The nation’s collective early talent development expertise under one roof for two days of learning and sharing.The LDP Summit is the annual conference for professionals who manage or support early career talent development programs. Invest in YOUR professional development at the 13th annual LDP Summit in Minneapolis, MN on May 8 & 9, 2024.
The 2023 conference welcomed 153 people from 73 organizations. The 2024 LDP Summit will be held in Minneapolis on May 8-9. See the agenda below!
Who Comes to the LDP Summit?
“Thank you for another great event. I have been to this event for several years and never leave disappointed. It is always great to take time to learn and network with others.”
Connie Gonzalez, Horizon Therapeutics
“This community’s passion for developing early career talent is palpable; we left energized to tackle our work with new ideas and a fresh perspective, and were happy to share some of our learnings along the way.”
Delaney Buenzli, Abbvie
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Hosted at
Offered again in 2024 due to popular request! Getting a program started on the right footing can make all the difference between success and trouble. With the LDP Connect maturity model as a backdrop, this full-day workshop will get you focused on the key foundational questions to setting up and running an impactful (and measurable) early talent development program. With an emphasis on clarifying your program’s goals, you’ll be guided through considering proper program structure, curriculum design, and community building among stakeholders. If you’re new to the world of early talent development programs, or if you’re looking to re-vamp an existing program that may need recalibration, don’t miss this workshop at Medtronic offices in Minneapolis. Facilitated by early talent development experts at Wronski Associates – a firm with 40 years of experience building and running early talent programs.
Kuda Biza
Many of us in early talent management feel threatened by AI. Are program participants submitting work that is genuinely their own? Can we trust what new applicants send us during the recruitment process? Has corporate counsel put everyone on eggshells in fear of intellectual property risks? In these early days, sometimes it feels like AI is creating more problems than it solves. But behind the concern there’s a tantalizing spark of possibility…. the allure of being able to customize at scale… the “what if” that seems to be lurking over the horizon. For our opening Keynote address, LDP Connect welcomes Kuda Biza – Entrepreneur, Tedx Speaker, and Philanthropist – for an exploration of the possibilities for AI in supporting early talent development. Early talent pros operate amid constantly swirling circumstances and the complex interests of many constituents. Could AI help us better discover and leverage the intersections? Join us!
Christine Archer, MSHRM
The core purpose of early career talent pipeline programs is to funnel capable and motivated employees into the business. But that’s an outcome with many competing variables that mostly fall outside of our direct control (particularly when the economy is soft). As businesses cut back, and hiring volumes drop, how can we seize creative ways to ensure that both the business and its early-in-career talents maximize their experience together – even when finding post-program roles is difficult? Join Christine Archer, Global Head of the SAP Internship Experience Program (SAP iXp), for a look at several initiatives she and her team employ to build and market the value of her early career talent – even when conversion options are low. Using the SAP iXp as a backdrop, session attendees will leave with a better understanding of how to create value in an early talent program, without losing sight of conversion as the ultimate goal. Learn how to take control where it’s possible, and how to build influence when it’s not.
Walter Gunter
Leadership development teams often speak a different language than the finance leaders responsible for maintaining or expanding their funding. When that gap isn’t bridged, the resulting misunderstanding of value can lead to the reduction or elimination of programs that are valuable to your organization’s bottom line. How can you ensure that you consistently communicate your program’s value in the vernacular of finance – the language of investment? Join Walter Gunter, Head of Finance Talent Strategy at CVS Aetna, and a Finance and HR polymath on a journey to translate and connect your talent development wins into the business results they drive. Tell your program’s story in a way that clearly defines its business impact and return on investment.
Jessica Lepine-Elfus
Michele Williams
If there is a constant theme to the lives of early talent program managers, it’s “change.” Whether moving participants to new rotations, adapting to the characteristics of the latest generation of hires, tweaking a curriculum, or adjusting to a new set of executive sponsors, sometimes it seems like more is in flux than in place. Inflection points in a program bring risk, but also opportunity. If we have the courage and skill to manage big changes in our program, we can ensure its survival and success. If we can’t change effectively, we risk becoming obsolete. The good news is that “change management” is a learnable skill. In this interactive session, Jessica Lepine-Elfus, certified change management practitioner and former early talent development leader, and Michele Williams, certified change management practitioner and Manager of Talent Management at Cardinal Health will take us through leading successful change. Using a real example such as a major, program transformation at Cardinal Health, Jessica and Michele will take you through the steps of smoothing transition and emerging stronger from disruption.
Ryan McCool
One characteristic of exemplary leadership is the ability to keep composure when all seems to be falling apart. Leaders in our military prepare themselves to think clearly and act decisively in the face of chaotic circumstances. Although it’s hard to imagine anything happening in our programs that could genuinely be called a “crisis,” we might find ourselves in high-pressure situations where others look to us for leadership and resolve. Did a program participant make a high-profile mistake? Did the program’s supportive executive team just leave the firm? Are your program evaluation metrics showing weak performance in a cost-cutting environment? Join Ryan McCool, former Marine officer and LDP participant for an exploration of effective leadership during crisis. Learn a “selfless leadership” approach that will help you navigate high-pressure situations with poise, and train your LDP’s to do the same.
Miranda Eisermann
Part of LDP Connect’s mission is to help community members with their own professional development. Happily, anything we learn about bettering ourselves is often practical in helping us develop talent in others. When was the last time you stepped out of your internal coaching role to examine your own personal brand? What do you value, what are you passionate about, what are your strengths, what do others appreciate about you, what do you want to be known for, and how would others describe you? Spend some time re-aligning your values with your career trajectory through the guidance of Miranda Eisermann, Talent Development Team Lead at Trane Technologies and architect of a successful personal brand development seminar for Trane Technologies employees. Leave the session more confident about communicating your own brand, and better equipped to promote the brand of your program and participants as well.
Patrick Cox
Serving the ever-growing community of people who touch our programs in some way can get overwhelming – particularly with diminishing resources and with ever-increasing expectations. Our program alumni in particular seem to be getting increasingly more attention, and their population grows every year. We want to support program alumni because their success is our program’s success; and we often need their direct support to make our programs operate smoothly. How do we engage alumni to increase their impact and influence in the organization without over-burdening our limited program resources? In this session, Patrick Cox, Group Supervisor of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab’s Discovery Program, will share his team’s approach to engaging alumni with very little bandwidth from program leadership. Learn how to create an effective alumni steering committee through an “organizational championing” model. Discuss how providing light support and guidance to your alumni as they pursue their own objectives can bring rewards to your program.
Allen Morgan
Beth Ivers
Stephan Wronski
Could your program’s curriculum use a refresh – or maybe even a “do-over?” Maybe you’re finding that the business moves faster than your curriculum, or that frequent changes in stakeholders have disrupted the stability of your participants’ development plan – and perhaps even disrupted the program overall. Making “real projects” the foundation of your program’s curriculum is an innovative way to tie your program to the business and can lead to deeper participant networks, stronger executive buy-in, higher program visibility, and ultimately more business impact and increased investment. In this session, Stephan Wronski, Beth Ivers of Wronski Associates will be joined by Allen Morgan of Pacific Life to share how they have designed Pacific Life’s ITLP curriculum around real-world problems sourced from within the business. The strategic decision to base learning on real projects has been instrumental in allowing this relatively new program to take root and flourish, and to do so in an organization without much history with LDP’s nor with early career talent in general. It has also allowed the program to thrive amidst significant change in executive leadership and sponsorship. Join this session to learn why this strategy was deployed, how it has been effectively implemented, the challenges overcome, the investment and timelines required and how you might do the same.
Sholeh Dadressan
Why does it seem like just as your program establishes itself, the business priorities change? In our increasingly disruptive business world, nothing stays in one place for very long. Given that our programs are strategic in nature, we constantly need to be forward-looking to make sure that our program’s “product” is still meeting the demands of our stakeholders. Even well-entrenched and powerfully-branded programs need to retain their flexibility. If you’ve been feeling like you’ve been chasing instead of leading, join Sholeh Dadressan, Early Talent Programs Lead at GSK’s US Pharmaceutical Business, for a journey into the profound transformation of GSK’s Flagship “Esprit” program. When do you know that it’s time to change, how do you know what changes to make, and how can you hold together your program stakeholders so that they support the program’s new direction? Leave this session with insights on how to keep your program aligned to the business.
Ilona Jurkiewicz
Ana Garcia
Unlocking hidden potential in early career professionals, especially amongst those who have not had all the advantages, demands an effective mechanism for building self-awareness, advocacy, and inner confidence. How can a focus on skills development improve outcomes for early talent programs? How can we better identify hidden skills in new recruits, prioritize them, showcase their abilities and accelerate their development? In this session, Ilona Jurkiewicz, President of Cappfinity – Americas; and Ana Garcia, Industrial and Organizational Psychologist, will take us deep into the architecture of a tech focused skills-based approach to early talent development, sharing insights captured from an array of client engagements. Leave the session with a better understanding of how a focus on skills can lead to better and highly effective and functioning teams, higher retention, and more optimism!
Brittany Forbis
If you sometimes feel like you’re planning your program’s future with a blindfold on, you’re not alone. Rarely do we hear of an early talent development leader having a seat at the workforce planning table. In fact, we find that many companies don’t even have a workforce planning table at which to be seated! Because most early talent programs have a mid-to long-term payoff horizon, some glimpse of the company’s intended talent future is important to answering basic questions like “how big should my program be?” and “how long should it take to complete it?” and “what should program graduates have learned to prepare for critical roles in the organization?” In this interactive session, Brittany Forbis, Director of Workforce Planning and Talent Management at enGen, will share her team’s recent experience in carving out early talent’s contribution to the company’s larger workforce plan. How do you right size using data? How do you fit your early talent programs into a larger talent development plan? Leave this session with a better understanding of how to integrate with talent planning, and how to find your own way if that planning is opaque!
Jordan Blair-Paladino
Dan Beaudry
Every two years, the LDP Connect community participates in the LDP Survey – a unique study of practices related to the positioning, management and evaluation of early career talent development programs. The 2024 data includes information collected from 169 development programs from 97 marquis employers across the country. In this session, we’ll explore what the data tell us. What is a “good” post-program retention rate? What activities are correlated with “success?” How diverse is the typical program? What program inputs are correlated with program success metrics? And many other insights. Join us!
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Minneapolis MN, 55407
Questions? Please contact [email protected]
Because you need support and validation! The life of an early talent development professional is challenging. You hold together a community of people at multiple levels of seniority, and the stakes are high. Early talent developers are coaches, sales people, recruiters, career counselors and brand managers all wrapped into one. The job is big and no one understands you better than your peers. Invest in attending the conference and you’ll walk out with ideas, friends and a whole bunch of positive energy.
Although our conference includes content related to early talent acquisition, we are not a “campus recruiting” conference. The LDP Summit was founded in 2012 to focus on early talent development and how to optimize the structured programs that exist to promote it. There are no university career services professionals at the LDP Summit, and the vast majority of our content is produced and delivered by members of our community – other early talent development professionals like you.
Here is a link to the agenda of this year’s conference. You can also see past agendas for 2023, and 2022. LDP Summit sessions cover many tactical issues in running successful early talent development programs, and often tackle larger strategic questions about early talent development in general.
If you have more questions about the LDP Summit or about the LDP Connect community, please contact us at [email protected].
LDP Connect includes professionals from many of the world’s marquis employers, including 40% of the Fortune 100..
A monthly digest of ideas from the early career development program community.
© LDP Connect, a division of WDR Enterprises, LLC - All Rights Reserved
Rention rates, NPS scores, Diversity metrics
Curiculum elements, Program structure & more!
From 165 early talent development programs
Across 97 organizations and 10 functional areas
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