Program Description

Join fellow talent development professionals for a 90-minute Leadership Special Interest Group (SIG) focused on the real challenges and priorities shaping leadership development today. This interactive session is designed for practitioners who design, deliver, or support leadership programs—and those looking to sharpen their approach with practical, market-tested insights.

Our features leadership spotlight speaker for Wed. May August 12th, 6 pm – 7:30 pm is Steven Patterson, Sr. Associate Development Partner, Netsmart.

Agenda

6:00 - 6:30: Participant round table. After brief into to to ATDKC, scope of the Leadership Special Interest Group, and introduction of our guest leadership development leader, everyone will be engaged in conversation and polling on their top priority for leadership development and challenges.

6:30 - 7:00: Guest leadership speaker, Steven Patterson, will spotlight a priority leadership topic she is focused on, learnings and challenges. The goal is to gain insight into multiple industries and takeaway tips. The leadership topic is not prescribed, so our featured leadership speaker can choose what they want to highlight. This should include a presentation and time for Q&A.

7:00 - 7:30 pm: Crowdsourcing, networking and connection. This is optional if guests want to stay on to chat further, share, and collect insight from others.

What You'll Learn:

• Reasons leadership engagement improves learning outcomes.
• Best practices for involving leaders, before, during, and after learning.
• Strategies for increasing leaders’ attendance and participation
• Practical “nudges” that encourage managers to become active learning partners.
• Ideas for creating accountability and reinforcement beyond the classroom.

Featured Speaker Bio

Steven Patterson is a Senior Associate Development Partner at Netsmart, where he designs and delivers learning experiences that help associates, managers, and leaders grow their skills and increase their impact.

His work spans onboarding, sales enablement, leadership development, and organizational learning initiatives, including enterprise programs such as Thoughtful Leadership, Grow the Next, and role-based development journeys for sales and client-facing teams.

Passionate about creating learning cultures that drive measurable behavior change, Steven focuses on the critical connection between learning and leadership. Through partnerships with managers, emerging leaders, and executive stakeholders, he has observed that one of the strongest predictors of learning success is active leadership engagement.

Drawing upon his practical experience and lessons learned from development programs, Steven helps organizations move beyond isolated training events to create environments where learning is intentionally supported, consistently reinforced, and visibly modeled by leaders at every level.

Facilitator Bio

Amy Swaminathan, CPTD® loves helping others reach their full potential. She’s a champion for driving your own career through ongoing development, learning from others, and using the benefits an ATD membership provides. She is a Sr. Talent Development Consultant at Saint Luke’s/BJC Health, supporting leadership development and new employee orientation.

Aligned ATD Capability Model Areas

This session aligns with the following ATD Talent Development Capability Model domains:

• Personal Capability – Lifelong Learning, Communication, Collaboration and Leadership
• Professional Capability – Career and Leadership Development
• Organizational Capability – Organization Development and Culture, Consulting and Business Partnering, and Future Readiness

This session has been approved for recertification credits by the Association for Talent Development.