Scaling Learning to 25K+ Employees with a Tiny Team with Kelly Stuart-Johnson and Jamie Forman
Fri Jan 30 2026
In this episode of The Science of Excellence, I sat down with Kelly Stuart-Johnson and Jamie Forman from global learning and development at VML, one of the world's largest creative agencies. Kelly and her team of five support 26,000 employees, delivering outsized impact through creative approaches to learning.We talked about how they moved VML from 9% to number one in adopting WPP Open, their network's proprietary AI platform, across all agencies. Kelly and Jamie shared why they listen for behavior change instead of accepting proposed solutions, how they build simulated environments that drove 8,000 practice sessions, and why being surprised by your data matters.These 5 insights stood out from our conversation:-Build a Team of Owners to Run Like a Bigger, More Agile L&D Team-Find Clever, Low-Effort Ways to Measure Behavior-Listen for the Desired Change, Not the Proposed Solution-Be Hyper Respectful of People's Time-Be Surprised by Your DataTune into the full episode to learn more!
More
In this episode of The Science of Excellence, I sat down with Kelly Stuart-Johnson and Jamie Forman from global learning and development at VML, one of the world's largest creative agencies. Kelly and her team of five support 26,000 employees, delivering outsized impact through creative approaches to learning.We talked about how they moved VML from 9% to number one in adopting WPP Open, their network's proprietary AI platform, across all agencies. Kelly and Jamie shared why they listen for behavior change instead of accepting proposed solutions, how they build simulated environments that drove 8,000 practice sessions, and why being surprised by your data matters.These 5 insights stood out from our conversation:-Build a Team of Owners to Run Like a Bigger, More Agile L&D Team-Find Clever, Low-Effort Ways to Measure Behavior-Listen for the Desired Change, Not the Proposed Solution-Be Hyper Respectful of People's Time-Be Surprised by Your DataTune into the full episode to learn more!