Learning Café
The Courage to Redefine Learning – Revisited!
Date Friday, Dec 5 Time – Room: Tiergarten
In this closing conversation, participants will have the chance to reflect, unwind and revisit some of the most compelling insights from the past three days. Inspired by the late, great Jay Cross, this unconference-style session will focus on the BOLD takeaways from the conference that can be applied with courage back in your workplace. You will have a chance to recap on lessons learned from your OEB 2025 journey, plan some new experiments, reconnect with old friends and make new connections. While this may mark the formal end of this year’s OEB programme, the conversation always continues at the Marlene Bar!
Femke Geerligs
Young Professional, Bronkhorst High-Tech, Netherlands
“I’m looking forward to connecting with colleagues from across the Learning and Development field, learning from their experiences and gaining knowledge about topics that are new to me.”
Ashley Cooks
Young Professional, EmpowerHER Strategies LLC , United States of America
“I’m most looking forward to connecting with global learning leaders and sharing practical ways to make scalable, inclusive learning the norm—not the exception.”
Yorick van der Heiden
Young Professional, Npuls, Netherlands
"I’m most looking forward to exploring how digital transformation can empower education to become more adaptive, inclusive, and future-ready—beyond borders and beyond tradition."
Moderator
Laura Overton
Analyst - Explorer - Writer - Facilitator, Learning Changemakers
I am an experienced international speaker, author and facilitator with a passion for exploring, challenging and sharing. I believe that the role of learning leaders in the changing workplace is to unlock the potential of business and people. My goal has always been to help learning leaders ensure that their organisations are equipped and ready through outcome-led and evidence informed practice.
Together we will co-create the future of learning - one where learning leaders will become business critical as they uncover new ways to add value. As the founder of Towards Maturity- I led a global research programme for 15 years, bringing a community of practitioners, policy makers, experts and suppliers together to investigate how learning innovation delivers business value.
I continue to investigate, to explore , to communicate insights and facilitate collaborative change in the industry through workshops, coaching and sounding board work via #LearningChangemakers and as co-founder of Emerging Stronger.
Tracking the L&D learning innovation journey since 2003, I have authored/ co-authored of over 70 major research reports and, as a regular contributor to industry publications I have written over 300 articles. I continue to play an active role in research working with the CIPD and other significant industry bodies.
As an industry change maker, I regularly share good practice findings as a keynote presenter at conferences around the globe and through masterclasses, webinars and seminars. I have served on several advisory boards including the original LPI Capability Map, the CIPD Professional Map and Learning boards, the Online Educa Global Council and the original Distributed Electronic Learning Group for the UK government.
I am an academic fellow of the CIPD, a fellow of the RSA and the first female recipient of the Learning and Performance Institute’s Colin Corder Award for outstanding achievement. I was also the first recipient of the Learning Technology award for outstanding achievement and regularly appear in the top influencer lists for our industry.
I am always willing to work with LearningChangemakers across the industry so please contact me if you would like to find out more about my writing, facilitation, coaching or soundingboard work.