Celebrating One Year of Leadership – ALT CEO Susan Martin

We’re delighted to mark the first anniversary of Susan Martin as CEO of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). With a fresh perspective and a streamlined staff team, Susan is leading the charge for change, redefining how ALT supports its members and stakeholders. Over the past 12 months, she has been working on overhauling the ALT strategy, bringing fresh insight into ALT’s future direction.

Through close collaboration with the Board of Trustees and a strong focus on community engagement, Susan is positioning ALT to embrace member-led change that responds to both grassroots priorities and the evolving landscape. In this blog profile, Susan reflects on her first year at the helm, her vision for the future, and what continues to inspire her leadership. 

How has your first year as CEO of ALT shaped your perspective on the sector?

The past 12 months have confirmed for me quite how dynamic, exciting and fast-moving (sometimes a little too fast) this sector can be. I’ve been involved in learning technology and digital education in one way or another since 2002, yet being in the ALT CEO role has given me a broader and richer perspective. I’m particularly excited about the diversity of careers that are opening up for people, and the increasing opportunity to move between organisations based in different sectors or have ‘squiggly’ careers.  There are still lots of us that are ‘accidental’ professionals in this space, but there is also an ever-growing body of colleagues who are able to plan out an interesting, enjoyable, productive career working with learning technologies.

What’s your vision for ALT in the years ahead?

We are seeing digital education professionals have an increasingly complex set of balls to juggle: rapidly engage with new or evolving technologies; deploy advanced digital infrastructure and tools to improve learner outcomes; advise senior leadership on the impact (both positive and negative) of learning technologies and the wider tech landscape; become senior leaders of their organisations, and collaborate with a raft of commercial stakeholders in the education and training sectors.  ALT has a mission to support people in all of those roles, and the ongoing work on our new 2025-2030 Strategy (due to be launched towards the end of the year) is focused on ensuring that ALT is well-positioned to continue to be the go-to community for new and existing members. Being a community is our biggest strength and, along with the Board of Trustees, I’m looking at ways to enhance how we work together, communicate with each other and collaborate with those outside of ALT.

How do you see ALT’s role evolving in the wider education and technology landscape?

I think that the greater breadth of adoption of learning tech and increased engagement in digital education means that ALT’s role is becoming more important to a wider group of people, and we’ve seen ALT’s membership broaden to reflect that change.  Our members come from many different types of organisations, and ALT must further develop to support not only its existing members and their organisations, but also ensure that it is an association that can effectively support people who join us from beyond our majority sector of higher education.  We actively embrace members from further education, charities, schools, commercial education and training providers, and those based in the learning and development departments of a whole range of organisations (…and more besides). In fact, anyone who engages professionally with learning technology and digital education. The diversity and richness of membership raises exciting opportunities for collaborative projects, learning from each other and opening up unexpected career paths. 

How do you ensure that member and stakeholder voices are reflected in decision-making?

This is absolutely critical to ensuring that ALT is supporting members now and into the future.  I’m currently working on our new 2025-2030 Strategy with the Board, and engaging members and other stakeholders comes up in all of our conversations.  There are already loads of channels available to us, such as the Assembly,  informal discussions with our networks, social media, sector events and JiscMail groups.  However, I do think it is one of those aspirations where you continually feel that you could do better and always want to dedicate more time to understanding what members and other stakeholders need from the organisation.  I’m always open to ideas and feedback.  Even if we can’t act on member input immediately, we are actively revisiting suggestions as the new strategy develops.

What have been some highlights of your first year?

There are a few that stand out: attending ALTC24 about a week after joining ALT – it was certainly a way of meeting a lot of our members very quickly and left me hoping that a good chunk of my job would involve choosing my favourite music for the Thursday Night Show; introducing ‘The Coffee Break’ sessions, both online and in-person, as an innovation space for members to share their challenges and successes when seeking engagement in new initiatives, and a very recent one is launching the website redevelopment project, something that I hope will start to address many of the issues that members and non-members have with searching out information on our website.  

If you were on a deserted island, what’s the one thing you’d take?

This is such a difficult question.  Lots of very practical things come to mind.  However, the biggest challenge that I’d face is a lack of company. So, although this might be cheating (as the ‘thing’ is living), I’d take my dog, Fenna. She’d be able to practice her hunting and fishing skills, as well as feed me – although she is very likely to eat everything she catches herself.  She always makes me laugh, so that will help make the experience much more enjoyable.

Susan’s first year at ALT has laid important groundwork for what’s to come, and we look forward to seeing how her vision continues to shape the organisation’s future. Her leadership is helping to mould an inclusive and forward-looking future for ALT and the wider learning technology community. If you’ve been inspired by Susan’s journey and want to get more involved with ALT, explore our membership opportunities or reach out to us at enquiries@alt.ac.uk.

Future profiles will feature colleagues involved with Special Interest and Members Groups, CMALT holders, ALT Members, Trustees, assessors, apprentices and ALT staff. If you are a current member of ALT and would be interested in featuring in an upcoming post or want to recommend someone members would be interested in hearing from, please contact us at blog@alt.ac.uk.