Leading Through Transformation | Steve Beard, Martin Whittaker | Win-Win Workplace Summit 2026

Let's do it.

When we started the journey we're on about four and a half years ago, we were a diversified conglomerate. We had a bunch of different brands and businesses across the education and training landscape, and we made a very intentional decision to double down and focus on one smaller element of that business, which was healthcare education. It meant exiting profitable businesses, changing the organization, rethinking ways of work. It really required us to think expansively about how do you take a population of colleagues and employees and migrate them on a journey of near constant change in service of a better end. The place we find ourselves today is we are a healthcare pure play. We're the largest healthcare educator in the United States, training nurses, physicians, social workers, and veterinarians. Despite all of the effort associated with that transformation, we've arrived at a corporate identity that really galvanizes our people. They understand very clearly the value we deliver, they relate very clearly to the customers we serve, and that means they feel a heightened degree of purpose and urgency about the work, which benefits all of our stakeholders.

We've long talked about ways technology would transform education and healthcare. And in fact, I think the results of that have been largely underwhelming. That's particularly true of electronic health records in healthcare. But I do believe that AI is different and it does have the potential to radically transform both industries, and we're privileged to be at the intersection of them. The way we've thought about that is first starting where I think most enterprises begin, asking the question of whether AI is a complement for your value proposition or a substitute for your value proposition, because that will guide every discussion you have from that point forward. We concluded that in our world AI was a complement. It didn't replace any element of our value proposition. And so it allowed us to talk about that technology in a way that I think was really affirming to our people. The first thing we did was to try to invest in a baseline level of AI fluency across the organization. We took the existing set of tools that we had and we encouraged everyone to begin to experiment with use cases with AI in the work they do every day, just to get people comfortable that this is something that doesn't replace them but enhances their value as colleagues. Then from there we began to think about all of the ways in which AI might disrupt education and healthcare, and we began to partner with some of the innovators in AI technology and healthcare to actually train clinical workforce to use these tools in the care delivery environment. Across our organization and across the institutions we partner with, AI is seen as less of an existential threat but as an opportunity that hasn't quite fully been exploited to its fullest just yet.

I think all employees, but particularly younger employees really want to improve and enhance their relevance to the organization. We've had lots of success positioning the technology as a way to make them more productive or give them access to additional data that informs the way they go about their work. We've tried to approach the issue as one of enhancement and augmentation and not as replacement. And I think that has resonated well with our folks because on the one hand, while you can talk about AI displacing entire job categories, all of the evidence we've seen to date would suggest that may not be as clear and present as you might think. Despite all of the investments in AI across the economy, the overall jobs picture remains relatively constant. And there is an argument to be made that AI doesn't mean you need fewer people. It means you have more people doing more and creating more value for your customers. As leaders we have a responsibility to try to find an optimistic frame within which to talk about these opportunities. And I think that goes a long way towards enhancing trust with your employees.

We feel a tremendous amount of pressure to articulate a perspective on AI. You can't go to any conference or participate in any conversation like this without addressing it. But I think the most important element of that is how you address it with your employees. They're reading about it all the time, hearing about it every day, and they want to hear from you: How does this affect us? Is this a risk for me? How should I think about my place in this organization in light of this technology? As part of any responsible AI approach, being candid to the extent you can, transparent and forthright about what the impacts may be for the organization and the people that work there is critically important. We also get lots of pressure to articulate whether we are going to experience any productivity gains as a result of the technology. I actually think that's the least interesting part of the AI story. Companies have improved productivity consistently for decades and undoubtedly they will with this technology. But I think the ability to actually transform your value proposition in a way that really distinguishes you from your competitor set is the more interesting way to think about AI.

In our business, we think one of the most powerful potential use cases for AI is the hyper-personalization of academic journeys at scale. One of the challenges of education, particularly postsecondary, is that you've got a curriculum, a frame through which you train people, but it's a one-size-fits-all curriculum, and every student has to clear that bar, and it's the same bar for everyone. I think what AI promises to do is allow us to completely tailor that experience to meet the unique needs of an individual student, based on their level of preparation, their inherent strengths, the way they like to learn, in some cases based on the language they spoke at home growing up. And as a result, allow more people to succeed in those academic journeys at a scale that to date we've just not been able to enjoy. That's an incredible opportunity for society that I think we as an education company are super excited about.

In the broader corporate environment, I think it's less of a divisive issue. But I do think any great technological wave that puts more distance between those that have access to the technology and the ability to leverage it versus those who don't is something really important. There's been a longstanding tech gap between the haves and have-nots and there is potential that AI only makes that worse. So how do we ensure that the least-resourced, least-prepared, most vulnerable populations in the country have an opportunity to enjoy some of the benefits of this technology and it doesn't accrue to the best-prepared, most prosperous part of society?

Absolutely. I think there are opportunities for government and for industry to ensure that the most powerful attributes of these innovations lift all boats. Ensuring, to the point about personalization, that we're providing that benefit to students in public schools, that we're providing in the healthcare space the ability to access great advice about your health records to folks that maybe don't have access to the best doctors or the best facilities. And I do think the value creation opportunity is sufficiently robust that it should create the kind of surplus value that allows us to extend the benefits to more than just the wealthy and the prosperous.

I don't think so. We talked a lot about this coming out of the pandemic, where we sent everyone home for two years and we only interacted on screen forever. As we started to bring folks back, one of the things we remembered is that a disproportionate amount of all communication is non-verbal. People communicate with one another through body language, through the way they smile, through what they see in front of them, in ways that can't actually be transmitted on screen. As we all learned during the pandemic, while you may be able to maintain existing relationships in a virtual environment, it's very difficult to build them or commence them. Everything you want to do in a high-performing business environment, align around a shared vision, resource people in a way that allows them to do their jobs effectively, chase a set of objectives and then celebrate the wins, that requires ordinary course human interaction. Folks working together, struggling together, celebrating together. And I don't think the technology will ever disrupt or replace that. One of the reasons we enjoy our jobs is because very often we enjoy the people we work for and with. We like the serendipity of bumping into people in the office and talking about the playoff game last night or the latest episode of The Pit. These are things that technology can't supplant, can't replace. We should all be heartened by the fact that there's really no substitute for getting highly engaged, motivated people around the table pursuing a common cause, and that transcends any technological innovation.