Member of the Month: Anna Heinrich

We’re kicking off a new recurring feature here on the NASAGA blog: Member of the Month, where we periodically highlight our amazing membership and the things they’re doing. June’s Member of the Month is Anna Heinrich, Lead Senior Learning and Development Specialist, Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and NASAGA Board Member.

What kind of work do you do?

 Primarily, it is teaching leader development to anybody on staff at OSHU who has direct reports. That can be faculty, but not always; we have a lot of non-faculty in our classes. But it’s also program management and leadership coaching, things like that. There’s also team development-type activities. There’s a lot that goes into it.

Why are you a NASAGA member?

When I first heard of NASAGA, and went to my first conference, I felt like I found my people! I heard about NASAGA because I like to use gameplay in learning. In our leadership classes, we're often focusing on those critical skills: emotional intelligence,  communicating, empathy, and belonging. All of those things that impact how you relate to other people. I find that games allow participants to have those experiences in a way that won’t impact their status, their future. Nothing they do in that game will be career changing, because we’re playing a game. So I have always pulled a lot of games into my teaching and learning, and this is just another way to continue that. And I get great ideas from NASAGA!

What’s your favorite NASAGA memory?

There’s so many memories! I went to the NASAGA conference in 2019 in Chicago, and I decided to go to a session Jared Fishman and Mike Canterino were putting on. It was on how they teach history to high school students. It was a role-playing game on the Roman Senate: there was a situation and we had to role-play it out. I had such a blast doing it! I’ll never forget coming out, going Wow! I’ve never seen that in education. I wish I had been in their class as a student. And that was what communicated to me that these are my people. I got to play a role-playing game, usually something I do for fun on Saturday nights, on a professional level. And I learned something I could use on a professional level! There were just so many of my interests and passions, all rolled up into one.

NASAGA’s theme for the 2023 Conference is “Space at the Table.” What do you do in your professional practice to integrate diverse points of view?

You know, I am on this journey just like anyone else. I’m lucky that OSHU is prioritizing that effort, and recently brought on to staff a couple members whose focus is on DEI* and Anti-Racism. They helped us look at our curriculum, find moments where we can start talking about DEI. They helped us ask questions like: What is our culture? How does our culture impact the way we show emotional intelligence? How does it impact the way we’re communicating or the way we work? As we have these conversations, these learning moments, I have these ahas that I can transfer to my work. When I’m playing these games, I can ask people (and reflect on my own) how their culture is reflected. So that’s how we can ask people, who’s at the table? How am I being equitable in offering my classes and activities? How are those activities reaching people who come from different cultures and different experiences?

Anything else?

If you’re a member and you haven’t come to a live, in-person conference, I can’t encourage you enough to do so. I was just at an Association for Talent and Development (ATD) Conference, 9000 people all together. And it was everything you’d expect from a conference of that size: the glitter, the shine, the people, the whole thing. Yet I get more from NASAGA than from those giant conferences, because you have these amazing moments. NASAGA is a boutique conference: you get to know everyone there, and because we’re playing games, you get a chance to really know them as people. You make some really authentic connections that I just did not make that this giant ATD conference. Those connections continue to help me to this day; I’m getting stuff my NASAGA network that I have never gotten from my other networks. There’s something about that connection that makes it happen. So if you’ve never been to a NASAGA conference, I urge you to come. It has changed my viewpoint of boutique conferences.

* Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion