Q&A with the Learning Strategy Lead from Chick-fil-A

Taking learning and performance improvement into the future is Lauren LePage’s goal for her new role as Learning Strategy Lead at Chick-fil-A. Hear her thoughts on AI, L&D strategy, and contextualizing her DevLearn 2025 session to her audience. 

Q: What are your current responsibilities at Chick-fil-A? 

A: Right now, I’m the learning strategy lead on the learning strategy and transformation team. And this team is made up of someone who owns learning standards, someone who owns learning innovation, and then there’s me, the learning strategy lead. Essentially, my role sets the stage for innovation. 

I’m creating a holistic learning strategy three to five years out for Chick-fil-A, and that sets up the roadmap of innovation for us to get to that destination. One of the primary deliverables right now that I’ve got an alpha version of is the learning forecast and trends, and that focuses on putting together everything that’s happening in learning outside of Chick-fil-A. So it’s an agnostic QSR learning forecast and trend document that will go into this learning strategy. I’m not entirely sure what it will look like yet, but I am also working on an alpha version of that, so hopefully I’ll have more before Devlearn.  

My leaders have seen this trend with L&D, and I think a lot of people can relate that L&D has been an order taker to the business. So if someone says, “I need training and this is how I want it,” then L&D is expected to deliver. And I think there’s some tension that’s been happening over, like, probably a decade. There’s a lot of science to learning and development, and there’s an art to it. And so, how do we show up as credible strategic partners in the business? We’re seeing this transformation from L&D being an order taker to L&D as consultants. I haven’t heard of a business who’s mastered this yet. I’ve created a measurement strategy to help get feedback from our clients and stakeholders. So that’s in the works right now to be turned into a standard at Chick-fil-A to help L&D truly become a trusted advisor in the business. 

Q: Out of all those things, what is your favorite part of your role? 

A: What’s really cool about this role is that it didn’t exist previously. I was a Learning Designer, and I thought that Chick-fil-A needed someone looking across the business at learning holistically because we were very siloed in the way that we supported the business. If I were on a team that was assigned to the learner audience of our field consultants, I didn’t know if what I was doing connected to what other people were doing. I was thinking about this role before it even came to be. So that, in and of itself, is my favorite part, really getting to see it come to fruition.  

But there’s a leader at Chick-fil-A, his name is Shane Benson, and he was doing this talk one time, and he said, “We get to do this”. And so it changed my mindset to “this doesn’t feel like a job”, even though we get paid to do this. I get to be a part of the world’s most caring company. I get to partner with people who are focusing on the future, and I get to partner with people outside of and within Chick-fil-A, focusing on the future.  

Q: What are some of your current challenges? 

A: I’ve been in a very reactive world. If there’s a business challenge that requires learning, it’s all hands on deck to get it done. So, everyone’s very much thinking about the present, and when someone comes in and starts talking about tomorrow, it’s hard to connect to that. When I was a Learning Designer, I was the same way. So my biggest challenge that I’m trying to navigate right now is how to support the team, serve their needs right now, and really listen, then help them come up with a plan to get us to the future.  

Q: You’re going to be part of the AI for Learning Summit pre-conference activity at DevLearn, so what’s your advice for L&D professionals who are just starting to use AI? 

A: This is advice for L&D professionals, including myself. I have to tell myself this every day. You don’t have to be an expert in AI, because whenever you start learning about AI, you’re going to be behind. It’s moving so fast. It’s kind of a mindset change for a lot of people to like being a lifelong learner and just knowing that you’re not going to know everything. 
But you do know your company. You do have your own experiences. AI hasn’t lived these experiences. It might be able to create a great story, but you’ve lived the experiences. You know what it feels like to be a human. So channel what you know, and you can find out what you need to know about AI. People need to know that it’s going to be really hard to be an expert, so don’t put that pressure on yourself, and just collaborate and be open-minded to all the possibilities that it could bring. 

Q: Without giving too much of a spoiler, what can attendees expect from your DevLearn session? 

A: I really had to think about what content I am going to give them that will stick on a Friday at 8:30 a.m. It’s about knowing your audience, knowing the environment that your humans are in, and then incorporating that care into your learning. So it’s more about what AI can do and what you uniquely bring as a human. AI is not living your culture. So how can you focus on the culture, use AI to help support that, and then put them together and truly make a remarkable learning experience?