⬆ Level Up 2026 | Badge of the Month | January 2026

New Year, New Goals!
As 2026 begins, I’m excited to embark on a journey of growth — to become the best version of myself and enhance my skills.

This year, I’m eager to:

1. Deepen my understanding of Employee Experience (EX) surveys and employee engagement, building on my existing expertise in Customer Experience (CX).

2. Explore the digital experience landscape and discover how it can elevate both my personal development and professional role.

I am wrapping up my Masters in Data Science this Spring semester and will be starting a Masters in Industrial Organizational Psychology in the Fall. I pursued my MS DS before a career pivot placed me directly into a full-time employee listening role. Adding a good foundation in psychology will help me pair the “whys” to the “whats” I find when analyzing our data. College is essentially free for me, which is why this will be my third graduate degree

I’m knuckling down to develop some capability in SQL and Google BigQuery to make sure that I’m continuously upgrading my skills. I’m also doing some more work in Tableau Public to upgrade my dataviz skills there (and come up with some women’s baseball analysis to boot, with thew WPBL starting play this summer).

I’d like to continue to lock myself away and enhance my technical skills, hoarding certifications like a dragon. Atlas, I think 2026 will be the year for honing in on relationship and people skills.

I have an 11-year-old daughter (soon to be 12, how did that happen?!) and 11-12 is a challenging age, making friends and being a friend. So she and I will tackle these skills together. As an introvert with a very extroverted child, this will be a wildly uncomfortable year, but I’m excited to see where it takes us.

I was reading my horoscope year in review for 2026 (shout out Aquarius) and the theme was being your authentic self.  That is something I would like to work on for the year.  I’m highly introverted so being able to express myself without fear would be a great skill.  I’m also interested in learning to do some knitting, crocheting, or macrame.  

​@KelliPolk & ​@pamelalbeck, it’s also a goal of mine to work on my people and networking skills this year! 

Networking is a good one!

As I have a few projects lined up this year, my focus is to develop my technical mentoring skills so I can pass on some capabilities to the rest of the team in order to free myself up a bit to work on these projects. 😅

I am committed to becoming an expert in Qualtrics! I am the survey expert on our team and the go-to for all Qualtrics questions. My new manager is a great mentor and helping me figure out the best ways to achieve this goal. I’ll attend the Qualtrics conference in March and I’ve been signing up for webinars and using online resources to grow my knowledge. 

Basecamp was crucial to me gaining mastery of this system. I am not going to tell you that gaining the Expert certification is a requirement to gaining mastery, but I highly recomend taking as much of the basecamp training as you can. X4 was a great benefit to our team the first few years as it opened our eyes to what others were doing in Qualtrics and gave us access to the questions bar (where I would pepper Qualtrics experts with hundreds of questions on things stymying me in the system). I basically camped out there my first year for X4 between talks or peer meetings I was attending. 

💥Happy 2026 All! 🌈. Another fresh start, good moment to come up with 3⃣ New Years Resolutions! 

👪 being a better parent - as any parent can attest it is a continuous learning journey. As soon as you manage to achieve some kind of predictable stability the child is jumps to the next developmental step and the parent has to catch up again, learn new parenting skills appropriate for that phase all while remaining a good husband and partner. Until they grow again! With 2 boys (15 and 17) this will be another year of new challenges and learning opportunities! 

💶 professional growth - being a little bit older than most of my enthusiastic peers here I've got my fair share of degrees, certificates and diplomas. I've reached the point where in all honesty I'm starting to wonder if another one can still make a difference in my career. Don't get me wrong, I've always been a strong proponent of #lifelonglearning but I feel I'm at this point in my career (and age!) where I've reached the tipping point of diminishing returns. When the last company I worked for went into Chapter 11, I ended up as a single contributor at the current company so my key objective is on becoming a people manager again with line management responsibilities!

💪 personal health - having read Outlive by Peter Attia over the Christmas holidays which underscored my own views on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. Although maintaining a healthy diet over the long term, continue to go to the gym regularly and pursue different sports, average 8 hours of sleep every night and to employ stress reduction methods, extending my health and lifespan will remain a work in progress for all of 2026 and beyond ...

In 2025, I had a focus on actually attending the trainings I would register for. So often, other priorities creep up and the first thing to flex is professional development time. I did well holding myself to this goal and will continue this into 2026. My focus will be around CX Strategy, Leadership, and Tech skills. 

Happy 2026! 🎆 

Professionally, my focus for 2026 is to advance my expertise in XM research. I plan to apply these insights to better empower frontline managers, ultimately delivering experiences that make work more fulfilling for their teams.

On a personal level, I am dedicated to navigating the joys and challenges of raising a beautiful 1-year-old with my wife, while also developing and practicing lay leadership skills through my service to the United Methodist Church.

Professionally, I am keen to actually have a go at a Qualtrics certification…

Personally, I’ve a few fitness goals in mind, one being an ocean swim… hopefully without being eaten by something.  

I love this imagery, ​@KelliPolk 🐉📜

​@SteveBelgraver I have heard good things about this book, and have similar goals in 2026! I will add it to my reading list. Good luck conquering all of your goals and resolutions in the New Year!

These sound like worthy goals, ​@pamelalbeck! I am a big supporter of the analog activities, as well! 

​@XM_JoshB Congrats on the new educational adventures! Perhaps a PhD or EdD is in your future? 

Professionally, I want to tackle some new certifications this year -- there is no shortage of available and worthwhile options, so the challenge will be finding the right ones and making time for them. Perhaps starting with our own Qualtrics Basecamp certifications, then perhaps diving into everyone’s favorite topic -- AI 🤓

Personally, I’d like to devote more time to intentional music practice. I play in a community orchestra in my spare time outside of work, and I think 2026 will be a good year to set healthy boundaries with tech. Time away from screens and deeper, more quality time with music is a good, healthy goal for this year, I think! 🎶🎶🎶

I’ve started coaching my daughter’s U14 volleyball team and have been completing coaching courses and working toward my national certification. I played for almost 30 years but have limited coaching experience. I am learning a lot from the courses and my fellow coaches. So excited to be back on the court and spending time with a great group of girls!

In 2026, I’m committing to learning and growing in two areas—one professional and one personal.

Professionally, I want to further develop my skills in product management, with a strong focus on better translating customer needs into meaningful products and services. Deepening this expertise will help me create solutions that deliver real value and improve the overall customer experience.

On a personal level, I’m finally starting a long-standing passion project: building my model railway. It’s something I’ve been planning for years and will likely take many years to complete—but every big journey starts with the first step, and 2026 is the year I begin.

Looking forward to learning, building, and growing alongside this community 🚀

In 2026, I’m really excited to complete the Google Cloud Associate certification.

My goal for 2026 will be to be more present in all things.  I often find myself trying to multi-task.  As a full-time working parent, there are a lot of things that need to be done in a day!  At work I feel like I respect the boundary; when I am at work, I am present with my tasks.  At home is where I tend to check an extra email while hanging with the kids, or step away to take a work call that could have waited.  I will try to reserve (when possible) family time as uninterrupted and then any work can happen after the kids go to bed. 

I will also try to learn more skills to help my kids better.  For example, I have never been a sewer.  But, my daughter asked for a sewing machine for Christmas.  Last night we made hair scrunchies and she was thrilled!  We are both learning how to use her machine, but in a fun way.

I would like to obtain a shrm cp certificate to deepen my expertise based on the learning and practical experience of HR sector over the past few years in 2026.

In addition, we plan to try to complete a full course marathon in the running section that I’ve been doing for hobby and health.

Learn more about project management, starting with CAPM, followed by PMP.