AECOM

Kimberly Currier

Learning Experience Designer

Kimberly Currier, Global Head of Talent Development at AECOM, has influenced and been influenced by the way organizations approach talent development and growth throughout her career. Across multiple industries, she’s built talent development programs from scratch while helping achieve organizational success.  With experience at the American Cancer Society, Kimberly-Clark, and North Highland, she has consistently driven learning strategies that align with business goals while fostering leadership and career development. Passionate about adaptability, collaboration, and personalized learning, Kimberly embodies a systems thinking approach and a growth mindset that encourages HR leaders to maintain close connections with the business to create a meaningful impact.

In an exclusive interview with Manage HR APAC, Currier shared her views on HR career growth, AI-driven learning, and adaptive leadership.

Journey in HR and Learning

Each role helped shape my strategic approach and leadership, leading me to where I am today. My journey in talent management and development began when organizations were really just starting to understand the strategic value of learning. A lot has changed for the better in the field of talent development and management, and how companies can leverage initiatives to drive growth, change culture and drive strategy.

My career has provided me the privilege of working at companies with leaders that supported innovation and growth, for me personally and the organization.

At American Cancer Society, I was part of the team that delivered one of the organization’s initial leader development training programs in the 1990s, which  eventually led to a more rounded strategy in HR. I led the led the creation of centralized talent development strategies and tactics building a team throughout the US that could deliver locally. With ACS I learned a lot about distributed team leadership, meeting the business where it is, working with stakeholders to understand priorities and the subtle dance of centralization with regional relevance.

“Staying closely aligned with business needs and being ready to adapt quickly will be critical for HR leaders moving forward”

At Kimberly-Clark, we developed global learning programs, considering how content needed to be adaptable to support a culture or environment, while still creating shared skills,, understanding, and learning across a global organization. The programs designed and delivered at K-C focused on how to drive culture change and adaptable leadership skills like coaching and situational leadership at any level of a career.

With North Highland, I deepened my understanding of the role that HR and development play in professional services companies, where people are your principal asset. Engagement, performance and leadership that extends to clients shaped the NH priorities. At NH I gained valuable insights on pressures of a professional services firm that balance billability, client agility, and the need to invest meaningfully in people to grow and develop their careers.

My time at AECOM has been an excellent opportunity to build our first global programs for leadership and manager development and to shape our first global learning strategy that aligns with the company’s business goals. The AECOM role represents a culmination of my previous experience, calling on the strategies and approaches I’ve learned throughout a 20+ year career to build an award-winning talent development organization.

Challenges in Career Building and Upskilling

For most organizations, there is a growing pressure for staff to be multi-skilled, with the ability to work across priorities In order to achieve this, strategies for upskilling and cross-skilling must live in the HR strategy, including talent identification, mobility and talent development. As AI advances, 0remaining relevant in a rapidly changing workplace requires employees to have a growth mindset, be ready to learn, and be coachable. The future opportunities will rely on people with skills that can work within change and ambiguity to achieve goals.

Teamwork and collaboration will become even more critical. As tasks typically completed by junior staff are replaced with technology, humans’ role will be be even more important within the business to work with clients or customers on high-value opportunities. Employees who understand the role of the team in collaborating and creating unique values that differentiates a business will thrive.  will and

For professional talent development, learning will change considerably as a result of AI Both in how learning is developed and designed, and how it’s delivered. Instructional design is being transformed by technology platforms that can accelerate content creation and delivery. Bots will create highly personalized learning based on someone’s role, career level and current scope of responsibilities. And companies will still need great minds to design effective programs, build cohorts, and build relationships. The role of talent development professionals will be linked to the needs of the business more than ever, providing performance support and development.

High-Performing Teams

As talent development professionals navigate the shift toward more performance consulting and less traditional instructional design we must respond more quickly, stand up resources efficiently, and leverage technology as a true partner in delivering content.

The great news is that talent development professionals will be able to focus on skills that serve professional growth and development fundamentally. The core skills of communications, collaboration, coaching, teaming, system thinking, influence, persuasion, navigating complexity, change, etc., will be even more important in an AI enabled workforce.   These core leadership capabilities equip people, their teams and the clients they serve for the uncertainty of the future of work. 

Advice for HR Professionals and Leaders

A piece of advice I always give is to "know your business.” Sometimes in HR, we become overly focused on HR-specific language or frameworks. You are an employee of a company, and you  must have a deep understanding of the business, its priorities, challenges, and market pressures that leaders face day-to-day. When you understand the future and focus on the business, you’re empowered to focus on developing the right learning strategies to drive success.

Additionally, HR must let go of some of the old ways of working. As jobs evolve faster than we can build traditional training programs, we will need new approaches that keep pace with change. Staying closely aligned with business needs and being ready to adapt quickly will be critical for HR leaders moving forward.