I started in classrooms — real ones, with students who weren't interested in compliance, only in whether what I was teaching meant something to them. That question has never left me. Fifteen years later, I'm still asking it. The classrooms look different now: conference rooms, clinical training suites, leadership cohorts, virtual delivery platforms. The question is the same.
My work spans healthcare, K–12 education, corporate learning, nonprofit leadership, and the performing arts. Each environment taught me something the others couldn't. Healthcare taught me that bad learning design has consequences. K–12 taught me that psychological safety comes before performance, every time. Corporate taught me that stakeholder alignment is part of the design work, not a prerequisite to it.
I run Rooted Growth Consulting — where I work with organizations to build L&D systems that actually change behavior. I also publish Learn with Maydwell, a blog and podcast for leaders navigating hard transitions: conflict, unlearning, the shift from directive to dialogue.
Outside the work: I play and teach trumpet, spend too much energy on Philadelphia sports, and keep looking for the problem nobody has named yet.
