Maya Thornton — Learning & Development Manager

I build learning systems that change how work gets done.

Maya Thornton · Denver, Colorado

Twelve years designing onboarding, leadership programs, and learning technology for healthcare and financial-services teams. I care less about courses completed and more about what people do differently on Monday.

M.Ed. Adult LearningCPTD certified6,500 employees supported

Learning that starts with the business problem

I lead a team of five at Cascade Health Network, a regional system of four hospitals and thirty clinics. My job is to make sure 6,500 people have what they need to do their jobs well, from a nurse's first week to a director's first budget cycle.

Before healthcare I spent four years at Meridian Financial designing compliance and sales-enablement learning for 1,800 advisors. Both worlds taught me the same lesson: training is only worth building if you can name the behavior it should change and the number that will move when it does.

I'm at my best turning a vague request ("our managers need help") into a measurable program with an owner, a timeline, and a scorecard the executive team actually reads.

Current roleL&D Manager, Cascade Health Network

Team5 direct reports

SpecialtiesOnboarding · Leadership · LMS

PlatformsDocebo · Articulate 360 · Workday

MeasurementKirkpatrick L1–L4 · Power BI

Open toDirector of L&D roles

Programs

Three programs, three measurable results

Each one started with a business problem, not a course request. The details are simplified; the outcomes are the ones I reported to leadership.

Program 01 · Onboarding

Nurse residency onboarding redesign

Cascade Health Network · 2022–2023 · 4 hospitals

The problem: First-year nurse turnover was 31%, and exit interviews kept pointing to the same thing: new graduates felt thrown onto the floor. Onboarding was a 3-day classroom block followed by informal shadowing that varied by unit.
What I did: Interviewed 40 nurses and 12 unit managers, mapped the first 90 days, and rebuilt onboarding as a 12-week residency with weekly skills checkpoints, a trained preceptor on every unit, and a simple readiness dashboard managers could see.
How it rolled out: Piloted on two medical-surgical units, adjusted the checkpoint cadence, then scaled to all four hospitals over two quarters with a preceptor train-the-trainer program.

Program 02 · Leadership

Manager Essentials

Cascade Health Network · 2021–present · 240 managers in 8 cohorts

The problem: Clinical experts were being promoted into management with no preparation. Engagement scores for teams under first-year managers were 14 points below the system average.
What I did: Designed a six-month cohort program: monthly half-day sessions on feedback, scheduling, performance conversations, and budgeting, each followed by an on-the-job assignment reviewed by a senior leader mentor.
How it rolled out: Launched with 30 managers, measured team engagement before and after, and used the results to secure funding for all new managers system-wide.

Program 03 · Learning technology

LMS migration and governance

Cascade Health Network · 2023 · 6,500 users, 1,100 courses

The problem: The legacy LMS had three admins, no content standards, and compliance reports that took a week to assemble by hand. Audit findings were a yearly scramble.
What I did: Led the selection and migration to Docebo, archived 40% of stale content, defined a governance model (who can publish, naming, review cycles), and built automated compliance dashboards in Power BI.
How it rolled out: Migrated department by department over six weeks with a two-week overlap, so no required training lapsed during the switch.

How I work

The same four moves, whether the request is a single workshop or a system-wide program.

Diagnose

Talk to the people doing the work and the people measuring it. Name the behavior and the number before anything gets built.

Design

Pick the lightest format that will work: a job aid, a cohort, a simulation. Prototype with a small group before committing a budget.

Deliver

Equip managers to reinforce it. Learning that is not supported on the floor does not survive the first busy week.

Measure

Report at the level leaders care about: application and business results, not just satisfaction scores.

Twelve years in learning

2020 — Present

Learning & Development Manager

Cascade Health Network · Denver, CO

Lead a team of five designers and facilitators serving 6,500 clinical and administrative staff across 34 sites.
Own the $1.2M learning budget, the LMS, and the system-wide onboarding and leadership curricula.
Report quarterly to the executive team on readiness, compliance, and program outcomes.

2016 — 2020

Senior Instructional Designer

Meridian Financial · Denver, CO

Designed compliance and sales-enablement learning for 1,800 financial advisors across 12 states.
Cut annual compliance training time by 35% by replacing lecture modules with scenario-based assessments.
Introduced Articulate Storyline and a reusable template library adopted by the whole team.

2013 — 2016

Training Specialist

Summit Credit Union · Boulder, CO

Delivered new-hire and systems training for 300 branch employees.
Built the credit union's first structured onboarding path and job-aid library.

Toolkit

Design & delivery

Instructional design (ADDIE, SAM)Curriculum architectureFacilitationTrain-the-trainerBlended learningScenario-based assessment

Technology & data

DoceboArticulate 360Workday LearningPower BIVyondKirkpatrick evaluation

Leadership

Team leadershipBudget ownershipExecutive reportingChange managementVendor managementStakeholder alignment

M.Ed., Adult Learning & Development

University of Colorado Denver

CPTD — Certified Professional in Talent Development

Association for Talent Development

B.A., Communication

Colorado State University

Let's talk about your team

Open to Director of Learning & Development roles and consulting on onboarding and leadership programs. Send a note and I'll reply within two business days.

📍Denver, Colorado · open to hybrid or remote

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