28 Influential New York L&D Leaders to Know in 2026

Capability has become one of the sharpest constraints on what a New York organisation can actually do. Strategy documents assume that people will be ready, and learning leaders are the ones who have to make that assumption true.

As of July 2026, this directory brings together 28 senior learning, talent and organisational development leaders whose current roles are based at or run from organisations headquartered in New York State and the New York City metropolitan area. It reaches from Manhattan trading floors to Buffalo, Ithaca, Syracuse, Purchase and Long Island. It spans global banks, insurers, luxury and consumer brands, hospitals, universities, law firms, sport and philanthropy.

This directory was put together, not scored. Nobody has measured influence across every learning leader in the state, and this article does not pretend otherwise. What each entry offers is a current remit and a specific piece of public work that other practitioners can learn something from.

Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out, works with leadership teams that want to turn development ideas into clearer behaviour, stronger collaboration and practical action. Organisations can arrange a keynote, Working Genius workshop or executive team offsite by emailing jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why learning leadership in New York is worth watching

The pressure on this role is not abstract. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 illustrates the scale by pointing out that if the world's workforce were made up of 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030, and it estimates that 39 per cent of workers' existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated between 2025 and 2030. The same report finds that 63 per cent of employers identify skill gaps as a major barrier to business transformation over that period.

The problem is not only supply. LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that 49 per cent of learning and talent professionals agreed with the statement that their executives are concerned employees do not have the right skills to execute the business strategy, and that only 36 per cent of organisations fall into its career development champions category with robust programmes that yield business results. Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index adds the human constraint, reporting that 80 per cent of the global workforce say they lack enough time or energy to do their work, while 82 per cent of leaders say this is a pivotal year to rethink key aspects of strategy and operations.

New York concentrates almost every version of that problem in one place. A capability question inside a global bank, an academic medical centre, a luxury house, a law firm and a hypergrowth commerce business looks different in each setting, which is exactly what makes the comparison useful. Readers who want a wider view can also browse the global L&D leaders directory.

1. Brian Glaser

Vice President and Chief Talent and Learning Officer, Google

Brian Glaser leads talent and learning for roughly 180,000 Googlers across more than 70 countries, working from New York. The remit sits where enterprise capability, leadership growth and culture meet, which means most of the job is deciding what not to build.

In 2017 he founded The Google School for Leaders, the company's first enterprise centre of excellence for leadership development. That origin matters because it reframed leadership learning as a durable internal institution rather than a rolling programme calendar. For learning heads who keep being asked to prove that development deserves permanent investment, the model is a useful precedent.

2. Peter Fox

Chief Learning Officer, Citi

Peter Fox leads learning across one of the most complex financial institutions in the world, and he does it from Citi's headquarters at 388 Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan. In October 2025 he opened that building to the iVentiv Learning Futures New York exchange, convening peers from other large enterprises.

His most instructive public work is Citi's mandatory artificial intelligence prompting training, rolled out to about 175,000 employees across 80 locations. The design adapts to existing skill, so experienced users can finish in under ten minutes while beginners take about thirty. That is a rare example of compulsory enterprise training that respects the learner's starting point instead of flattening everyone into the same seat time.

3. Jennifer Gabriele Miller

Global Head of Learning, Banking and International, Client, and Legacy Franchises, Citi

Jennifer Gabriele Miller carries one of the more revealing job titles in enterprise learning, covering banking, international, client and legacy franchises. Learning leaders rarely get named responsibility for legacy businesses, and that is often where capability risk actually sits.

Her remit has visibly widened over time. Earlier iVentiv material describes her as Global Head of Learning and Development for Global Markets and Early Career, so the current scope represents a real expansion rather than a title refresh. She facilitated at the October 2025 New York exchange alongside her Citi colleagues, which puts her in the room where peers compare what is genuinely working.

4. Tina Gupta

Senior Vice President and Head of Talent Management, New York Life Insurance Company

Tina Gupta connects talent strategy, mobility, upskilling and the technology employees use to navigate their own careers at New York Life. Her work is a good corrective to the idea that learning can be improved in isolation from the wider talent system.

Two pieces of her public work stand out. She launched Lead Forward, a behaviours-based leadership programme that reached roughly 2,400 managers and executives, and she has spoken about New York Life's Career Hub, an internal gig marketplace built around artificial intelligence that produced around 86 gig placements. Both examples are useful because they attach a countable outcome to a system change rather than to a course.

5. James Fulton

Chief Learning Officer, Goldman Sachs

James Fulton is chief learning officer and global head of talent development at Goldman Sachs, working from the firm's Manhattan headquarters. He is unusual among enterprise learning leaders in that he writes publicly and argues positions rather than describing programmes.

His bylined pieces for Chief Learning Officer magazine include an argument that external benchmarking is bad for corporate learning, alongside work on bringing a growth mindset to the learning function. He also spoke at the Learning Reimagined summit in September 2025. For practitioners, the value is watching a leader in a highly benchmarked industry make the case against copying the field.

6. Paul Tiesler

Senior Vice President, Talent Development, Moody's

Paul Tiesler runs talent development and learning strategy at Moody's from 7 World Trade Center. He arrived in the profession from an acting career that included a Broadway run at the Belasco Theater, which is a more common route into learning work than most job descriptions admit.

His measurement thinking is the reason to follow him. He has been replacing traditional level one reaction surveys with a Net Impact Score that combines manager-assessed behaviour change at thirty days with employee-reported application. His team's company-wide generative AI training reached 99 per cent completion against an 85 per cent target, won a Brandon Hall award, and was followed by a 40 per cent increase in AI tool adoption.

7. Patrick Martin

Chief Talent Officer, Moody's

Patrick Martin holds the chief talent officer remit at Moody's, sitting above the learning function and connecting it to the wider questions of who the organisation hires, keeps and promotes. That vantage point is where learning strategy either gets protected or quietly deprioritised.

He has used it to open the door for the profession. In October 2026 he invited iVentiv to convene learning executives on the 52nd floor of Moody's New York headquarters. Hosting peer exchanges is a small act with a disproportionate effect, because it gives learning leaders a room where they can be honest about what has not worked.

8. Catherine Kevett

Global Head of Enterprise Learning and Development, MetLife

Catherine Kevett leads enterprise learning at MetLife, where capability has to serve a large insurer's regulatory, technical and customer demands at the same time. She joined MetLife in 2022 after fifteen years at Johnson and Johnson, including a period as vice president of human resources for global functions.

Her most visible contribution to the wider field is repeat hosting. She has brought the iVentiv Learning Futures New York exchange into the MetLife Building on Park Avenue more than once, most recently in March 2026. Convening peers year after year is a slower kind of leadership than launching a programme, and it tends to improve the quality of judgement in the room.

9. Kate Brown

Senior Vice President and Global Head of Talent, S&P Global

Kate Brown leads global talent at S&P Global from Lower Manhattan and facilitates at the New York learning exchange. Her public position on artificial intelligence is refreshingly direct for a data company.

Speaking about the firm's Spark AI Academy in an Accenture case study, she said, "In the age of AI, our greatest asset isn't the algorithm, it's the talent we nurture." That sentence is worth borrowing by any learning leader trying to keep a technology programme anchored to people rather than tooling. Coming from a company whose product is analytics, it carries more weight than the same claim would elsewhere.

10. William Varsos

Head of Global Learning, Marsh

William Varsos leads global learning at Marsh from the firm's offices on the Avenue of the Americas. Insurance broking is a business built almost entirely on judgement, relationships and technical knowledge, which puts learning close to the revenue line.

He is the only facilitator listed at two consecutive iVentiv Learning Futures New York exchanges, in March 2026 and again in October 2026. Sustained participation is a modest signal, but it is a real one. Learning leaders who keep showing up to peer exchanges tend to be the ones testing their thinking rather than defending a finished strategy.

11. Emily Lin

Chief Learning Officer, Mastercard

Emily Lin is chief learning officer at Mastercard, based at the company's global headquarters in Purchase, in Westchester County. Her presence in this directory is a reminder that senior New York learning leadership is not confined to Manhattan.

She was named to Women We Admire's list of the top 25 women chief learning officers of 2025, and in 2026 she took a headline panel slot at the North American Learning Executive Summit on the future of talent development, advanced technologies and organisational transformation. Payments sits at the intersection of regulation, technology and trust, which makes her view of capability building particularly transferable.

12. Tulie White

Chief Learning Officer, The Estée Lauder Companies

Tulie White leads learning for The Estée Lauder Companies from Fifth Avenue, having previously held the global vice president role for enterprise learning and development there. Beauty is a category where brand voice is the product, and her work reflects that.

She co-authored a Training magazine piece on creating on-brand digital learning experiences, and she provided the client testimonial for the company's 2025 Coursera Engagement Excellence Award. The on-brand argument is a genuinely useful one for practitioners in any strong-identity organisation. Learning content that sounds nothing like the company tends to be ignored no matter how sound the instructional design.

13. Chrissie Leibman

Chief Learning Officer, PepsiCo

Chrissie Leibman became chief learning officer at PepsiCo, working from the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York. Her published brief is to reimagine the future of learning by architecting a strategy and ecosystem that is unifying, agile, learner-centric and technology-enabled.

She reached the role after leading PepsiCo's global learning and development function, and she was recognised in 2025 as one of the OnCon Icon top 100 learning and development professionals. Following a leader early in a redesign is instructive, because the first year usually reveals what the organisation has decided to stop doing.

14. Jennifer Budveit

Senior Director, Talent Development, PVH Corp.

Jennifer Budveit built PVH's first enterprise-wide leadership development strategy, covering more than 26,000 employees across Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, from the company's Madison Avenue headquarters. She was named an OnCon Icon top 100 learning and development professional in 2026.

Her route into the work is genuinely unusual. She trained at the Joffrey Ballet and performed as a principal dancer before moving into corporate talent development. Practitioners who came into learning sideways often bring a sharper instinct for rehearsal, feedback and practice than those who arrived through instructional design alone.

15. Yulia Denisova

Vice President, Talent and Development, Fanatics

Yulia Denisova leads talent and development at Fanatics from the company's Morton Street offices in Manhattan. She describes the organisation as "18 businesses in one", which explains why a single standardised leadership curriculum was never going to work there.

Her argument is that long structured leadership programmes cannot keep pace with a hypergrowth business. Reflecting on the pace after joining, she said of her colleagues, "These people are not even running. They're flying." That is a useful challenge for anyone still designing eighteen-month development journeys.

16. Sasha Fast

Associate Vice President, Talent Management and Learning, National Basketball Association

Sasha Fast is based in New York and leads enterprise-wide talent, performance, leadership development and learning strategy at the NBA. A global sports league is an unusual capability environment, combining a small headquarters function with an international commercial operation.

Her background explains the range. She served as an expatriate in Germany leading global human resources and recruiting across several countries, after senior talent roles at Citi, Bertelsmann and Foot Locker. Learning leaders who have run people work inside another country's employment culture usually have a sharper sense of which practices actually travel.

17. Danielle M. Marzo

Director of Learning and Development, Media Americas, dentsu international

Danielle M. Marzo leads learning and development for dentsu's media business across the Americas from Buffalo, which makes her one of the clearest upstate voices in this directory. Agency networks demand a particular skill, because capability has to serve many disciplines and markets without becoming generic.

Her community work is substantial and separately documented. She is a DiSC-certified trainer, serves as a racial equity coach for the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, and mentors students in Clarence High School's Business Academy. That combination of enterprise remit and local practice is uncommon, and it keeps her development thinking grounded in real learners.

18. Sean Jarett

Director of Learning and Development, Spotnana

Sean Jarett leads learning and development at Spotnana, the travel technology company with its corporate address on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. He built the function from nothing alongside a single learning and development specialist, which is the reality for most scaling companies.

Spotnana's own account of the team describes a remit covering onboarding, manager development, professional development and performance management. Running all four with a team of two forces genuinely hard prioritisation. For learning leaders in growth businesses, that scope is a more realistic benchmark than a large enterprise academy.

19. Nancy Sanchez

Executive Vice President and Vice Dean, Human Resources and Organizational Development and Learning, NYU Langone Health

Nancy Sanchez leads human resources and organisational development and learning at NYU Langone Health, supporting more than 54,000 faculty, staff and students. Academic medical centres combine clinical, research and educational workforces, so a single development approach rarely fits.

Her team has built more than 25 career option programmes that sponsor existing employees into hard-to-fill roles. That is internal mobility used as a workforce supply strategy rather than as an engagement message. In a sector with persistent clinical and technical shortages, growing your own is often the only route that actually closes the gap.

20. Diane Adams

Chief Learning Officer, Mount Sinai Health System

Diane Adams is chief learning officer at Mount Sinai Health System, where her team spans leadership development, workforce capacity building, engagement and patient experience. Joining those four together is a deliberate design choice, because in a hospital they are the same problem seen from different angles.

She began her career as a licensed clinical social worker delivering family and group psychotherapy before moving into learning about twenty years ago, and she is a Certified Patient Experience Professional. She also serves on the board of trustees at Excelsior University in Albany. Clinicians who move into capability work bring an instinct for what actually changes behaviour under pressure.

21. Jason J. Naidich

Executive Vice President and Chief Learning and Innovation Officer, Northwell Health

Jason J. Naidich holds a combined learning and innovation remit at Northwell Health, New York State's largest private employer. Fusing those two portfolios is a statement about how the organisation expects new practice to spread.

He remains a practising academic clinician alongside the executive role, serving as Associate Dean for Innovation and Chair of Radiology at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra and Northwell. His remit connects to Northwell's Center for Learning and Innovation. A learning leader who still holds clinical and academic credibility can ask for changes in professional practice that an outsider could not.

22. Kathy Burkgren

Associate Vice President for Organizational Development and Effectiveness, Cornell University

Kathy Burkgren leads organisational development and effectiveness at Cornell, serving the Ithaca, Geneva and New York City campuses. Universities are difficult development environments because authority is distributed and change cannot simply be mandated.

At Cornell's Emerging Tech Dialogues in October 2025 she ran a session on stewarding the university's legacy of leadership in continuous advancement through a period of disruption, and introduced a work-prioritisation tool for staff facing change. That is a practical response to a common failure, where organisations add new expectations without ever naming what staff should stop.

23. Stephanie Black Allen

Assistant Vice President, Talent, Learning and Organizational Development, New York University

Stephanie Black Allen is the named leader of the office responsible for talent, learning and organisational development at New York University. The function carries university-wide responsibility across every school and administrative unit.

Its scope includes NYUiLearn, the university-wide training registration and online learning system, university-wide new hire orientation, and organisational development consulting for all schools and units. Running shared infrastructure inside a federated institution is a distinct discipline. It depends on making the central service genuinely easier to use than the local workaround.

24. Dana Sovocool

Associate Vice President of HR Operations and Talent Management Strategy, Syracuse University

Dana Sovocool leads human resources operations and talent management strategy at Syracuse University, on the Skytop Road campus. She heads the Talent Management Center of Expertise, one of only five centres of expertise in the university's human resources structure.

That centre covers global talent recruiting alongside all staff development and performance evaluation programmes. Placing hiring and development inside one function is a structural decision worth noticing, because it makes the trade-off between buying and building capability explicit rather than leaving it to two teams with different targets.

25. Milana Hogan

Chief Talent Officer, Sullivan and Cromwell

Milana Hogan is chief talent officer at Sullivan and Cromwell in Lower Manhattan, a firm where professional development and commercial performance are inseparable. She is one of the few people in this directory who has formally studied the discipline she practises.

She holds a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania's Chief Learning Officer programme, and her research on the role of grit and growth mindset in the careers of successful women lawyers was profiled by Penn's Graduate School of Education. Evidence generated inside the profession, about the profession, is rarer than it should be.

26. Lauren Hakala

Senior Director of Global Learning and Development, Reed Smith

Lauren Hakala leads global learning and development at Reed Smith and lives in Brooklyn. She came to the work through practice, having started her career as a transactional lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb before holding senior knowledge and talent roles at Paul Weiss, White and Case and Milbank.

She is an ICF-accredited executive coach with a stated specialism in coaching neurodiverse leaders and supporting cross-cultural working. Naming neurodiversity as an explicit coaching specialism is still unusual at this level. For learning leaders designing leadership programmes, it is a prompt to check whether the default format suits only one kind of thinker.

27. Aisha Greene

Director of Attorney Development and Training, Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft

Aisha Greene oversees four connected portfolios at Cadwalader at once, covering attorney development, training, diversity, and pro bono and corporate social responsibility. She holds a bachelor's degree from New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

Her remit includes the formal work assignment system, upward and downward attorney evaluations, and all continuing legal education. Owning the assignment system matters more than it sounds, because in a law firm the work people are given is the development they receive. She also serves on the board of the Rohan Levy Foundation, a Brooklyn nonprofit working against gun violence.

28. Yi-Ching Lin

Senior Vice President of Learning, Philanthropy New York

Yi-Ching Lin directs programme strategy for Philanthropy New York, a membership community of nearly 300 philanthropic organisations, from East 43rd Street in Manhattan. Designing learning for peer institutions rather than employees is a distinct craft, because attendance is entirely voluntary and the audience is senior.

She is a professionally trained musician who has served on participatory grantmaking committees for the Communities of Color Nonprofit Stabilization Fund and the Korean American Community Foundation. That grantmaking experience matters to the learning work. It means the programmes are shaped by someone who has sat on the funding side of the relationship the members are trying to improve.

Conclusion

Three themes run through this group. The first is that the strongest New York learning leaders are building systems rather than catalogues. Career marketplaces, assignment systems, centres of expertise and internal sponsorship programmes appear far more often than course libraries, because a system keeps working after the launch communication stops.

The second is that measurement is quietly getting better. A net impact score built on manager-observed behaviour at thirty days, a completion rate weighed against a stated target, an adoption increase tracked after training, and career option programmes counted by roles filled all show a field moving past attendance and satisfaction. None of these are elaborate. They are simply chosen before the work starts rather than assembled afterwards.

The third is that context refuses to be copied. A hospital, a hypergrowth commerce business, a law firm and a global bank face the same underlying question about capability and reach completely different answers. Reading across them is more useful than reading any one of them closely, and it pairs well with the thinking of organisational development voices who work on structure, decision rights and change.

The practical move is to choose one directory entry from a sector unlike your own, take one idea, and name the condition that would have to be true for it to work where you are.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and the author of Step Up or Step Out, which has sold more than 10,000 copies. The Working Genius framework was created by Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group. He hosts The Leadership Conversations Podcast, which has published more than 240 episodes and reaches listeners in over 150 countries, and he founded The 7 Questions Movement, which now has more than 6,000 participating leaders.

Jonno is based in Brisbane and works with corporates, nonprofits, schools and leadership teams around the world. He achieved 93.75 per cent satisfaction for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference.

Next Read

A learning function cannot build capability sustainably if the wider leadership system consumes people faster than it develops them. The next guide sets out the difference between organisations that grow leaders deliberately and those that quietly rely on a few exhausted high performers, and it gives senior teams a way to examine succession, decision rights, delegation and the everyday conditions that let learning transfer.

Keep reading: Leadership Factories vs Burnout Factories: The Complete Guide

Email jonno@consultclarity.org with the decision or team pattern that needs to change, or explore team offsite facilitation if your leadership team needs a structured working session rather than another content module.