Coursera + Udemy Career Growth & Development

Udemy allows you the flexibility to jump into different side projects, have cross-functional collaboration, show up “earnestly authentic” as your whole self, and discuss where you want to go and what you want to do. We’ve seen people transition from customer success to marketing, facilities to support, and even email marketing to back-end engineering. There’s no one right way to build your career here.

Always learning’ is a core value at Udemy, and based on that value, we have identified a skill of engaging in constructive debate with one another that allows us to learn more effectively. Our employees are encouraged to use their UDays to build skills and model our ‘always learning’ value.

Udemy’s MentorU program pairs employees across teams and levels based on the skills they want to develop, creating more intentional mentorship relationships. By connecting learning with internal mobility, the program helps employees build leadership capabilities, pursue promotions and move into new roles within the company.

“Since being a part of that MentorU program, not only did I get promoted, but I entered an entirely new role at Udemy. My career has been transformed since joining MentorU.”
 

Udemy’s MentorU program supports leadership development by matching employees with mentors whose skills, experience and career paths align with their growth goals. Using Workday Career Hub, the program creates more targeted connections that help employees learn from experienced colleagues and build capabilities for future leadership opportunities.

“Having our MentorU participants find mentor matches based on the skills they were developing and sharing in Workday Career Hub allowed for more intentional skills-aligned connections.”
 

What new skill or role did you want to learn, and why was this important to you?

I’ve watched every role at Coursera + Udemy shift — product, finance, marketing, all of it. It’s not enough to simply add AI to your toolkit anymore. You have to understand how it works, where it fits into your decisions and how to iterate responsibly. AI fluency (basic literacy in how AI works and where it fits into decisions) is a non-negotiable skill, but pairing experimentation (empowering employees to try new things, and how to do it responsibly) and psychological safety unlocks what it actually takes to integrate successfully. In practice, one program we’ve created to help us tackle all of these skills is something we call AI Spark Sessions, or Sparks for short. Sparks are monthly all-hands sessions where people across every business unit sign up to share what they’re building with AI: which AI experiments worked, which didn’t, what surprised them and what they’re wrestling with. It’s become our way to share wins, learn from each other, demonstrate that it’s safe to experiment and build connections and trust while we do it.

How did Coursera + Udemy help support this time of learning and/or professional development?

On day one of Coursera + Udemy’s merger, Coursera employees got access to Udemy Business, and Udemy employees got access to Coursera Enterprise. We provide unlimited access to both Coursera and Udemy for every employee because continuous learning isn’t optional, especially when your company is going through a transformation. We’ve created Slack channels where we share what we’re learning, what courses we’re loving and peer recommendations. 

We also run cohorts targeted to specific teams, and provide the space to connect, share insights and, of course, some accountability to keep making progress. For example, one of the things I’m looking forward to in the second half of the year is our entire people/HR team taking the HRCI Professional in Human Resources Professional Certificate on Coursera. We have a dedicated Slack channel and monthly check-ins where we share progress, discuss how we’re applying what we’re learning and keep each other accountable. Learning happens as part of how we work, not separate from it. Slack channels make it visible, peer cohorts create accountability, and managers are actively involved in supporting progress and providing opportunities to practice new skills on-the-job.

What was the outcome of this experience? How did it impact your future growth in your profession?

Building Spark Sessions from scratch was itself an experiment. I had a hypothesis: If we gave people a structured, regular forum to share AI wins and failures, it would build both psychological safety and organizational learning. But I had no playbook for how to make it work at an all-hands scale. That taught me a lot about what it takes to actually run something like this. I learned how to identify and coordinate with the right speakers, working across business units to surface the stories that matter, then coaching presenters on how to tell them. It’s one thing to find someone doing interesting work; it’s another to help them translate that into a narrative that lands. I also learned how to manage competing priorities: drumming up attendance, securing executive support, coordinating logistics across time zones and keeping the format tight and meaningful so people actually show up next month. And honestly, the part I didn’t expect was the creative challenge. Designing a logo, tweaking the session structure, figuring out how to make storytelling the format, building in moments for connection and humor — that stretched me in ways I hadn’t anticipated.