Even when executives say they value learning, training is often treated as a separate support function rather than a key driver of business performance. But, when you look at how organizations actually achieve long-term success and employee retention, learning is everywhere: onboarding, upskilling, reskilling, leadership development, coaching, and change management. That work is too important to be reduced to a checklist item.
For the C-suite and learning and development (L&D) to truly be aligned, at least one senior learning leader needs to be part of the executive team shaping strategy, not just responding to it.
In conversations with learning executives and drawing on insights from Training Industry research, a clear theme emerged: An executive-level L&D leader changes not just how the organization learns, but how it thrives.
How a Senior Learning Leader Elevates the Organization
1. Perspective Between Senior Leadership and the Front Line
Having L&D at the executive level ensures there is someone who can take information from the C-suite, make sense of it through the lens of workforce capability, and then translate it again into experiences that actually work for employees at different levels and in different roles.
Justin Roscoe, CPTM, vice president of learning and organizational development at California Credit Union, describes this as “professional translating.” “Being able to speak to all levels of the organization goes a very long way for a learning and development professional,” he says. “L&D is there as a partner to ensure that the messaging, the change, the initiative not only gets communicated effectively throughout the organization but is executed upon.”
Because L&D touches every role at every level, a senior-level learning leader sees patterns many executives wouldn’t. They hear the friction points in onboarding, the gaps in manager capability, and the performance lapses in systems and processes.
Dr. Kristal Walker, CPTM, vice president of learning and talent development at Sweetwater, explains, “I gained a lot of insight around different types of training programs by understanding employees’ challenges and asking: Why are employees struggling in these roles? Why are managers having a hard time coaching employees? What’s going on internally, and what are some external factors we could leverage in order to really optimize learning?”
Sitting on the executive team means initiatives don’t get stuck in mid-level conversations. Instead, a chief learning officer (CLO) can share organization-wide insights related to:
- What a particular strategy means for how quickly employees can upskill
- How a change initiative will land on the front line and what support people will need to execute it
- The risk if the organization doesn’t invest in this capability now
That “translator” role is critical when executives are balancing competing priorities like revenue, risk, and operational efficiency. A senior L&D leader sits in the center of those priorities and connects them back to skills, behavior, and change.
2. Making Training Proactive, Not Reactive
In many organizations, L&D still operates like a back-office order-taker, becoming reactive, rushed, and often misaligned with the actual problem. A new system launches, and someone notes to “do training.” A compliance incident happens, and mandatory modules roll out. Employee engagement scores drop, so managers receive a job aid on communication skills.
Dr. Walker points out that having a learning leader at the table helps prevent that cycle. “Senior leaders within your organization may only speak the language of business, so they may give orders or send training requests to check boxes from a business perspective. But I think the leaders and the organizations that do well understand the significance of creating a culture of learning.”
Senior learning strategist Kelly Rider adds, “An effective learning leader pushes back on the assumption that ‘training is the answer’ by using analytics to show what the root of the problem could be, such as hiring the wrong people for the role, and refocusing efforts on correcting that cause, rather than defaulting to assumptions that it’s a training problem.”
In other words, the conversation shifts from “What course can we roll out?” to questions like:
- What is the real business outcome we’re trying to drive?
- What capabilities do people need to achieve it?
- Is this actually a learning problem, or are we hiring for the wrong profile, misaligning incentives or overloading systems?
When L&D is a part of the decision-making conversations where strategy is being shaped (not after the fact), they can flag where change management and capability building will be required and what that realistically looks like in terms of time, budget, and support.
3. Connecting Learning to Metrics That Matter
CLOs and senior learning leaders are uniquely positioned to connect skills development to outcomes.
Roscoe notes, “One of the biggest buzzwords of the L&D space is ROI, return on investment. Being able to calculate it is a game-changer when you’re working with executive leaders.” If people can complete critical tasks faster and with fewer mistakes, and that improvement is multiplied across teams and locations, the value adds up quickly.
He points to metrics like:
- Time to proficiency for new roles
- Task time reduction (e.g., cutting a process from 30 minutes to 20)
- Quality indicators such as error rates, customer satisfaction, or deal quality
Learning metrics matter most when they are directly tied to the organization’s goals, not just completion percentages. As Rider explains, “Within sales, for example, we were measuring our new-hire sales program and its impact on quality of hire, time to proficiency, deal quality, deal close, etc. Learning leaders need to have a deep understanding of the business and their goals and use those to guide what is measured.”
A senior-level training professional bridges the gap between employee development and business performance, demonstrating how learning influences productivity, quality, and outcomes. With this line of sight, senior learning leaders can spot emerging opportunities and risks for the business long before they appear in traditional metrics.
Tips for Landing an Executive Learning Role
Even before pursuing a formal executive title, learning leaders can start building the capabilities that CLOs and senior L&D executives rely on every day.
1. Build your business and data fluency.
Multiple leaders emphasized the importance of “learning the language of the business.” Dr. Walker describes her role as dual: She’s teaching others the language of learning while actively learning the language of finance, operations, and strategy to have impactful C-suite interactions.
Rider suggests that aspiring L&D executives intentionally seek roles beyond the learning function in sales, operations, HR, or technology to understand how value is created and measured. That experience makes it much easier to position learning as a strategic lever instead of a cost center.
2. Invest in emotional and cultural intelligence.
Technical skills and business acumen matter, but they’re not enough on their own. Senior learning leaders are constantly navigating personalities, politics, and power dynamics.
Dr. Walker highlights emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence as essential. You’re often the person in the room asking tough questions about who is being left out of opportunities, whose perspective is missing from the conversation, and how decisions will land on different groups of employees.
3. Nurture relationships across the organization.
Roscoe emphasizes the importance of generating relationships up and down the ladder, “seeking to understand” individual roles. The more you understand the day-to-day realities of branches, plants, stores, contact centers, or field teams, the better you can represent them in executive discussions.
Relationship-building also supports your own growth: When people across the business see you as a partner who understands them, they’re more likely to advocate for your voice at higher levels.
4. Prioritize your own development.
Training Industry’s L&D Career and Salary Study found that while many L&D professionals aspire to roles like director of training or CLO, they often report development needs in areas such as strategic alignment, change management, process optimization, stakeholder communication, and business acumen.
Closing those gaps requires intentional investment. Seek mentoring from senior leaders who can provide a strategic perspective, pursue credentials or programs that focus on the business side of learning, and join cohorts or forums where you can learn from real business cases while building a strong peer network.
“When L&D is part of strategy conversations, learning stops reacting to change and starts shaping it.”
Why L&D Belongs in the C-Suite
As work grows more complex and change accelerates, organizations need training and development that’s tightly aligned with business priorities. But this doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when learning is embedded in how decisions are made, how strategies are executed, and how people are supported through change. And that requires a senior learning leader with true influence.
If the goal is to build a workforce that can adapt, innovate, and deliver results, then L&D can’t remain on the sidelines. It must be part of shaping the strategy from the start, because no business outcome is achieved without learning. When learning has a meaningful role in strategic conversations, organizations make better decisions, and employees are better equipped to deliver on them.
By Jenny Ayers, CPTM