Elizabeth Brinlee – A career of learning and development

A small gesture can go a long way, and a recent compliment made Elizabeth Brinlee’s day.

As a Webex meeting came to an end, a colleague asked her to stay a minute afterward so they could share something with her. They said they had received unsolicited feedback that people found her very approachable, and they were glad she was at the Lab. Just a few months into her tenure as Workforce Development Division leader, Brinlee felt uplifted by her colleague’s encouraging gesture.

As a new community member, she’s continually impressed with our employees’ support for one another and their dedication to our mission. Having devoted her career to leadership, organizational and cultural development, Brinlee feels these qualities are vital to a strong environment and culture.

In her new role, she’s passionate about enabling the Lab’s mission today and in the future through helping employees develop their skills and themselves.

“My personal mission is building people’s capability and capacity to be their best, most inspired selves, because strong individuals lead to strong teams, divisions, organizations and culture,” she said.

In a field that spans both employee, leadership and organizational development, Brinlee walks the talk, and throughout her career she’s continually developed her own skills.

A former college DJ (yes, you read that right), Brinlee studied speech communications as an undergraduate at California State University, Fresno, and earned a master’s degree in the same field with a focus on training and organizational development at San Francisco State University.

She also participated in competitive forensics, or speech and debate, through college and graduate school. Lucky for the Lab, this former debate champ is on the LLNL team now, using her powers of persuasion to help employees communicate, grow, and be their best selves at work.

With experience ranging from corporations to startups, and from individual to organizational development, employee education has been Brinlee’s life’s work, and she has built several programs, teams and functions from the ground up.

“Liz brings important skills, talent, and an external perspective that will help us advance our Lab’s learning and development program,” said O&B Principal Associate Director Cynthia Rivera.

At Mervyn’s, a large retailer, she led the design and delivery of learning and development programs for leadership, stores and distribution centers, including a hybrid strategy that resulted in significant savings for the business. Brinlee also was part of the change in management team that helped transition Mervyn’s from then-owner Target into an independent operation.

During her seven years at Symantec, where she served as director of global leadership and employee development, Brinlee partnered with leadership to expand learning and development offerings. These included soft skill development, growing a Coaching Center of Excellence with more than 50 internal coaches and transitioning the company’s in-person training program to hybrid/blended solutions to meet evolving business needs.

At Tonal, a fitness startup supported by early investors such as Steph Curry, Lebron James and Serena Williams, Brinlee handled leadership/executive coaching, talent management, enterprise leadership and development, retail and sales training and executive leadership development.

Working in government is offering Brinlee another welcome angle to her experience in employee development, and she’s excited about the Lab’s unique combination of maturity in some areas and room for growth in others, in comparison with the private sector.

For example, while many employees have been here more than 20 years, the surrounding tech culture sees employees changing jobs much more frequently. And with half the Lab at under five years of employment, leadership is concerned with how to retain a more mobile generation.

“It’s really about helping people discover how they can learn and grow, feel connected, engage, and have a multidecade career here,” Brinlee said, echoing Lab Director Kim Budil’s goals for longer worker retention.

Brinlee is enjoying getting to know the Lab, and she’s also excited about creating change in a place where things traditionally move slowly.

With the staunch support of Rivera, Budil, and Chief Human Resources Officer Larry Durham, Brinlee is looking forward to evolving the Lab’s current learning and development programs into ones that will further empower employees to reach their potential, both professionally and personally.

“In partnership with leadership and employee groups across the Lab, Liz and her team have tremendous opportunities to transform the foundations of our leadership pathways; development offerings and overall talent initiatives both for the current workforce as well as the workforce of the future,” said Durham. “What an exciting time to be at the Lab and contribute

– Kimberly Moore