How to explain LERs to your grandma
Badge Summit - July 2026
Badge Summit is where the digital credentialing world gets together: the people building the tech that turns skills and achievements into verified digital badges instead of paper nobody ever looks at twice.
LERs (Learning & Employment Records) are the bigger idea behind it, a person's whole skills story (degrees, certs, courses, real experience) packaged into one record that's digital, verifiable, and actually portable.
Powerful stuff. Also, historically, explained terribly. Watch her make the case that the future of this industry isn't better acronyms. It's better stories. .
In this talk, Thania stands in front of a room full of credentialing experts and says the quiet part out loud: this industry is full of brilliant ideas buried under jargon, acronyms, and insider language that shuts real people out. Her fix isn't more technical precision, it's a Thanksgiving table, a grandma, and a five-year-old.
Key Takeways:
You are not the audience. Everyone in that room already spoke fluent LER. The career changer, the plumber whose credentials live on paper, the veteran translating military experience, and the working mom juggling all of it do not. Build for them.
If you ever felt like the dummy, you weren't. Thania walked into her first credentialing rooms assuming she was behind. The concepts were never the problem. The explanations assumed fluency in a language nobody had taught her.
Run the grandma test. Picture your grandma on one side of the Thanksgiving table and a five-year-old on the other. If neither one can follow you, it isn't simple enough yet.
Lead with the benefit. Apple never sold you on SSL encryption and data architecture. They sold you tap and go. The infrastructure still matters, it just shouldn't lead the conversation.
Speak English. No jargon, no caveats, no ecosystem diagrams. Human, honest language, every time.
The slides
Click the arrows to scroll the slides and follow along with the video. You may also download the presentation in PDF format below.
Grab the cheatsheet
We couldn’t fit all of the scripts into 8-mins so we made you this cheatsheet. 7 different scripts to help you start explaining LERs like a human.
Meet Thania
Thania Guardino is a marketing strategist, speaker, and entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience growing startups and scaling impact across the education, workforce, and small business space. She's the founder of The Conquer Company, a boutique marketing agency, and co-creator of Skills Scoop, a fast-growing newsletter simplifying the future of work.
She built her career on a simple belief: the best ideas in the world don't matter if nobody can understand them. Thania has spent over a decade translating complex industries into language real people actually use, whether that's helping a startup find its voice, breaking down credentialing jargon for a newsletter audience, or standing on stage at Badge Summit explaining Learning & Employment Records in terms your grandma would get.
From keynote stages to virtual panels, Thania brings practical insights, contagious energy, and a deep commitment to helping people do more of what they love, with the tools to back it up.
Your work changes what happens to somebody's next ten years, and that deserves more than a vendor.
Most agencies would need six months just to learn what a stackable credential is, and you'd spend that whole time explaining your own industry back to them.
We've already been inside this world.
We care about this industry and whether the end user actually adopts the thing you built.
We're also really freakin' passionate about marketing, which is why we're good at taking something dense and technical and turning it into something a learner, an employer, or a funder acts on.
Who you work with matters more than the size of their team or their years of expertise (we've got those too).
We're the ones who'll be at the Thanksgiving table explaining why it matters, and by now you know how seriously we take that table 😉
You'll be on calls with this team every week for months, and we'll be just as excited about your story in month nine as we were in month one, because this is the work we actually want to be doing!
How to get learners to use their badges + get jobs
Our university client wanted students to take action with their badges and use them as SmartResumes. We built a campaign around their interests, and successfully converted 80% of attendees.
We speak education & workforce development
We don’t just talk about the LER space, we’re living inside it. Take a look at who we’ve worked with, and see exactly how we help credentialing organizations turn "nobody gets it" into
real adoption.
You've got an LER story worth telling.
Let's tell it together.
We'd love to help you.
book a free 15-min call →