Elevate Your Application: Resume & Cover Letter Best Practices - Career Transition SIG

The lunch-and-learn workshop offers a fresh, confidence‑building approach to telling your professional story through resumes and cover letters that feel clear, compelling, and genuinely reflective of who you are.

We’ll reframe these application documents as powerful self‑marketing tools—ones that highlight strengths, impact, and capabilities rather than repeating generic tasks or job descriptions.

Together, we’ll explore how to transform experience into value‑driven bullet points that resonate with hiring teams and communicate your unique contributions. You will leave this workshop with practical strategies, real examples, and a renewed sense of agency in navigating their job search.

By participating in this session, you will:

About the Presenter

Lola Ivy, M.S., is a facilitator and certified Career Management Coach with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UCLA and a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership and Learning from Pepperdine University. She leads a year‑long cohort‑based professional development program at UCLA and provides individualized career coaching to employees across campus and UCLA Health.

She also serves as Vice Chair of the UCLA Administrative Management Group (AMG), an organization dedicated to cultivating leadership growth and advancement at the university. As a learning and organizational development professional, she is committed to helping employees expand their potential, strengthen their confidence, and thrive as both professionals and community members.

This SIG is a joint effort of the ATD-Orange County and ATD-Los Angeles Chapters and provides support and education to professionals making the exciting transition into the L&D field.

About Your Co-Leaders:

Kesha Thomas Clark is an experienced professional currently working to transition into the learning and development field. Recently, Kesha worked with UCLA’s Office of Undergraduate Admission and the Association for Talent Development—Orange County chapter to facilitate leadership workshops to executive staff and senior managers. Driven by a desire to help people, Kesha is interested in leveraging her unique experience in business and the nonprofit sector to create impactful strategies and learning experiences that support professional growth and organizational success.

James Oakley is an Instructional Designer and eLearning Developer who specializes in the electrical, engineering, and technical spaces. He started out his career as a High School English Teacher and then took his passion for education into adult learning. Most recently, James developed a comprehensive curriculum of eLearning and Instructor-Led training courses for Critical Facility Engineers in Meta Data Centers across the globe. In this space, James makes meaningful and results driven training experiences for Fortune 500 companies.

Earn Professional Professional Development Points

This program is worth 1 Professional Development point. 

Find out more about APTD/CPTD Certifications here.

Each ATD-OC Learning Event will be aligned to at least one Talent Development  Capability, as identified by ATD National.

This program aligns with:

Building Personal Capability:

Developing Professional Capability:

Impacting Organizational Capability:

Disruption via technology will continue to be a reality for organizations and talent development functions. Talent development professionals must have the ability to identify, select, and implement the right learning and talent technologies that serve the best interests of the organization and its people. Practitioners should be able to identify opportunities to adapt and leverage the right technologies at the right time to meet organizational goals.

To find out more about the ATD Capability Model for the Training and Development Profession, visit http://tdcapability.org.

PHOTOGRAPHY RELEASE

As part of your registration, you will be required to indicate your acceptance or rejection of the statement below:

By registering for this event, I hereby give the Association for Talent Development, Orange County Chapter, its clients, agents, and assigns, full permission to use, publish and copyright photographic images, film images, video images, sound recordings, and any reproductions from these materials of me and/or my property or any part thereof, either in conjunction with or without using my name, and make changes or alterations therein and/or alterations thereto Worldwide in perpetuity. Some places these images and recordings may be used and posted include, but are not limited to, the Internet, emails, social media, etc.

If I do not provide permission, I understand I will be seated outside of the field of video.