"Earlier this week, Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine held its annual Learning in Practice awards ceremony at the CLO Symposium in Carlsbad, California. The event was attended by more than 300 top corporate learning executives from around the world. For those of you who don't know, the Learning in Practice Awards recognize transformational and visionary leaders in enterprise education. For 2014, there were more than 200 nominations across 15 categories.

Recognizing an Essential Corporate Strategy

There's no doubt that learning and development has arrived as an essential - and effective - corporate strategy. There have been so many advances in this regard - changing policies, new education programs and models - and the ceremony is a chance to recognize everybody who is working incredibly hard to move these important initiatives forward. For us at EdAssist, the evening was also an opportunity to applaud our clients who are having significant impact. Many - like the Apollo Education Group who took a Gold award home in the Provider category for Community Service; and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina who was a finalist in the Practitioner category for Collaboration - received much deserved recognition for their commitment to learning and development. For me personally, the evening provided the chance to recognize my own team as well. I was so proud to see EdAssist take home the Excellence in Vendor Partnership first place (Gold) award for our extraordinary work on behalf of an aerospace client. That the nomination came from our client ; a distinct honor for which we are extremely grateful - signals to me that creating tailor-made programs that serve a client's specific educational, strategic, and budgetary needs is a formula that works on all sides of the equation.

Looking Ahead in L&D

My thanks and congratulations go out to everyone on the hard-working EdAssist team. I also want to thank Stephanie Rose for building such an terrific partnership with this client. Additional kudos to Bright Horizons' own Linda Whitehead and Helen Zarba whose second place (Silver) award in the Practitioner category for their work on a new video-based training program illustrates what creative thinking can do. Awards aside, for all of us, it's now back to business and to continuing to move L&D along as a strategy. In the meantime, congratulations to everyone. As CLO says, their awards recognize "learning leaders who demonstrate excellence in the design and delivery of employee development programs through a combination of qualities such as leadership, vision, business acumen and strategic alignment."

"Here's to celebrating continuing vision and progress."