In this conversation, Jason Gorman talks with Alex Bayer and Henri Maindidze, two professionals entering the learning field from very different directions. Alex, an emergency room nurse and EMS instructor draws a striking parallel between clinical triage and the diagnostic process of instructional design. Henri, a PhD in industrial organizational psychology at Portland State University, researched what actually motivates employees to engage in learning opportunities. Together they discuss what attracted them to the learning professions, the transferable skills they carry from emergency medicine and structural engineering, and what the ideal training pathway should look like for people doing this work. The conversation also explores how generative AI creates both opportunity and anxiety for newer professionals, why scientific communication is one of the hardest skills to build in a formal program, and what early career professionals want more experienced ones to understand about how work and learning are changing.

• Emergency medicine and instructional design share a diagnostic process: start broad, then focus.
• The opportunity to help people enjoy their work drives meaningful careers in learning.
• Communicating complex findings to non-technical audiences is one of the hardest skills to develop.
• Designing learning for a domain you have no expertise in requires deliberately better questions.
• Self-directed learning and choice within structure matter more than ever to newer professionals.
• Healthcare will always need learning professionals, but content delivery must evolve with the times.
• AI creates real opportunity for individualized learning but genuine anxiety about job security.
• Employees are not always as motivated to learn as the people designing the training.
• Applied, project-based coursework that reflects organizational realities produces the best preparation.
• Meeting learners where they are, not where the designer is, remains the fundamental challenge.

Episode 30: What the Field Looks Like When You Are Just Getting Started: Alex Bayer and Henri Maindidze on Opportunity, Threat, and the Skills That Actually Prepare You for This Work

The Diagnosis Before the Design: Alex Bayer and Henri Maindidze On Their L&D Journey So Far