The Coffee Chat (#103)
My conversation with Iain Boomer: Global talent and leadership transformation leader, Co-Host of the Lead & Learn Podcast, Homeschooler and Dad to 2!
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Hi there 👋🏽
Early in the morning, I was feeding my baby when my older one entered the room, jumped into our bed, and asked if she could sleep there with us for a little bit.
As the sun came up, I had my husband on one side of the bed, both our babies - the older and younger one - between us, and our dog at my feet.
In that moment, I felt nothing but blessed….this is exactly the life I wanted when I pictured myself all grown up.
I’ve taken a mental picture of this moment and know that decades later, I will revisit it and feel nothing but warmth.
Every once in awhile you have a moment you know will flash before your eyes on the way out of this world, it’s good to bask in the glory of it all.
☕ Now, on to today’s coffee chat…
Meet Iain Boomer
Iain is a global talent, leadership, and learning leader with nearly two decades of experience building systems that help organizations grow, adapt, and perform at scale. Across Canada, the US, and EMEA, he has led enterprise-wide talent and learning transformations impacting more than 12,000 employees, with a particular focus on closing the gap between well-intended people strategies and what actually gets executed day to day. His work brings together culture, leadership capability, performance, and modern learning ecosystems in service of real business outcomes.
A co-host of the Lead & Learn podcast and and shaped by an international family journey, Iain brings systems thinking, curiosity, and deep self-awareness to how he leads and how he helps others lead.
Below is my conversation with Iain…
Please tell us a little bit about yourself
Iain Boomer and professionally I’ve been in the learning and development field for almost 20 years now, with several different roles around the world. I’ve progressed through different levels of learning - from doing the work myself, to working on the vendor and partner side, all the way up to working in industry. Most recently, I led the global talent and leadership transformation at Bitfarms, a digital infrastructure company that is undergoing a massive transformation from Bitcoin mining to high-performance data centers for AI. Prior to that I, I held several learning leadership roles at AbbVie.
I am really passionate about what I do. I love it.
My wife, Taryn, used to work in the exact same field. That’s where we met. She understands exactly what I do, very well. She has a passion for it as well, so it’s great to be able to have conversations about it together.
Taryn is South African, and I’m Canadian, so we’re pretty much an international family. Everybody’s born somewhere else, with a couple of passports here and there. One of the interesting things about having opportunities to change roles around the world is being able to see different cultures, experience different things, and also see different ways our kids can interact with programs in different countries.
We had a nanny in Germany. We left just before Zack was two, and that was a great experience because we were both working at the time. We both had jobs with a lot of responsibility…we were both driving learning for a medical device company in Germany. We worked in a very hybrid, even virtual, environment, which gave us flexibility. We could go into the office or work from home without having to worry too much. That flexibility was huge.
So when we moved to the States, Taryn decided to leave her job and stay home to take care of Zack. Then Riley was born there.
How did your wife arrive at her decision to leave her job?
Because we have a passion for learning, we put our son into a Montessori school - a truly well-funded, well-supported Montessori program with really well-educated teachers who followed the Montessori approach properly. We were very fortunate, because there was a teacher in Zack’s homeroom who identified something called Sensory Processing Disorder, which is an autistic trait.
At that point, we didn’t really know a lot about autism or neurodiversity in relation to our son. When the teacher shared this with us, we were floored. We didn’t really believe it at first. Zack was very smart, he had been speaking from a very young age and had an advanced vocabulary. We just thought, “He’s a smart kid.”
But that one moment, when he was two years old, gave us a massive opportunity - a window to start learning about how Zack is different. We were very fortunate, because not a lot of parents get that kind of information so early in their child’s journey.
We were also fortunate to be in the U.S., where there is a lot of support. Because we had insurance through our company, we were able to start very early in getting Zack the support he needed. He’s very high-functioning, very smart, very intelligent.
One of the things that follows Zack is that he also has Nonverbal Learning Disorder. What that means is that he can speak very eloquently, so he looks and sounds much older than his age. As a result, he is often overestimated and underestimated at the same time.
That put us on a significant learning journey as a family. He did very well in that Montessori school because there was a strong teachers to student ratio, and it allowed him to self-discover and progress at his own pace.
Then I had the opportunity to come to Canada to head up learning here. Riley had already been born, and when we moved to Canada, Taryn said, “Let’s try Zack in a private school,” knowing that public school might not be the right environment for him.
We gave it a try. Within three months, Zack was spending most of his time in and out of the principal’s office, just sitting there. People didn’t really know what to do with his energy or how his brain worked. He also has ADHD.
That’s when we made the big decision to homeschool.
For Taryn, that was a massive decision saying, “I’m going to learn how to do this.” And it wasn’t just Zack; it was Zack and Riley. They’re very different individuals, and of course males and females present very differently across the neurodiversity spectrum.
So Taryn decided to take this on, and as a family, that meant we became a homeschooling family.
Kudos to her, that is a big commitment and more intense than most jobs
It’s a real commitment and while she does the lion’s share of the work I too support our kid’s education. I am very open and public about it. There is always a child at home. There will be interruptions. There’s always that moment when someone wants to share something exciting they’ve learned.
The reason I’m public about it at work, and why it comes up in meetings, is because these things are part of my life. Just like during the pandemic, people may appear on screen. This is simply our way of working and being…it happens every single day for us.
That’s fascinating. And when I think about it, you’re not just playing two roles, which is what many working parents do. You’re leading learning and development for an organization, you’re a dad but you’re also taking on aspects of being an educator.
I don’t even want to ask “How do you manage all of this?” but more: how do you think through it as a family? How do you stay on top of everything together? It just feels like a lot, and I’m not sure how I’d handle having a third role added in.
We do have a very strict and regimented schedule at home. The kids wake up at set times. They have structured activities. When someone is home all the time, there’s more food being consumed, more electricity, more water, more cleaning - so those responsibilities are part of the household schedule too.
The kids are involved in that. Part of their learning is understanding how responsibilities fit into daily life.
Taryn runs the majority of the homeschooling program. But for me, just like in the corporate space, what matters is application. How do the kids apply what they’re learning? How do they demonstrate it?
So we integrate reading, science, and math into real-life activities. We think outside the box. Taryn does a lot of research into curriculum requirements for wherever we’re living, and then we look for tangible, real-world experiences instead of just following a ministry-issued classroom model.
That flexibility allows us to adjust our schedules. If there’s an activity that isn’t coordinated with other homeschoolers, I might take an extra day off so we can do it. Homeschooling for us runs almost 12 months a year.
We get to choose when we take breaks. I don’t have to take vacation strictly during summer because the kids are off school. I can work all summer and then take time off in September, October, November or in January or February. That lets us design our lifestyle differently.
I might take extra days here and there for curricular activities, just like parents take time off to attend school plays or science fairs. The difference is that I may participate more directly.
Our entire day revolves around the homeschooling schedule from chores and responsibilities to extracurriculars, social learning, and social skill development. We make sure those elements are built in.
For my work schedule, it’s really about knowing that the kids are here and interruptions will happen. If Taryn needs help managing multiple students, I might block off a meeting to cover something so she can do one-on-one time with a child who needs extra support.
That give-and-take might mean working an extra hour later in the day or waking up earlier. It’s just part of the rhythm.
Taryn also works a lot with the kids on ownership and development, helping them understand what they need to accomplish in a day. They can do it in two hours or six hours - it’s up to them. They can play, go outside, do other activities, but the work needs to get done.
Some days they finish quickly. Some days, like with any child, it takes eight hours. Some days nothing gets done and it’s frustrating.
That’s just part of the reality.
I was just thinking about it - you’re probably the first person I’m speaking to who is homeschooling their kids. And what I really like about it is that your entire life is no longer constrained by external structures. You can design and structure life the way you want.
But also, it feels like there’s a real focus on skills that actually matter. School, especially public schooling, has its pros and cons, but it’s often preparing people for a workplace that doesn’t exist anymore. Everything is regimented. There’s very little creativity. There’s a lack of first-principles thinking. So the fact that you can integrate all of that feels really powerful.
Yeah and just on that point, we do take some key differences very intentionally. Taryn is responsible for creating the curriculum, and in that curriculum we step outside a lot of the norms that exist in public schools, largely because of the rules and regulations they have to follow.
For example, we have a distinct curriculum on finances, which doesn’t really happen in traditional schooling. We also have a distinct curriculum on racism and diversity. And when we go into history, it’s real history - history that public schools are often limited in how far they can go.
So we get to change things up a little bit. We homeschool not because we have to, but because we chose to - it’s what’s best for our children right now, while they’re learning more about themselves and developing the skills they need. At some point, they may move into a more traditional schooling environment, and that will be a decision we make together with them.
Being able to shift the curriculum allows us to give them those planning skills and life skills that, like you said, aren’t typically developed in public school not because schools don’t want to, but because there’s limited time, limited teachers, and limited capacity.
And the other thing I was thinking about, for both you and your partner, is energy. How do you manage your energy levels? How do you recover?
Because when you say you’re doing this for 12 months a year, it’s kind of like working for 12 months straight. You’re both working - there’s curriculum planning, delivery, constant adaptation. I imagine Taryn is also continuously upskilling herself. It’s a lot of labor. How have you thought about burnout and making sure that doesn’t happen?
That’s a great point. I mentioned earlier that we do have skills and hobbies on the side, but there are a few broader reasons why this has been particularly intense for us.
We’ve moved a lot ….countries, houses, rentals before buying. We’ve bounced around quite a bit. And since committing to homeschooling in 2018, that’s taken a lot of time and effort. Our families are also far away geographically, so we don’t have close family support nearby. That means we’ve fully committed to this lifestyle.
It’s also not a surprise that Zack and Riley are both neurodiverse and honestly, we are an entirely neurodiverse family. I was recently late-diagnosed with ADHD and autism, with the same sensory processing differences. Taryn has ADHD as well. So over the last couple of years, we’ve also been discovering ourselves.
That’s required a significant investment in self-discovery - really understanding who we are and how we function. That’s been incredibly important.
So when it comes to recovery, energy, and making sure we keep ourselves safe, sane, and functional, it comes down to communication. Very strong communication.
Brené Brown says it really well she talks about telling her partner, “I’m at 20% today. You’ll need to cover the other 80%.” Taryn and I don’t use that exact language, but we’re getting much better at communicating where we’re at.
We’re also very different people. I’m very internal, I process things in my head. Taryn is very external in how she communicates. So a big part of our journey has been learning how to meet each other where we are.
That handoff is critical. Whether it’s, “I’m done for today,” or “This is where I’m at,” and then the other person takes over - whether that’s dinner, cleaning, or managing the kids. Some days, things just don’t get done because it’s too chaotic. And with neurodiversity, there are moments when you can engage in conversation, and moments when you absolutely can’t.
So you have to be able to read each other.
For us, creating that safe space, where we can protect ourselves and show up appropriately, comes from that clear handoff. “Here you go, I’ve got it.” Or, “I need to step away. I’m going for a walk. I’m going to read. I’m taking a bath.”
We have to be very intentional about that.
There are also days when I’m just overwhelmed by work, by my own emotions, by what I’m trying to understand about myself. And I need to communicate that early. Say, “I’m not okay today.” And not just to Taryn - to the entire family.
That’s a key skill for us as a neurodiverse family: getting out of our comfort zones, finding strategies that work, and communicating clearly. For us right now, communication is everything. That’s what allows us to rest and recover.
And I imagine you extend this into the formal workplace as well. From what I can tell, you’ve created a psychologically safe environment by sharing enough about yourself.
There’s also a gender dynamic here. Unfortunately or fortunately men bringing their whole selves to work is often perceived very differently than women doing the same. When women say, “I’m a mom” or “I have caregiving responsibilities,” their commitment or competence can be questioned. When men do it, it’s often celebrated.
How do you think about this in your workplace? Are there things leaders can do to help people build lives where they can truly be themselves and create structures that let them thrive both personally and professionally?
Leading people means learning all the time. The moment you decide to step into leadership, you commit to learning - from others, from mistakes, from failures, from reading, from courses.
One of the benefits of the work we do is that we’re very open about information flow. We’ve been saying for years that we need to normalize differences—but the workplace is still very far from that reality.
It’s much easier for a white man to walk into the workplace, set boundaries, and have them respected. For others, particularly women, there’s often a history of trauma around boundary-setting, or environments that have punished them for it.
We don’t normalize conversations around the different life stages women go through. Instead, we expect them to show up every day as if everything is fine while often carrying the majority of household and caregiving responsibilities.
And even structurally, it’s reinforced. In Canada, for example—when you file taxes to receive child benefits, those benefits are typically tied to the woman. The system perpetuates these dynamics constantly
If somebody is not feeling well one day, generally a man’s lifestyle doesn’t really change. There’s very little adjustment. But women go through different phases at different times in their lives, and yet the expectation placed on them never changes.
And if the attitude and understanding aren’t there, that’s where we start running into boundary issues.
Not to go too far off on a tangent, but this is a big thing - we just don’t normalize these conversations.
So what we do in our family, from a very young age is we normalize conversations around periods. We normalize conversations around when Taryn isn’t feeling great, whether it’s because of her cycle or something else. Every woman experiences this differently, so we use language that allows her to say, “Right now is not the time for this,” or “I can’t engage in that at the moment.”
We normalize it.
It’s important for Riley to understand this, and it’s equally important for Zack to understand it as well. For us, this is just part of our day-to-day reality. And it makes us more conscious of what this looks like in the work environment.
To bring it back to boundaries depending on a person’s background, their trauma, or their lived experience, setting boundaries can be very difficult. We talk a lot about the importance of saying no. There are lots of courses and frameworks about it.
But for individuals who haven’t had good experiences with setting boundaries or whose boundaries haven’t been respected just saying, “Hey, say no,” doesn’t really work. Boundary-setting is a leadership skill, not a simple tactic.
I don’t want to go too far into theory, so I’ll simplify it with how I structure my day.
I design my day in a way that works for me, clarifies expectations, and makes things clear for others. For example, when I’m traveling to work, when I arrive, the first thing I do is my MIT - my Most Important Task. That time is already blocked in my calendar so I’m not immediately inundated with emails.
I also have specific blocks in my calendar for answering emails. That repeats three times a day. So I have dedicated time for my most important tasks, dedicated time for email, and dedicated time for travel whether that’s commuting, lunch, or heading home.
If people know where I am and what I’m doing, we can schedule meetings during travel time if needed. And I also have clear blocks of time when I’m available for meetings.
That structure allows me to actually get work done. Otherwise, it becomes, “I’ve been in meetings all day when am I supposed to do my real work?” And the answer can’t be, “When I get home.”
Yes, sometimes things happen you wake up a little earlier or work a bit later but that’s not the norm for me. And the reason it’s not the norm is because if I’m not present here, then I’m not supporting my family or myself.
About a year and a half ago, I made a big decision to separate my work phone from my personal phone.
Now, when I get home or on the weekends, my work phone is off. I only have my personal phone. Making that separation was a big change for me, but it also clearly communicated that at the end of the workday, I’m done. On the weekend, I’m done. I pick it back up on Monday.
When I get to work, I use my email blocks, and then I engage. Before, I was mixing everything all the time.
To finish up answering your question about - Are there things leaders can do to help people build lives where they can truly be themselves and create structures that let them thrive both personally and professionally?
Leaders have to take control and make it a priority to create this environment in their teams. As a new leader, coming into a new team, and this needs to be done yearly, it’s good practice to run Team Assimilation and Team Alignment meetings. Revisit your team vision/mission, what do the company values it look like and don’t for your team. What is are your communication norms, what are your boundaries and what happens when they are crossed – what is the expectations. What is team loyalty and how do we expect to show up for each other. What’s working well and what is not working well. When failures or mistakes happen, how do we come together to discuss and discover the next action to innovation or change. Being intentional about these actions, committing to them, and revisiting regularly (quarterly) is essential. As a leader, you made a mistake, say it, involve the team. Show vulnerability. Use we. Let’s solve this together, let’s find a new way. How do we celebrate? Celebrating the wins, celebrating how we discussed failures and moving one, celebrating how people succeed at work life balance, celebrating taking time off for family birthdays and other special events.
I love that. There are very tactical things here that we could all do.
I agree with you - you can be incredibly busy answering emails and sitting in back-to-back meetings, and still have no time or energy to think or do creative work. And I think that’s one of the reasons people feel overwhelmed.
In a pre-children world, you could stretch your day to 16 or 17 hours if you wanted to. But once you have kids and, once you want a life outside of work, putting constraints in place becomes critical. Saying no, not being interrupted by every email notification, protecting your energy - that feels really important.
Yeah, absolutely. I used to be someone where, if I saw an email come in, my face would change, my attitude would change, my energy would change immediately.
And I was also one of those people who said yes to a lot of things. People in learning and development often do - we want to help, we want to support, we want to say yes to the team.
I was doing a lot of travel like, a lot. I was away constantly. And during that time, yes, the kids were going to school for a bit when we weren’t homeschooling, but it meant that I wasn’t very present here.
And that has massive consequences when your partner, the person you want to support and help, is essentially doing everything alone. If you’re not present, whether physically or mentally, you’re not really there.
I was doing 14-, 15-, 16-hour days. Seventy- to eighty-hour weeks. And when you’re doing that, you’re just not present. And if you’re not present, then you’re not showing up for your partner.
What we’re doing right now would not work - at all - if I were still in that environment or allowing myself to be in that environment.
And let’s be clear: most of the time, as individuals, we create that environment for ourselves, unless we actively choose otherwise. Now, I know that depends on what people can and can’t do in their roles, and I fully acknowledge that.
But for me, I allowed myself to be there. And I wasn’t being the partner I wanted or needed to be.
That level of self-awareness is powerful.
The fact that you can look back and say, “My partner was carrying the entire burden, and I wasn’t showing up the way I wanted to,” is incredibly impressive.
Iain, thank you, truly, for that self-awareness and vulnerability.
Before we wrap, is there anything you wanted to share that I didn’t ask? Anything that’s been sitting with you and feels important to say?
Yeah. I think one really important thing, both in our careers and as parents, is taking the time to step back and ask:
Who am I as an individual?
Who am I in this corporate world, or running my business, or doing my job?
And who am I as a parent?We often set goals for ourselves at work. We’re very intentional about that. But we rarely set a vision or goals for ourselves as a family.
And that’s a key step.
If you can do that - define your vision as an individual, your vision as a family - and then even invite your kids to do the same, it makes such a difference. There are great tools out there that allow families to do this together.
Because then you become self-aware of what’s actually important to you.
If you have a hobby that really matters to you, where does it fit into your day, your week, your month, your year? Because that hobby is part of who you are. If you’re not doing what you enjoy, something will always feel missing.
Whether it’s playing hockey, golfing, reading, flying a plane, whatever it is you need to understand how that fits into your life, your family life, and your work life.
If you get that right, everything starts humming. You’re firing on all cylinders.
So take the time to set a vision and goals - not just for work, but for yourself and for your family. We do this constantly in our careers. We push ourselves to achieve.
Why wouldn’t we do the same for our lives?
100%. And that also tells me that every aspect of your life needs to be in sync.
Some of the most miserable people I’ve met are those who over-index on one area of their life. And then they wonder, Why am I so unhappy? Why do I feel so broken?
It’s because they’ve poured all their attention, focus, and energy into one identity ignoring that life is everything happening around us, not just one small piece of who we are.
I love that you’re someone who owns your entire identity and still enjoys what many would call conventional success.
So again, thank you, Iain, for being a role model and for having this conversation with me.
🤓 Open tabs…
(I have modeled this section after those “open tabs” that we all have with a few (okay 30-40) interesting links that we promise we will eventually get to one day. These are the links that I had open for sometime that I finally got to …)
She was seemingly at a career high, working as an senior leader at Airbnb, when she quit it all; she packed up her life and moved to Buenos Aires for a year in 2018 with her husband and three young children, to hit pause.
Despite the stigma that often surrounds résumé gaps, Smith scored a promotion on her return–and has since seen her career go from strength to strength. And the 50-year-old chief tells Fortune that it’s largely down to the big reset the year abroad gave her and importantly, her marriage.
⭐Applying Product Principles to Your L&D Strategy (Podcast Episode 93 )
I was recently invited as a guest on Training Industry’s The Business of Learning podcast. We spoke about how product management principles can help L&D teams move beyond programs and courses to operate as true strategic partners to the business.
Some of the topics we spoke about:
How product management and modern L&D processes overlap
What L&D can learn from product managers about taking a business-first approach
How customer-centric thinking can improve learning design and impact
⭐How MAGA Won the ‘Sensitive Young Man’
“I was 10 when he first announced he was running for president, and he just captured my attention,” he says. “I’d always been fascinated by politics and history, obsessed with world leaders. . . . I think that there’s a certain element of greatness in Trump’s personality.” And then: “I’ve always seen myself in him. That’s the first thing that drew me to him when I was 10. I’d always been admonished in school by my teachers . . .”
📖 My private thoughts from my very public diary…
(Sometimes on X (Twitter), sometimes on Threads and sometimes on BlueSky)
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Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer
Thanks for sharing this. Iain has amazing clarity of thought and the part around communication between partners was very powerful and stayed with me.