Elizabeth Fiting, unfiltered
In honor of Women’s History Month, I sat down with the Director of Learning Strategy of Studio 5 (S5), Elizabeth Fiting. For over 15 years, Elizabeth has had a robust career in L&D, acquiring a Master’s degree in Learning Design & Technology along the way. Elizabeth is constantly striking a balance between committing her time and expertise to S5’s Thought Partners and her internal team, and her passion for learning and development shines through in every aspect of her work. Elizabeth and I conversed for a full hour, in which Elizabeth shared tons of genius nuggets and insightful perspectives. For this blog, I’ve consolidated and pulled out some of the most inspiring and informative pieces.
Samantha Grom (SG): To get us started, can you briefly share a little bit about your role at Studio 5 and perhaps include the most rewarding piece and the most challenging?
Elizabeth Fiting (EF): In my role at Studio 5, I lead our Learning Design and Delivery team on the execution of work contracted by our Thought Partners. The most rewarding piece of my role is honestly getting to watch the team develop and thrive, and become great at their jobs. I recently had this realization that for all the reasons I was attracted to L&D work in the first place, wanting to develop people, that really has come to fruition in the most rewarding way by having a really great team I’m leading, and getting to see people grow and thrive. That’s absolutely my favorite part…my role as CLO is helping to create an environment where people can grow and thrive, and that makes me really proud.
The most challenging part is time. It never feels like there are enough hours in the day. As the person who leads the largest team and is responsible for a really big body of work, I am often pressed by having to balance supporting the team and their needs with the strategic work I do with Jesse to grow the business. Time is always a big challenge. I’ve had to leave some of my professional development goals off to the side for the last couple of years to just kind of like maintain what I have to do day to day.
SG: Noting that Studio 5's leadership team is made up completely of underrepresented identities, what impact has this diversity on the leadership team had on your experience and career at Studio 5, particularly compared to previous experiences in your career?
EF: That’s a great question, and I’ll admit that previous companies I’ve worked with have largely had homogenous leadership teams… I was in a strategic role at my previous company during 2020 when George Floyd passed away, and when Black Lives Matter [gained momentum], and I was one of the team members who was in the work of figuring out what the DEI response should be. Unfortunately, I saw our leadership team really stumble, and I think that was coming from a privileged perspective because our leadership team was, with a few exceptions, white and male, with a pretty big age disparity. I think it influenced the amount of influence the female executives had because they were so much younger than the male executives. I think there were a lot of people who were trying to fight a good fight against a lot of people who did not see a problem. I left towards the end of 2020, and started as an executive at Studio 5 in 2021, and I’ll admit, I came in hot because I directly saw the impact on marginalized communities, like we have to do better than what I was seeing happen at my previous company. My two peers are members of the LGBTQ community, so both of them were like “yeah, totally, we are not going to ignore this, these things are important to us.” It was wonderfully refreshing, and continues to be something I don’t take for granted, that my peers making decisions for this company prioritize and value diversity equity and inclusion so highly. I have never once felt like my role as a woman on the team was anything other than celebrated by Jesse and Marcus, they intentionally seek out my perspective…My voice is valued. My voice would be valued regardless of whether I was a woman or cis, or straight, or gay, or whatever, because that’s the world we’re trying to build here, is that everyone has a right to have a voice.
I think we support it because we make it a priority, and we know the work doesn’t stop. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll get to see the perfect world. Like I want to live in Schitt’s Creek, I want to live in a world where who you are is a non-issue. Like, who do you love, what you look like, your gender, your race, all of those things are non-issues. That’s the world I want to live in, it’s not the one I’m living in. But it’s at least the world we’re trying to create at Studio 5, and that’s done with intentionality. It’s done with a lot of consideration and thought from the leadership team to make sure we’re checking ourselves constantly and honoring the perspectives of the people here…I will say that in previous roles, more often for me… Click here for the full interview
