Cristina Colquhoun, former Teach For America (TFA) middle school science teacher/curriculum specialist, discusses her journey taking the leap of faith out of the classroom into instructional design. She expresses the importance of continually investing in your future by learning through blogs, webinars, listservs, and advancing your skills.

Scott Luberto, former Teach For America world high school history teacher turned, provides many great pointers for teachers who are in the shoes he once was in. Two key takeaways to his success are to always stay curious and to position yourself as a business partner with executives.

Are You “Good” at Social Media? In the world of social media, many times we find people, thought leaders, and business plastered all over our news feed. Are they just making noise because they are “good at social media” so they appear in our feed or are they showing up in our news feed because

From Fashion to Paraprofessional/Educator to Tech Trainer to Learning Experience Design Operations Manager Lisa started in fashion merchandising, then became a paraprofessional in education, and now has over 20 years of program and operations management experience. She has both domestic and international experience. How did you get into teaching? I majored in Fashion Merchandising and after

From Social Worker to Social Studies Teacher to Designing Learning Solutions in a Nationwide Organization Leah started working as a social worker, then got into teaching social studies to our youth. After about 10 years, she transferred her skills along with additional education into adult learning. How did you get into teaching? After graduating from

From High School Language Arts Teacher to Instructional Designer Entrepreneur Chris taught high school language arts then ended up working as an instructional designer. Eventually, he had a vision to go out on his own and start his own company, and he did just that! His company now works on instructional design projects with clients

From Tech College Adjunct to Blackboard Product Designer Most people interviewed started teaching at the K-12 level. Melanie started her teaching career as an adjunct at a tech college. Currently, she is a product designer for the LMS Blackboard. How did you get into teaching? My mom taught elementary art for almost 20 years, so

Transition from College Curriculum Support to eLearning Developer Many of us in the instructional design and elearning industry just happen to stumble upon the profession or somehow find out about it accidentally and then realized we finally found “our thing.” Gemma’s journey is a perfect example of this. She also stresses the importance of reevaluating