How VML Won Four Brandon Hall Awards Using AI Roleplays for Leadership Development

When one of the world’s largest creative companies sets out to help 26,000 employees across 50+ markets get better at difficult conversations, the results are worth celebrating. This month, VML swept the Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards, winning eight of the eight categories they entered, including five Gold.

Four of those wins recognize Hi, VML’s leadership development series built in partnership with Yoodli:

• Gold, Best Competencies and Skill Development
• Gold, Best Use of AI for Leadership Development
• Silver, Best Unique or Innovative Leadership Program
• Silver, Best Leadership Development Program

Congratulations to Kelly Stuart-Johnson, Jamie Forman, and the entire VML learning and development team. These awards are famously hard to win, and an eight for eight sweep speaks to the caliber of the work.

The Hi Program Results at a Glance

• Organization: VML, one of the world’s largest creative companies (26,000 employees, 50+ markets)
• Program: Hi, a multi-episode leadership development series using Yoodli’s AI roleplays to practice difficult conversations
• Results: 20 percent improvement in leader confidence; 81 percent of participants prepared for their toughest conversations
• Recognition: Four Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards (two Gold, two Silver), 2026

Why Difficult Conversations are the Hardest Skill to Train

The Brandon Hall HCM Excellence Awards are among the most respected honors in human capital management, judged by independent panels of industry experts on program design, delivery, and measurable results. Winning one is difficult. Winning four for a single program is a signal that something different is happening.

The Hi Series tackles one of the hardest skills in any workplace: difficult conversations. Giving hard feedback, navigating disagreement, delivering unwelcome news. These are moments most professionals dread and few ever get to practice before the stakes are real. Traditional leadership development training relies on videos, slides, and the occasional in-person workshop, none of which give leaders a safe place to actually rehearse. That is where AI roleplays and real-time coaching change the equation, taking leaders from fearful to fluent in the conversations they used to avoid.

Using AI Roleplays to Practice Difficult Conversations at Scale

Through Yoodli’s AI roleplays, VML employees practice difficult conversations in realistic, low-stakes scenarios, receive feedback in real time, and build measurable competence in minutes rather than months. It is how the Hi Series takes users from confident to competent: practice builds the confidence to walk into a hard conversation, and repetition with feedback builds the competence to handle it well. For an organization of VML’s size and global footprint, that kind of scalable, personalized practice was not possible before AI.

The results are quantifiable: the Hi Series improved leader confidence by 20 percent, and 81 percent of participants reported feeling prepared for their toughest conversations.

 “Yoodli made possible a scale of practice I could only have dreamed of earlier in my career. Thousands of people getting real feedback on hard conversations, at the moment they needed it, with no facilitator required. What made the difference for VML was that Yoodli saw us as real partners in shaping an already excellent product. We felt heard and saw changes as a result of sharing our experiences. Yoodli made a meaningful, measurable difference in our people’s ability to have clear and psychologically safe conversations and I can’t thank them enough.”

Kelly Stuart-Johnson, VP, Global Head of Learning, VML 

A Partnership that Shaped the Product

What makes this story special is not just the technology. From the start, VML has taken an active role in shaping the product alongside Yoodli’s team, pushing on what AI roleplays could do for an enterprise learning organization and helping define what great looks like.

“We’re known for the ways we creatively push the limits of our tech stackThe partnership with Yoodli gave us the ability to build the learning experience exactly the way we wanted, teach a framework first and follow it with guided, customized practice. Before Yoodli, we didn’t have a way to scale that kind of practice, let alone measure it. Now participants get personalized feedback the moment they finish practicing, and for the first time, we can measure the resulting skill improvement.”

Jamie Forman, PhD, Global Manager, Learning and Development, VML 

“Kelly and the VML team never treated Yoodli like a vendor. They pushed us, challenged our product team, and made the platform better for every customer we serve. These four awards belong to them, and we could not be prouder to have played a part.”

Varun Puri, CEO and co-founder, Yoodli

What Award-Winning Leadership Development Looks Like Now

At Yoodli, we believe the future of learning and development is experiential. People do not build communication skills by watching videos or reading slides. They build them by practicing, getting feedback, and practicing again. That is the journey the Hi Series was built around: from fearful to fluent, from confident to competent.

VML’s recognition from Brandon Hall Group is proof of what happens when a world-class L&D team pairs bold program design with AI roleplays that make practice possible at scale. It joins a growing body of evidence from enterprises using Yoodli for leadership development, like Ochsner Health, which gave frontline leaders a private, repeatable way to practice their hardest conversations, from performance reviews to rebuilding trust. Different industries, same principle: people get better faster when they can practice.

Congratulations again to the entire VML team. We are honored to be part of the Hi Series and excited for what comes next.

Want to see how AI roleplays can transform leadership development at your organization? Book a demo.