What advice would you give those who are entering the learning field? Robert Burnside

Robert oversees Ketchum’s learning and development function, including Ketchum’s ethics policies and practices. Robert has extensive experience in learning and development, including corporate learning, e-learning, adult development, leadership development, and creativity and innovation. He has applied this learning in a variety of roles including consulting, professional services, and executive management, and since April 2002 in the public relations industry. He worked for 12 years in marketing and merchandising with Wrangler Brand Apparel, and 14 years in executive development with the Center for Creative Leadership, consistently ranked in the top ten globally among leadership providers by the Financial Times. Robert was named partner by Ketchum in March, 2005.

In his role as Ketchum’s chief learning officer, Robert oversees both formal and informal learning. Specifically, he manages:
• Learning and development initiatives to enhance skills and competencies
• Partnerships with universities, for example, Tsinghua University in Beijing
• Development of individuals, teams, offices and regional groupings
• Culture building activities focused on employee engagement and agency success
• Development of digital and social media skills for employees
• Evolving learning from teacher-centric to multi-faceted co-created knowledge
• Yearly mandatory ethics certification for all employees
• Moving learning from a support activity to a business critical asset
• Building effective learning efforts that are truly global in nature

Robert works closely with Ketchum’s regions, subsidiaries and offices to enhance Ketchum’s learning and development processes and to shape learning to meet ongoing and changing business goals. He manages Ketchum University, which provides curricula in leadership, business skills, and client skills for all employees. His current focus is on providing just-in-time learning that provides globally relevant current guidance to agency strategy on the ground. In the past six months he has overseen 1600 client facing employees participating in a social engagement online program named “Ketchum 2016: The Race To Make It Real” which teaches how to build campaign leading creative programs that deploy across all web channels, paid, earned, shared and owned. Participants rate each other’s ideas to create a leaderboard of the best ideas.

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