Why I'm Pursuing an EdD at UIUC

Learning how to navigate the complexity and ambiguity of a professional career throughout one’s life is arguably one of the most valuable skills a person develops. However, there are no formalized curricula on how to build a career—career development is usually learned informally through trial and error. As a freshman in college, I recognized the need to learn this skill on my own, and I became passionate with discovering and enabling ways to develop one’s career, not just for myself but also for others. This led me with spearheading various career-related initiatives that gave me self-driven leadership experience, from serving as President of Future Business Leaders of America at UCLA and launching its inaugural Networking Night to founding Sparkr.org, a nonprofit promoting communal career mentorship targeted to underrepresented groups, such as LGBTQ+ and BIPOC people. After my MBA, I became a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach to build expertise using an industry-recognized talent development framework that can be leveraged in career development programming. This led me to coaching numerous individuals and teams as a freelance consultant, contributing to what became “Strengths at LinkedIn”, forming partnerships with 8 departments and coaching over 1,000 colleagues. These efforts demonstrate my capabilities in developing scalable career development programs at a grassroots level.

Every day at LinkedIn, the leading professional network with over one billion members, I am immersed in an environment where finding talent is a key purpose of the product and developing talent is a key driver of product engagement. My half-decade of work at LinkedIn has contributed to improving the experience of many key moments for a member’s career, whether someone is seeking a job or developing skills to advance in their career. As a program manager in customer experience (CX), I have addressed diverse needs of stakeholders, especially employees, having gained valuable insights into engagement, satisfaction, and performance improvement strategies. Alongside engaging in graduate-level coursework during my MBA, my decade of work experience in consulting and CX has prepared me with the analytical and problem-solving capabilities and the interdisciplinary context in business and people needed to conduct research on complex human resource development issues.

These experiences—academic, professional, and extracurricular—contribute to forming my life’s mission: To advance human potential at scale. As an EdD in Human Resource Development at UIUC, I would formulate an academic perspective to accomplish this mission, codifying tactical strategies to shape a future leadership role in talent development, both at LinkedIn and within American society. Incorporating my personal experiences as a queer Filipino, son of immigrants and first-generation college graduate gives me stronger intrinsic motivation to champion thought leadership that promotes upward mobility and equity in career development opportunities for society at large.

As a Doctor of Education, I will aspire to advocate for broader access to career development opportunities for people like me—people of color, LGBTQ people and first- generation college graduates. Doctoral research would formalize my interdisciplinary interests at the intersection of business, education, and equity, synthesizing my emerging perspectives in improving accessibility to career development opportunities for both individuals and organizations. Scholarly questions that would address this research would span all four major HRD pillars:

• Talent development: What role does continuous learning and skills development play in talent retention and career advancement strategies? How can organizations design personalized learning experiences that cater to diverse employee needs and preferences?
• Organizational development: How might organizations evolve to support the diverse career development needs among an array of audiences within the organizations? How can organizations ensure equitable access to career development resources?
• Instructional development: Drawing from theories and real-world studies, what strategies prove effective in corporate educational initiatives to personalize career development and advocate for equitable opportunities for underrepresented groups?
• Learning technologies: How might talent development professionals utilize technologies, digital platforms and data-driven insights to improve talent development practices, including e-learning, gamification, and AI-driven personalization?

My scholarly interests align closely with Dr. Jessica Li, whose research explores integrating corporate learning approaches to talent growth and employee engagement strategies, thereby unlocking the capabilities of individuals. Specifically, her work in the publications Exploring the impact of training, job tenure and education-job and skills-job matches on employee turnover intentions and In pursuit of learning: sensemaking the quality of work life would directly inform how I could approach solving the scholarly questions I posed earlier. I envision working with Dr. Li to develop innovative strategies that integrate emerging technologies with driving equitability in career development opportunities.

As a scholar-practitioner, I would align my doctoral research with LinkedIn’s emerging strategic priorities, incorporating my research into real-world applications that support advancing LinkedIn’s ‘Skills-First’ talent strategy to realize tangible results. While my MBA and extensive work experience has provided a crucial foundation into how businesses transform and change, I currently have a clear experience and expertise gap in talent development and need further scholarly support to demonstrate my preparedness to solve the evolving challenges in the complex and ambiguous space of talent development. Earning an EdD will improve my ability to compete for leadership roles in LinkedIn’s talent development organization. Eventually, I will contribute to developing a platform that translates corporate career development practices into increasing access to career development opportunities for a wider audience of underrepresented groups, ultimately improving upward mobility and advancing the collective professional potential of our society.

Note: While I have since departed from LinkedIn, I will continue to develop my perspective on the 'Skills-First' talent strategy to broaden my impact industry-wide.