tried to do, we had a mentoring program that's been a little bit suspended, because we're working on a project now, to try to get kind of a course of study together of like, here are the basics. Here are the basic areas you might want to learn about for instructional design. I almost liken it to like the Google like courses where they're like, kind of introductory like to project management or introductory I mean, I don't think it's going to be as good as that on the first go. But we're gonna iterate and make them better. But just so it's free. Because there's a lot of content out there that's not curated that people ask us for. And it's like, how do we get this together for everybody? So trying to curate trying to develop some content of our own and just get people resources that is maybe more guided, because teachers often want a guided process. They're very busy, they don't have a lot of money. So how can we help them with that? To kind of maybe support so that they don't, I think if anybody wants to hire paid services, because it worked for them, that's fine. But so that they don't have to do that so that they can do get what they need for free.

Luis Malbas  
Right? And just so that for the folks that don't know what, what that group is, Can you can you can you explain.

Alison Sollars  
So we have a website called teach, learn Dev, where you can find us there. And it's got some of Sara's webinars from a few years ago, which was really the start and the origin of it. And then we have a really active LinkedIn group teaching as a pathway to learning and development. It is really focused on instructional design currently, because that's what Sarah does, and also what most of our volunteers do, including myself, but someday maybe we will branch out to corporate training or training coordinators, other aspects of l&d to try to support those as well. And we do have members who come from all ranges of training, you know, like there's active members who are corporate trainers or in other areas of learning and development, or even like UX or or other areas kind of tangentially related and we try to great resources and support, like give community support have events, I'm trying to have a resume workshop in September probably, because that was the kind of voted on topic. So trying to hold events and, and just support teachers in this journey in a way that is organized without them having to pay for it.

Luis Malbas  
No, that's great. I think that that's definitely aligns with sort of some of the things that we're trying to produce on the T LDC side, you know, just gather got volunteers to help teachers sort of transition into this space. And so it's great, I would happily promote, promote your group if you'd like. Um, let me see here. We go back to your career stuff now. So now you're an instructional designer, what is like your daily schedule, like?

Alison Sollars  
So I actually posted last Thursday, and I'm gonna try to post once a week on LinkedIn about this, like, I'm gonna post sample days because I don't really have a set daily schedule, we don't have like a daily huddle or anything. We have weekly meetings, usually on Thursdays, but like this week, it's today. So it can be really variable. We're very communicative on our team's chat and our like, we're remote, but like I talk to my boss and my teammates quite frequently, like throughout the day, I would say, we are across time zones. So some of us are east coast, some of us are west coast, some of the middle. And so it's, it's a matter of like, you have to be pretty communicative. Update your projects on the project board, like reach out to people and send them things via teams and email. But I spend a lot of my time working on ELearning Development, I would say. But I also develop a built virtual instructor led trainings, my big project recently has been like a technical training project that's had multiple courses, both IoT format, and elearning. So like working with some news on that, but usually you have two to three projects going at a time. And they can vary from job aids to elearning, to kind of workshops and even other weird solutions and so forth. So it's it's pretty varied. I am a morning person. So I'll sometimes start early and a little early or you know, work through lunch and and a little earlier, take a long lunch to run an errand. So it's remote, it's flexible, which is nice, a little bit, but basically eight to five, and just kind of usually spending I would say 60 to 70% of my time on developing, whether it's slide decks or job aids or elearning. And then like 20 to 30% on like storyboarding, working with me is kind of getting that information I need because development just takes so much longer, you know, then that design part I feel like, and we design kind of iterative. So a lot of the writing is back and forth in the development process. I would say we use more Sam than Addie. But it depends, right? And then, like maybe 10% on like Project Management Administration, like just the basic stuff. And then, you know, 5% on professional development and like stuff that I'm just like learning new tools or new things just to continue to keep up with

Luis Malbas  
is that variety, something that that you really like? Or is it challenging for you?

Alison Sollars  
No, I love the variety. I like the variety of topics to like healthcare, we have technical trainings, we have clinical trainings, we have interpersonal trainings, and leadership trainings and dei trainings. Like I love that there's been such a variety that even so far I've gotten to work on and a variety of like tools, you know, and techniques as well, where they're like this is a scenario or this is a simulation or, you know, this is just a straightforward like workshop that a Smee is going to deliver but they want some like more organized information and a job aid to go with it. Like how I like it. There's that right? How would

Luis Malbas  
you compare that that level of variety versus like your work as a teacher,

Alison Sollars  
I had a lot of variety as a teacher, because I did teach a lot of different courses, like some teachers teach the same thing all day. But I usually had two or three preps and different periods. And I would like change, I changed throughout my, like 10 years teaching grade levels and courses in schools. And I also would change like my curriculum for AP and IB almost every year to refine it, and so forth. So there was a lot of variety there. But there wasn't a lot of variety. And like what I was, even if I was like, doing different things, I still had to do like 30 hours of facilitation a week. So it was very much like scheduled and down to the minute and so I like the kind of flexibility and the ability to work how my brain works that works really well for instructional design. And also I was overworking because I was always taking on more projects. So it'd be like we need this staff training but of course I don't have time in my regular day to do it. So you do it for like either a stipend which is much less than your regular rate or like sometimes for free. And there was a lot of like working off the clock as a teacher just at work.

Luis Malbas  
definitely heard that I've definitely heard that. I've got a couple questions from chat here. What do you feel was the thing that helped you the most transfer from a teacher to ID that one's from Nikki Brubaker? I think there

Alison Sollars  
were two things that really helped me one was technical skills. I think that technical skills and tools are not the end all be all. But I do think that if you're trying to move fields, that's an easy thing to show. Proof of like, it's hard to show proof of some other things. But it's easy to show proof, you can use a tool and that is one thing that people are wondering. So I always do you advise people work on their technical skills, even though I don't think it's the meat of what we do, I do think is one of the easier things to showcase. And then two, I think what really helped me was that I had that kind of ability to switch into that organizational thinking from like my educational leadership and some corporate work that I've done before, like the ability to see kind of like that bigger picture of how I fit into my school, and like how I had solved problems. So I think and I think most teachers are solving problems who want to transition, I think they have a lot of that trait, but they sometimes don't give themselves the credit for it, or know how it fits into the bigger picture. So it's just taking that step back, and being able to like kind of translate. I think those were the two things that really helped me.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, that's great. So you know, I'm just a little bit it kind of this aligns a little bit with this next question. Another one from Cindy Nagel, what is in your developer toolbox? And also, when you answer that? When did you get into like, you know, using tools? Is that something that you've always been comfortable with? Like, building stuff like using technology?

Alison Sollars  
Yes, I hadn't found storyline until recently, because that's kind of an ID specific thing. But I had used Adobe Creative Suite prior in my marketing days, even all the way all the way back then. Oh, yeah, I used to make websites in Adobe Dreamweaver. I knew HTML, CSS, and then I brushed up on it this year, because I really like I would, I would like jailbreak the LMS sometimes, and like, do HTML, CSS things like when they locked fonts, and I didn't want them to and so forth. So I used it occasionally. But I didn't like it wasn't necessary. It wasn't something that I needed as a teacher, but I would just like, I like making things and so I was always making things, and kind of using you technology even then. Like LMS, like training and stuff like that, like I was, you know, at the forefront of like, my district has been one to one since 2016. So like, I was at the forefront of like Ed technology. But then storyline, like, I learned that in December, and I spent but I spent I think you have to think of it in hours rather than years is the thing I sometimes tell people, I spent like 100 hours on it, and two weeks the first time that I did it, so like I really like dove into it. Because it was really fun for me, like I like like, you know, drag and drop programming and things like that. So it's been something that I enjoy. But these tools, some of them are new to me. But it's just a matter of like if you've used other tools, sometimes it's easier to pick them up. I think then, if you haven't videos, I've made videos for the classroom for a long time flipped classrooms and stuff. And like any kind of timeline, editing software's is pretty similar to other timeline, and there's differences and there's things you can learn that are really cool and neat, but like you can pick them up more easily if you've used one.

Luis Malbas  
So currently in your developer, toolbox, storyline, anything else,

Alison Sollars  
storyline Camtasia I've used beyond Adobe Creative Suite. I'm not a master of every Adobe Creative Suite app because there's so many but like Photoshop, Illustrator XD, little bit InDesign Canva, I will sometimes use instead of Adobe Creative Suite just because it's simpler for like quick things like if I'm going to make something to attach to it, like LinkedIn group post, I'm probably not going to go to Photoshop and spend three hours on it, I'm probably going to spend 10 minutes in Canva. I'm just like, cranking out HTML, CSS and a little bit of web design. I would say that's my main toolbox and there's like other like, you know, I played around with ice cream sweet. I like tools to play around with just so that when somebody asked me something, I know the right solution. Like I don't think the tool really matters. But I do think that if you know a lot of tools like oh twine would be good for that. Or HP five would be good for that, especially when you're looking for kind of creative solutions for people like teachers who are looking for maybe some free things or other things that aren't as expensive as storyline because it is quite cost prohibitive.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. It almost seems like you've been an Instructional Designer for a really long time and just didn't realize it.

Alison Sollars  
I mean, I kind of feel that way sometimes I definitely thought there was big gaps and things to learn, right? Definitely so much that's different. But the way that I I mean curriculum Design was always my favorite part of teaching. And I was always the teacher that was like making curriculum. And people were like, can I just use yours? I don't want to make stuff. Could I just use your your lessons, and like doing weird technical things like to kind of make it better? So I think it was just like, I found the thing that I was meant to find, just like, after a very long, circuitous journey.

Luis Malbas  
Right, right, right. All right, last question for you, what are your future goals look like?

Alison Sollars  
I do want to get a terminal degree someday. That was actually one of the reasons I left education because I realized I would never be able to afford a PhD on an educator salary. And my district didn't pay enough to make it worth it to get a doctorate. So I would like to get either a doctorate or an MBA someday, I haven't completely decided, but I'm leaning more towards a PhD and like human performance, and looking at those programs. So that is my long term goal. Like far out, I really, really would like to do that. And just like solve bigger and better problems, and help a community of teachers find what's right for them, whether it's instructional design or something else.

Luis Malbas  
That's great. Wow, Allison, what a fascinating conversation. I do wonder, like, um, you were talking about mentorship and stuff earlier, is that something that you're actively doing now?

Alison Sollars  
I feel a little too early to like, officially mentor to many people. And I also like, I develop a lot of resources and like things at a little bit more scale, I would say, to be used, but I do mentor a few people kind of unofficially, I guess that I've worked with like, and sometimes I'll spot people, especially when I spot people from my district that I know have been looking for a little while, I'll be like, hey, like, let's look at your resume, let's figure out what's going on. And, and over the summer, I was able to help a couple people get opportunities and just kind of fill in that missing step, right? Like that last kind of piece. They had the skills, they had everything there. People just weren't seeing it yet. So how can we make people see it. But I don't think I'm like there to mentor in like, building all of the skills yet on my own. I tried to help and support Sara and doing that, and the community because you know, I am only six months into this job. And even though I have a wealth of like, I think valuable experience, I also really value the people in the voices that have been in the community a long time, but they don't have time to help everybody. So I just tried to kind of facilitate and connect people and share the good advice that I've gotten. And I got a lot of mentorship, especially in January and February when I was looking. I had people who did you know, coffee chats with me who shared leads with me who really supported me. And so I tried to just do the same.

Luis Malbas  
That's great. So good to hear it, you do have a lot of valuable experience, a wealth of it. So that's, that's, that's it's pretty amazing. Allison, thank you so much for, for doing this. And I want to mention also, you volunteered to do like a virtual table during that week of the event schedule is still TBD. But at some point, people might be able to kind of meet up with you and just sort of chat in one of our virtual tables for that week. Yeah, I

Alison Sollars  
want to try to maybe give you a couple of times, I'll send you that. And then like maybe you can do some, like group sessions for just what are people's individual needs, you know, how can I help on this transition journey?

Luis Malbas  
Love it. Love it. All right. Well, Allison, thank you so much. Thanks, everybody, for showing up today. Don't forget, if you haven't already registered for the event, just go to T to ld.com for transitioning to learning and development virtual event that takes place August 29 through September 2. And with that, I'm going to wrap it up. Thanks, everybody. All right. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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