MEMBERSPOTLIGHT
Sam Haider brings more than 30 years of diverse global training experience to his role as senior director of commercial learning and development (L&D) at Gilead Sciences. His experience spans healthcare (pharma, biotech, med devices), high technology companies, consulting services and two stints in the military as a commissioned officer with assignments in command training and military intelligence.
His current role at Gilead includes overseeing the learning strategy, effectiveness, technology and operations of global commercial learning and development (GCLD).
Haider shared his vision for transforming L&D in the commercial space.
In April of 2024, the GCLD implemented a new and comprehensive approach to global learning and Haider was hired into a new role to ensure GCLD was a critical business lever to pull through learning aligned to critical capabilities that enable real patient and business impact.
“If we could as a global team, connect our processes, services and products in the right places, in the right way and at the right time in the learning lifecycle, we will have outsized impact,” Haider said.
As the team has grown, he has focused its strategy on four key pillars:
Empowering local country specific L&D teams by consolidating commodity operations within the global L&D group so they focus on learning application.
Leading an innovation-driven learning culture by responding to needs in new ways, such as the implementation of AI-driven roleplays and other tools.
Driving collaboration by co-creating solutions with local L&D teams.
Delivering measurable results by using a data-driven approach to ensure initiatives directly contribute to Gilead’s commercial success.
The mission of the global learning team extends across nine global markets and the United States, where they’re building, translating, deploying, scaling and measuring learning curricula that includes sustainment strategies to ensure consistently high learning retention. In addition, Haider’s group is developing a robust learning technology ecosystem that includes a comprehensive suite of platforms, software and apps to build and deploy curriculums faster, enhance field sales effectiveness and establish clear correlations between L&D initiatives and sales performance.
Haider’s team supports priorities across other parts of GCLD focused on therapeutic and disease states, sales excellence including sales leader development, advanced selling skills and marketing excellence.
“One of our priorities is ensuring competitive fitness with our field sales force so we try to align all the ingredients that enable higher performance, even beyond training curriculums,” Haider said, emphasizing the importance of sales effectiveness as a fundamental pillar of their work. This approach requires strong partnerships with sales leaders and local commercial L&D groups to ensure alignment with broader organizational goals.
When securing buy-in for learning initiatives, Haider’s approach is methodical.
“If I had a dollar to invest in the training lifecycle, I would spend 80 cents on assessing the need and being clear on what we are solving for, and 20 cents in the development and execution,” Haider said. “Because if you do the assessment right, you can more easily engineer value into your approach, then measurement to business outcomes is easier to establish.”
His team employs a comprehensive evaluation methodology from Level 1 through Level 4, incorporating learning outcome correlated to real sales data to precisely identify competency gaps.
“Where is the drop in the competency? Plan the intervention where the need is,” he said.
This analytical, data-driven process transforms what might otherwise be seen as an “optional need” into a strategic business enabler. Haider acknowledges that “asking leaders to make time for learning is the issue,” which is why he emphasizes the importance of storytelling, benchmarking and real-world data to make the case compelling.
Haider is concerned about common industry practices: “Rather than hearing from the people on the ground, we hear second-hand through experts or through survey data results which misses the human-centered design principle to ‘walk in your customers shoes.’”
He advocates for a context-dependent learning mix that might include microlearning or comprehensive curriculum development depending on specific needs.
“In what context can the learning be best consumed and based on that, should we build guided experiences or choose your own journey?” he said, emphasizing that understanding this is critical to success.
For Haider, product-market fit in learning comes from truly knowing learners and designing solutions that integrate seamlessly into their work. “How well we know our learners and how to navigate that to deliver value” determines success in creating learning that pulls people in rather than it being pushed upon them.
Looking ahead, Haider is most excited about the transformative potential of artificial intelligence. “AI roleplays, seeing a lifelike avatar and having a natural conversation is leveraging AI in truly accelerated ways” are part of his teams efforts today.
Haider identified four key trends shaping the future of L&D:
AI-powered experiences: “How AI will develop end-to-end experiences” will transform learning design and delivery.
Demonstrating value: “How L&D can get a seat at the table” by showing effectiveness and correlating sales data with learning initiatives to “find gold.”
Targeted learning: Moving away from a “spray and pray approach” to identify specific learners and their needs through personas or more human-centered design approaches.
Content: The traditional development processes are being disrupted by new AI platforms as “the world has dramatically changed” from traditional ADDIE model approaches to new tools for development and deployment.
Haider emphasized that success in L&D comes from understanding learners deeply, focusing on outcomes and measuring what matters. At Gilead Sciences, he’s pioneering an approach to commercial learning that creates solutions that not only develop capabilities but demonstrably drive business success.
Deb Ghosh is CTO and founder of CoachBots. Email him at deb@coachbots.com or connect through www.linkedin.com/in/debg1/.
