By Paige Yousey
Learning and development is a field built on helping others grow, but for emerging professionals, the path into that work is rarely straightforward. Many enter the profession prepared to create structure, guidance, and momentum for others, only to find that their own careers are unfolding with far less of a blueprint.
That is part of what makes recognition like the Young Learning Leader of the Year Award so meaningful. The award is presented by the L&D Collective, a free, global community of learning and development professionals powered by 360 Learning. At its core, the community is built on the belief that learning happens most effectively between peers, not just through formal training or top-down instruction.
The Young Learning Leader of the Year Award recognizes emerging professionals who are making a meaningful impact in the field. Recipients are selected based on their contributions to learning initiatives, their engagement with the broader L&D community, and their demonstrated potential as future leaders.
Isabella Barker, learning and development specialist, is the 2026 recipient. She is active across multiple industry groups and has established herself as a thought leader through speaking engagements, published work, and ongoing contributions to the field. Known for her willingness to collaborate and mentor others, she is also involved in the Learning Guild’s Thirty Under 30 Alumni group.
What makes Isabella’s perspective especially resonant is that it reflects a reality many early-career professionals know well: Learning and development may be built on creating structure, but the people entering the field often have to find that structure for themselves.
Learning Without a Playbook
That tension often begins with the flexibility of the field itself. The Learning function offers a wide range of directions, and for many professionals, that openness is part of what makes the work so appealing. But early on, possibility can feel just as disorienting as it does exciting.
“L&D can be as flexible as you make it,” Isabella noted. “There are so many different directions you can go, and that’s one of the best parts of the field. Early on, it’s easy to try everything. But it’s important to find what you’re actually interested in and move toward that. The more connected you are to the work, the easier it is to get other people engaged in it too.”
Exploring widely has value, especially at the beginning. Trying different kinds of work helps people understand where their interests hold and where their strengths begin to take shape. But there is also a point where constant exploration starts to divide attention rather than deepen it.
What Isabella points to is noticing what continues to draw you in. In L&D, that signal often shows up quietly: The project you keep thinking about after the meeting ends. The problem you want to solve again. The type of work that feels energizing even when it is difficult. Paying attention to those patterns can be more useful than waiting for a perfectly defined path to appear.
Mindset as a Compass
If flexibility creates uncertainty, then mindset becomes one of the first real tools for navigating it. Early in a learning professional’s career, growth often depends on how someone interprets the challenges in front of them—and adjusts when the work does not unfold as expected.
“You have to be able to adapt. The work we do is centered around people, so you have to meet them where they are,” Isabella said. “The sooner you can recognize when your approach needs to change, the more effective you’ll be. You can’t stay locked into one way of doing things.”
Adaptability sounds obvious until something that should work does not. The content is solid. The structure makes sense. Still, people are disengaged or not responding the way you expected. That is the moment Isabella is pointing to. It is not a signal to push harder. It is a signal to change something: Shorten what is not landing. Change how you are delivering it. Ask instead of tell. When you start treating reactions as feedback instead of resistance, your work gets sharper and lands the way it is supposed to.
Building Credibility Early
That responsiveness also shapes something else early-career professionals are often trying to build: Credibility. In L&D, credibility does not always arrive with experience. Many professionals are asked to influence decisions, facilitate conversations, and guide others well before they feel fully established themselves. That can make even routine interactions feel high stakes.
When speaking about how newer professionals can build trust before they feel seasoned, Isabella explained: “Confidence is huge. Not overconfidence—you don’t want to oversell and under-deliver—but real confidence in your ability to figure things out.”
That distinction feels especially important early in a career, when inexperience can make people feel pressure to either overcompensate or retreat. What Isabella describes sits somewhere more grounded. Confidence, in this case, is not about performing certainty. It is about staying steady enough to move forward without pretending you already know everything.
She went on to connect that confidence to trust: “People can tell when you believe in what you’re saying. And even if you don’t have all the answers yet, being able to say, ‘I don’t know this yet, but I’ll figure it out,’ builds trust. That honesty, paired with follow-through, is what earns credibility.”
In practice, credibility is built in small, repeatable actions: Naming what you can speak to with confidence, acknowledging what still needs to be explored, and then following through without needing to be chased down. Over time, that pattern changes how people perceive you. The question stops being how long you have been doing the work and starts becoming whether they trust how you handle it.
Finding Your Voice
As credibility begins to take shape, so does something closely related: Presence. At a certain point in most early careers, knowing the answer is not enough. Being willing to contribute, especially in rooms with more experienced colleagues, becomes part of the work too.
“Speaking up is one of the hardest things to do when you
Isabella Barker
don’t feel like you have a seat at the table,
but at some point, you have to decide that you do.
That’s not something other people grant you—
it’s something you take ownership of.”
Isabella’s framing repositions speaking up as less of a permission issue and more of a participation choice. It does not erase the discomfort, but it does shift where the decision sits. Instead of waiting to be invited into the conversation, early-career professionals often have to begin by entering it in smaller, manageable ways.
“The worst outcome is that someone disagrees,” she said. “The best outcome is that you build credibility, show your perspective, and create opportunity for yourself. There’s far more to gain than to lose.”
Applying this requires a shift: Instead of focusing on the possibility of being incorrect, the more useful question is often what is lost by staying silent. In many cases, participation is what establishes credibility, not the result of it. The act of contributing shifts how others perceive your role in the conversation. That contribution can start with offering perspective, asking a clarifying question, or naming something others have not yet said aloud. Over time, those moments build presence and make it easier to participate more fully in higher-stakes discussions.
Growing Without a Mentor
For many professionals, early-career, support can be uneven, informal, or missing altogether. Development can feel less like a structured progression and more like a self-directed effort to keep moving.
Isabella is clear that waiting for a mentor to come along is rarely enough: “You have to be your own biggest advocate. If mentorship isn’t available to you, you still have options.”
She expanded on what those options can actually look like: “That might mean pursuing certifications, reaching out to people in roles you’re interested in, or just putting yourself in spaces where learning is happening.”
Isabella’s practical approach is grounded in personal agency. “The more you invest in your own growth, the more likely it is that mentorship will find you. It’s rarely handed to you. You have to create the conditions for it.”
That often looks less formal than people expect: It may mean initiating a connection with someone whose work you respect, joining a professional conversation without waiting to be invited, or spending time in spaces where ideas are already being exchanged. The structure may not be built for you, but access is often closer than it first appears. Self-advocacy is often where development begins.
Navigating What Comes Next
All of this leads to a larger reality about careers in L&D: They are rarely linear. “One of the biggest advantages of working in L&D is how many directions you can go. There are so many different roles, and the skills you build are incredibly transferable,” Isabella observed.
That expansiveness is part of what makes the field attractive, but it is also what can make early decisions feel harder to interpret. When there is no single track, progress is not always easy to recognize.
Coherence often appears in retrospect rather than in real time. “You might take on work that doesn’t feel like the perfect fit in the moment, but later, you’ll realize how valuable that experience actually was. It shows up in ways you don’t expect,” she said. “And what you think you want early in your career will likely change. The key is giving yourself the space to explore different areas and figure out where you really want to focus.”
Over time, though, that uncertainty changes shape, becomes easier to work within. You begin making decisions without checking them repeatedly. You adjust a session in the moment because you can tell it is not landing. You follow up before anyone has to ask. The hesitation may still be there, but it no longer has the same power to stop you.
At some point, the structure you were looking for no longer feels absent. You realize you have been building it all along in the choices you made, the ways you adjusted, and the things you carried through to completion.
Image credit: sasha85ru
