Brent Colescott has spent 25 years asking an inconvenient question: why do most organizations invest so much in learning and get so little from it?
It’s a question that requires critical thinking — the real kind, not the buzzword kind — and it has shaped everything he’s written, built, and argued for across a career that has taken him from the front lines of corporate training at some of America’s largest companies to the inside of the HR technology industry itself. He spent years at SumTotal Systems, one of the world’s largest learning technology companies, and most recently served as Global VP of Learning & Development at WorkForce Software, where he led the function through significant transformation and market recognition.
Along the way, he’s become one of the more plainspoken voices on what the learning industry gets wrong — and occasionally right.
Brent writes from the practitioner’s corner. He’s skeptical of buzzwords, impatient with theory that doesn’t survive contact with a real organization, and genuinely curious about what’s coming next. His Wednesday Words blog, now in its seventh year, has covered the AI inflection point in workforce development, the long-overdue collapse of the degree as a hiring credential, and the persistent gap between what companies say they value in their people and what they actually measure.
He’s been published in Chief Learning Officer Magazine, Training Industry, and HRCI, and has spoken at ATD International, CLO Symposium, and conferences across Asia and Europe.
He lives in the Houston area, is a devoted (and occasionally long-suffering) Astros fan, and believes the most quietly endangered skill in the modern workforce is the ability to think for yourself.