31 People to Follow in Customer Education
Great teachings start with great learnings. If you’re an education or L&D leader, the best thing you can do for your customers is invest in yourself, so you can invest in them.
Between social media feeds, online academies, books for the bedside, and podcasts for the road, more content is available than ever. Yet, your time is limited, and not all resources are made equal. Where do you even begin?
When in doubt, look for the leaders that others rave about. (Don’t take my word for it; I asked the LinkedIn community and several names came back, again and again.)
31 Must-Follow Customer Education Leaders
From tech leaders at Fortune 500 companies to various creatives, founders, and consultants, here are the names in education and L&D you simply shouldn’t miss. Click on each name for a link to their social media. Go ahead and give them a follow!
1. Danielle Evans
Danielle is the Director of GTM and Customer Enablement at Sendoso. As director, she’s responsible for leading a team that covers all aspects of education, ranging from self-paced learning to webinars, knowledge bases, and in-app education.
With that leadership comes some terrific learnings! She posts regular updates about the Sendoso team on LinkedIn, and also plugs other top-tier thought leaders in the space.
2. Eric Mistry
Eric is a Customer Success Manager and AI & Automation Transformation Lead at Zapier. Long before artificial intelligence hit critical mass, Zapier made workflow automations easy, and they’re only continuing to innovate today.
When he’s not actively helping his clients, Eric uses his “incurable LinkedIn habit” to curate a bi-weekly customer education newsletter that is chock-full of great insights. Check it out here.
3. Adam Avramescu
Adam quite literally wrote the book on customer education. With a career spanning big names like Slack, Personio, Checkr, and Optimizely, he knows a thing or two about developing best-in-class learning experiences for customers.
His LinkedIn posts include upcoming events, product announcements, job postings, and much more. He also hosts the Customer Education Lab podcast.
4. Vicky Kennedy
Vicky’s background speaks for itself. From Meta and Amazon to Intellum (yes, us!) and DataCamp, she’s helped build education strategies from the ground up.
As an enterprise education architect, she works with Fortune 500 clients to design terrific content no matter the scale of their operations. And now, you too can learn from her. She shares learnings via LinkedIn and also hosts her Echtus Educates series on YouTube.
5. Talya Reynolds
Talya has a wealth of customer education experience from her time at Homebot, metadata.io, Cube, and Pendo. In her most recent role at Pendo, she led a team focused on AI and automation, and shared her experiments and insights with us all on LinkedIn.
If you’re interested in testing your way into the future of customer education, Talya is worth a follow.
6. Kevin Dunn, PMP
Kevin is the Director of Digital Programs at Airtable, where he leads teams responsible for community, onboarding, education, artificial intelligence, and more. Prior to Airtable, he spent eight years at HubSpot, much of which was dedicated to HubSpot Academy.
Follow him for updates on his people, their education wins, and other breaking news in the world of customer education and AI.
7. Christie DeCarolis, MSIT
Christie is a Learning Experience Facilitator at Sendoso, responsible for client onboarding, platform adoption, webinar growth, and more. Before Sendoso, she spent over a decade at Rutgers University, where she designed curricula for faculty and students alike.
Follow her for thought leadership on AI, design best practices, webinar plugs, and other terrific resources.
8. Samantha Murray
Samantha is the VP of Education Strategy at Gainsight. Before then, she worked at equally big names, including Docebo and Shopify. She’s worn nearly every hat you can wear in tech, including founder, advisor, head of marketing, and head of revenue.
If you need advice not just on how to build education, but how to advocate for it across the business in a post-AI world, she’s a must-follow.
9. Melissa Kruminas
Melissa is the VP of Learning Experience & Enablement at Litmos, an AI-powered learning platform. Her career has spanned L&D, product marketing, go-to-market strategy, and more.
She posts regular thought leadership, often tying lessons to personal anecdotes and life stories. If you’re looking for engaging content that’s smoother than a warm cup of tea, look no further.
10. Courtney Sembler
Courtney is the Head of Learning & Content Strategy at Zoom. Prior to Zoom, she spent a decade building up HubSpot Academy—first as an educator, then as a director.
Follow her for customer education tips, life updates at Zoom, and above all else, great stories.
11. Clea Mahoney
Clea is an educator who has designed and delivered learning experiences at NYU, Columbia, and various other organizations. She was mostly recently Learning Experience Design Manager at Rewst, an AI-powered automation platform.
Follow Clea for speaking engagements, AI design tips, and other insightful posts. Also tune in to her podcast, The Learning Rabbithole.
12. Blair Mishleau
Blair is a Senior Community Education Manager at Patreon, where he’s responsible for onboarding, content governance, and more. Prior to the tech industry, he worked as a teacher, which ignited his passion for learning and development.
In addition to various other posts, check out Blair’s weekly #CustomerEdQuandary series, where he tackles a tough issue in the education space.
13. Justin Seeley
Justin serves as Senior eLearning Evangelist at Adobe, helping clients leverage powerful tools like Adobe Learning Manager through a mix of product demos, keynotes, webinars, and more. With past roles at Walmart, Snap, Twitter, InVision, and LinkedIn, he’s driven education initiatives at some of the biggest names imaginable.
Follow Justin on LinkedIn and subscribe to his Learning by Design newsletter, delivered weekly.
14. Roberto Aiello
Roberto is a Senior Learning Experience Designer at Personio. Before Personio, he spent years at Zendesk, working his way up from customer trainer to Manager of Instructional Design while the company grew across EMEA, LATAM, and APAC.
What I like most about Roberto is that he doesn’t assume a course is always the answer. He starts with the customer’s problem and works back from there. He’s also generous with what he knows, with more than 150 mentoring sessions behind him for people in 29+ countries, and recognition as an ADPList Top 1% Mentor. Follow him for design-led thinking on customer education.
15. Erika van Gijlswijk
Erika is a Learning Experience Designer at Sendoso. In her roles past and present, she’s led campaigns, designed academy content, managed webinar programs, produced newsletters, written blogs, and more. Putting the rest of us to shame!
Check out updates about her work—and customer education at large—over on LinkedIn.
16. Mark Dearlove
Mark has spent 30 years in learning leadership, most recently running global academies and education teams at Spryker and Tealium. Today he runs The Learning Stack, an independent consultancy and media business that reviews learning technology. He helps learning leaders at start-ups and mid-market companies make better buying decisions.
Mark is building The Learning Stack in public, so follow along for honest reviews, hard-won lessons, and a practitioner’s view of the learning tech market.
17. Kristine Kukich
Kristine helps companies scale their education programs. She also manages conferences for the Customer Education Management Association (CEdMA). And, perhaps most importantly, she co-hosts the Mixology YouTube series with yours truly! (We mix drinks while talking about the state of customer education and customer marketing. It’s as delightful as it sounds.)
Kristine is a dear friend of mine, and her content is among the best in the business. Show her some love!
18. Melissa Milloway
Melissa heads up Learning Strategy and AI Product Development at Microsoft. Previously, she managed learning experience design at another tech juggernaut, Amazon, with a year at Miro for good measure. To say she has her finger on the pulse of L&D would be an understatement.
Follow Melissa for AI tips, video clips, stories about her time at Amazon, and so much more.
19. Michelle Kostya
Michelle is Senior Director of Digital Customer Success at Gainsight. She previously managed Customer and Partner Education at Shopify, and before that, she led global marketing for KPMG. She’s led enterprise training at Hootsuite, scaled social media for BlackBerry... she’s practically done it all.
And that means plenty of great learnings for you. Follow her for education stories, resources, and tips.
20. Anamaria Dorgo
Anamaria is the founder of Handle with Brain, an experience design consultancy that helps clients bring their education initiatives to life. She’s also the L&D Manager at Adyen, a fintech platform.
Follow her for education insights, podcast and webinar recommendations, and plenty of cool events catered to L&D. Check out her L&D Shakers event calendar.
21. David James
David is the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, as well as the host of The Learning & Development Podcast. Before founding Looop (which was acquired by 360Learning), he spent nearly a decade managing learning and development for The Walt Disney Company.
Part visionary, part L&D strategist, David has insights for big-picture and detail-driven educators alike. Follow him to join nearly 40,000 others who get daily learnings.
22. Hadiya Nuriddin
Hadiya is the CEO of Duets Learning, a learning and development consultancy. She’s written the book—several, actually—about effective learning, and is also a speaker and lecturer.
If you’re building a program and want to hone the learning experience from end to end, Hadiya is a terrific leader to know.
23. Casey Trujillo
Casey is the SVP of Strategic Partnerships at BrainStorm, an AI-powered learning and development platform. With a 15-year tenure at BrainStorm (and counting!), he has unprecedented insights into when learning works, and when it doesn’t.
In an AI-native age, Casey’s teachings are more valuable than ever. Check out his weekly posts to get ahead of the curve, and subscribe to his SaaS Therapy podcast.
24. Dr. Philippa Hardman
Philippa is an independent learning researcher who studies how people learn, and how AI changes that, for better and for worse. She advises executive teams at organizations including BCG, Bain, KPMG, Pearson, the UN, and OpenAI. Her AI Bootcamp for L&D on Maven has trained more than 3,000 learning professionals across 30+ cohorts.
Follow her on LinkedIn, where she’s a LinkedIn Top Voice, or subscribe to Dr Phil’s Newsletter, a free weekly Substack with more than 30,000 readers. If you’d rather start with something you can watch, her TEDx talk on AI and education is a good place to begin.
25. Todd Kirk
Todd is the Vice President of Software Engagement Advisory at BrainStorm. Much like his colleague Casey, Todd is laser-focused on helping clients upskill and navigate change management.
Follow him for daily insights. He co-hosts the SaaS Therapy podcast with Casey, so give them both a listen!
26. Anesa Abdullah
Anesa is the head of Customer Education and Strategy at Yoodli, an AI roleplay platform. At Yoodli, she helps clients level up their workforce through high-stakes coaching and training simulations.
Roleplaying has always played a key role in education, and it’s exciting to see how AI can further personalize these experiences. Follow Anesa to keep up with this tech; she also writes regularly via Substack.
27. Dave Derington
Dave manages customer education at VAST, an AI-native operating system. He’s also the co-founder of the Customer Education Lab, which he hosts with Adam Avramescu.
With experience implementing learning strategy for Atlassian, ServiceRocket, Outreach, and Gainsight (among others), Dave is a goldmine for great customer education advice.
28. Nicole Papaioannou Lugara, PhD
Nicole is the Founder of Your Instructional Designer, a consultancy that helps clients “make learning that matters.” With experience leading L&D functions and teaching at St. John’s and other universities, she understands the power of effective, personalized education.
Follow her for daily posts, book recommendations, upcoming events, and more.
29. Dr. Pooja Jaisingh
Dr. Pooja is the Founder and CEO of the Digital Learning Nook, a consultancy specializing in AI-native eLearning. With instructional design experience at both Adobe and JPMorgan, Dr. Pooja has walked the walk so that you can too.
In addition to regular LinkedIn posts, she has a self-paced course for those looking to embed AI into their education strategy.
30. Brett Strauss
Brett is the Director of Strategic Accounts at Pifini, an AI-native partner sales enablement platform. A regular poster on LinkedIn, Brett gives education advice through a unique, sales-oriented lens.
Follow him to stay current not just with customer education, but customer enablement.
31. Shannon Howard
If you have room on your follow list for one more, I’d love to connect! It’s been a privilege getting to know many of the thought leaders listed above. If we haven’t had the chance yet, please reach out. I share regular stories on LinkedIn that I hope you’ll enjoy.
When I’m not on LinkedIn, you can find my writing here on the Intellum blog. We also run monthly webinars, which may introduce you to even more new faces worth following!
