Trudi Miller

Employee Spotlight: Trudi Miller, Senior Learning & Development Manager

Our Employee Spotlight series is designed to provide a deeper look into our talent here at Annalect across all different roles, teams, and experience levels. You can expect to learn about passions inside and outside of our office walls.

What is your current role at Annalect?

As Senior Manager on the Learning & Development (L&D) team, focused on Marketing Science, I help design, develop, and curate learning experiences, including onboarding and professional development.

Describe a passion you have for the type of work you do and how Annalect helps to feed your passion?

Annalect has a wide range of fascinating tools, technologies, and services to learn about. I love organizing complex concepts into learning experiences so that people can understand them. There’s nothing more rewarding than helping someone have an “aha!” moment – that moment where they recognize how to apply something new in their work.

Can you think of a project you were a part of that you really enjoyed? Why?

An ongoing project I’m excited about involves sharing knowledge across our partner agencies in a variety of formats. It’s enjoyable because I’m able to follow the mantra “form follows function” and use design thinking to propose creative solutions to attain measurable outcomes.

What made you first enter your field? Was it planned or unplanned?

My current role requires transdisciplinary work bridging traditional fields such as education, technology, and social science research. I’ve had a variety of job roles in the past – software developer, technical trainer, research assistant, Ph.D. student, assistant professor – each of which helped hone skills that I rely on today. I can’t say I’ve planned my precise career trajectory, but I can clearly trace the path back to starting computer programming and teaching outdoor education in my teens.

What advice would you give to someone just starting his/her career in your field?

First, get as much experience training different people as possible. The more you experience learners with different backgrounds and learning styles, the easier it is to recognize the importance of varied methods of learning.
Second, be an avid learner yourself. Each of the fields my role touches on are constantly changing: education, technology, media. It’s important to be able to assess and respond to paradigm shifts versus reacting to every proposed silver bullet.

What do you like to do when you’re not at work?

My most time-consuming hobbies are video games and travel. I collect and play video games, especially older consoles. When I travel, often to visit family, I look for environmentally responsible nature and animal encounters. I can often be found communing with wildlife and learning about their habitats.

 

1 comment

As someone who is a former student of Trudi’s, I can say that Trudi has an impeccable capability of taking all of her work and academic experiences and turning it into something practical and beneficial to those she works and collaborates with. I’m not surprised that Trudi’s role with the company involves interdisciplinary experience. Are you sure this position wasn’t created specifically for her?!

Congrats on making the employee spotlight, Trudi, and thank you for making my time, as well as the rest of the CIS crew, at UWSP a memorable and fun one!

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