Joshua Baker

Joshua Baker spent over a decade inside corporate learning and development before he started writing about it. He built and led training functions at mid-size companies across the financial services and professional services sectors, where he was responsible for everything from new-hire onboarding programs to leadership development curricula delivered across multiple regions. He holds a Master's in Instructional Design and has held ATD membership for most of his professional career, earning a CPTD certification partway through his time as a practitioner.

That background is the foundation of everything Joshua publishes at vaeyc. He writes about training strategy the way someone writes about a craft they have spent years practicing under real pressure: with candor about the organizational politics that derail well-designed programs, realism about budget and timeline constraints, and genuine respect for the complexity of changing how a workforce learns. His coverage spans needs analysis, competency frameworks, blended learning design, vendor evaluation, and the perennial challenge of demonstrating training ROI to stakeholders who measure everything in quarterly numbers.

As Training & Development Editor, Joshua also shapes how vaeyc approaches the corporate L&D space more broadly — ensuring that articles aimed at practitioners reflect the actual decision-making environment of an L&D manager rather than an idealized version of it. He is particularly focused on helping smaller L&D teams — those without large budgets or dedicated instructional design staff — find frameworks and tools that scale down without losing rigor.

His editorial standard is simple: if advice would not survive contact with a real organization, it does not belong on the site. Readers working in corporate training return to Joshua's writing because it treats them as professionals navigating genuine constraints, not as students who just need the right checklist.