9 Atlanta L&D Leaders Shaping Workplace Learning

In 2026, Atlanta's learning and development community is doing the practical work of turning strategy into capability. The people in this directory connect instructional design, talent strategy, learning technology, employee experience and professional community across the metro area.

The scope is deliberately local and broad. These are current practitioners and chapter leaders with a clear connection to Atlanta's talent development ecosystem, not a ranking or a claim that one job title explains the whole profession.

Together, they show why strong L&D work is more than a catalogue of courses. It is the discipline of understanding the work, designing for the people doing it and creating the conditions for useful change.

Why Atlanta L&D matters

Atlanta gives L&D leaders a rich operating environment: global employers, universities, professional services, logistics, technology and growing local organisations all need people who can build capability in context.

The strongest work moves between diagnosis, design, facilitation, measurement and community. It helps managers support new behaviour, gives learners a reason to care and keeps the organisation's real priorities in view.

These nine leaders reflect that wider system. Their current work shows how professional association leadership and day-to-day learning practice can reinforce one another across Atlanta.

1. Jeffery Alejandro, EdD, CPP

Past President, ATD Greater Atlanta

Jeffery Alejandro is the Past President of ATD Greater Atlanta and a current member of the chapter's 2026 board. The chapter describes a career spanning leadership, training, talent development, learning strategy and performance management.

The breadth is useful for Atlanta employers because learning problems rarely stay inside one industry. Jeffery's work across more than 200 organisations points to a practical discipline: adapt the learning response to the operating context while keeping the intended behaviour clear.

2. Tony Ballard, Ph.D.

VP Membership, ATD Greater Atlanta

Tony Ballard is VP Membership at ATD Greater Atlanta, where the current chapter profile places human capital, talent transformation and professional community at the centre of the role. Tony brings more than 20 years across finance, the U.S. Air Force, entrepreneurship and academia.

His experience includes global learning strategies that affected more than 200,000 employees, alongside work supporting veterans moving from military to civilian careers. That combination gives Atlanta practitioners a useful example of learning at two levels: enterprise scale and the next practical step for one person.

3. Brandy M. Ford, PMP, CPTM, CRP

Senior Advisor, ATD Greater Atlanta

Brandy M. Ford is a Senior Advisor on ATD Greater Atlanta's 2026 board and serves as FM's Senior Advisor of Learning Analytics and Technology. Her work brings strategy, change management, facilitation and stakeholder advice into the same learning conversation.

That intersection matters as Atlanta organisations ask learning teams to show more than activity. Brandy's background across healthcare and commercial property insurance is a reminder that useful analytics begin with a real operating question and end with a decision people can act on.

4. Andrea Goodwin

Senior Advisor, ATD Greater Atlanta

Andrea Goodwin is a Senior Advisor on ATD Greater Atlanta's 2026 board and a current Senior Learning Consultant. The chapter profile traces a path from instructional design through performance analysis, facilitation, leadership development coaching and learning strategy.

That range is valuable because a request for training is not always a training problem. Andrea's consultative approach gives Atlanta L&D teams a strong prompt for their own work: understand the performance need first, then choose the lightest response that can genuinely help.

5. Jasen Hayes, MBA

VP Chapter Programs, Professional Development and CPTD/APTD, ATD Greater Atlanta

Jasen Hayes is the VP responsible for chapter programmes, professional development and CPTD/APTD at ATD Greater Atlanta. The chapter also identifies Jasen as a Senior Executive Partner at Hayes Development Agency and a Fractional HR Executive.

Jasen's contribution is programme curation. Designing curriculum and bringing the right speakers into a professional community turns broad workplace shifts into useful local learning. For Atlanta practitioners, that is capability-building work in its own right.

6. Josiah Owens, MSHRM

President-Elect, ATD Greater Atlanta

Josiah Owens is President-Elect of ATD Greater Atlanta. The chapter describes more than a decade across instructional design, talent strategy, HR and employee experience, with current work focused on employee experience and staffing in Atlanta.

That blend matters because learning does not sit apart from the experience people have at work. Josiah's profile points towards a broader view of development, where stability, internal people development and thoughtful design reinforce one another.

7. Frankie Robinson, M.Ed.

VP Learning and Development, ATD Greater Atlanta

Frankie Robinson is VP Learning and Development at ATD Greater Atlanta and the founder of MoguMogu Solutions. The chapter profile places more than a decade of training, education and instructional design behind that work.

Frankie's experience includes training programmes for AT&T, workshops in Japan, a global online learning community of more than 7,000 educators and multimedia content for AWS Cloud Institute. The through-line is experimentation with purpose: use new tools, including artificial intelligence, to improve learning rather than distract from the outcome.

8. Kelly M. Tracy, M.A., APTD

VP Technology, ATD Greater Atlanta

Kelly M. Tracy is VP Technology at ATD Greater Atlanta and a Senior Instructional Designer for Conduent's Delta Air Lines account. The current chapter profile places more than 17 years of teaching and training behind that practice.

Kelly's path crosses language instruction, higher education, nonprofit learning and corporate development. That range is a useful reminder for Atlanta organisations that good learning design changes with the learner, the language, the technology and the work people need to do.

9. Cornelius Dowdell

VP Strategic Partnerships, ATD Greater Atlanta

Cornelius Dowdell, also known as Neil, is VP Strategic Partnerships at ATD Greater Atlanta. The chapter connects Cornelius's work with The Best Workplace, facilitation and strategy, while current professional profiles describe a wider talent-development practice.

The useful lesson is alignment. Cornelius's work brings learning, leadership and people systems back to the organisation's real goals. That is the conversation Atlanta L&D teams need when a programme sounds promising but the behaviour, workflow or business priority has not been made clear.

Conclusion

The clearest theme across this group is translation. Atlanta L&D leaders translate strategy into learning, technology into usable experiences, evidence into decisions and professional expertise into community.

A second theme is range. The work stretches from enterprise learning and analytics to instructional design, talent strategy, employee experience and the careful curation of professional development.

For an employer, the practical question is not which approach sounds most impressive. It is which capability, behaviour or decision needs to become stronger next, and which kind of learning leader can help make that change real.

Related Reading

For a wider view, explore Consult Clarity's learning and development thought leaders guide. For a related Atlanta service directory, see Working Genius facilitators in Atlanta.

Bring practical learning into your leadership work

If your organisation needs a practical keynote, workshop or facilitated leadership session connected to team capability, contact Jonno White at jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and the author of Step Up or Step Out. He works with schools, organisations and leadership teams around the world.