Professional development is one of those phrases that gets tossed around a lot. I would not be surprised if it was a component of your performance reviews, but what does it mean to develop professionally? In this column, I would like to unpack the answer to this question.
At its core, professional development means becoming more capable, more connected, and more confident in your field. It means staying curious and purposefully learning new things. The good news is that as a member of the American Statistical Association, you have many ways to do this, and they are all within your reach right now.
Growth rarely happens by accident. From my career experience, I have been most successful when I’ve been intentional about it. This means I regularly identify gaps in my knowledge, set goals for what I want to learn, and look for opportunities that move me in that direction. That doesn’t mean I have a rigid plan. It means I pay attention to what I want to understand better in the future and what interests me, excites me, or challenges me. With that intentionality as a foundation, let’s explore the landscape of opportunities available to you as an ASA member.
Structured Learning Through Courses
The most familiar form of professional development is structured learning through courses. These have endured for good reason. They offer focused instruction, clear learning objectives, and often the chance to engage with others who share your professional interests. If you are attending the Joint Statistical Meetings, I encourage you to register for a continuing education course. Whether you want to learn about deep learning methods in advanced statistical problems, explore calmer ways of working in your statistical practice, or get an introduction to Python for R users, there is a course built for exactly that—and so many other topics.
Short courses are offered at many conferences. The Council of Chapters traveling courses provide low-cost options for ASA chapter members. Chapters can choose to have courses presented virtually or in person. These full-day or half-day courses let you dig into a topic quickly and often hands-on. They are valuable not just for content but for the connections you make. In my experience, the sidebar conversations and follow-up connections can be as professionally constructive as anything on the official agenda.
Webinars and Online Resources
Webinars have transformed professional learning, making it possible to access world-class expertise from anywhere, without the cost or logistics of travel. The best ones are tightly focused, delivered by genuine experts, and designed to give you something you can apply right away. Even a 60-minute webinar about a topic you’ve been meaning to explore can shift your thinking or introduce you to a new approach. ASA sections, interest groups, and committees offer a remarkable range of topics tailored to nearly every professional interest and career stage, bringing together practitioners who share your passion for excellence and commitment to the field.
Another great opportunity comes through our partnership with Instats. ASA members receive a 30% discount on educational content, tools, and resources. Watch your inbox for these opportunities, which often come at little or no cost.
Learning From Colleagues
Some of the best professional development happens not in a classroom but in a hallway conversation, a team meeting, or a collaboration that stretches you in an unexpected direction. Colleagues are an underused resource, and engaging with them deliberately can accelerate your growth in ways formal training cannot. Seek out people within your professional community whose expertise complements or extends your own. If you work in a technical role and have a colleague with deep communications experience, spend time understanding how they think and find a reason to work together. Cross-functional collaboration is one of the fastest ways to build new skills while also making yourself more valuable to your team.
Don’t overlook informal structures, either. Peer learning groups, internal communities of practice, and lunch-and-learns all create space for collegial learning. If something like this doesn’t exist at your organization, consider starting one with your ASA community. ASA communities of practice could be transformative. Please reach out if you are interested.
Mentorship and Leadership
Mentorship—both seeking it and offering it—is another powerful vehicle for growth. Being mentored by someone who has navigated the challenges you are facing can compress years of learning into a few well-timed conversations. And, perhaps counterintuitively, serving as a mentor often teaches you as much as it teaches your mentee. Sharing what you know with someone else forces you to clarify your own thinking, revisit assumptions, and articulate ideas you have long taken for granted.
Professional development through volunteer service is an often-underrated strategy, and it is available to nearly everyone. Serving on a committee, chairing a working group, or taking on a leadership role in your section or chapter puts you in rooms you wouldn’t otherwise enter and asks actions of you that your day job may not. This work often involves skills distinct from what you exercise in your regular role. You might coordinate a multi-stakeholder initiative, facilitate a group of peers toward consensus, or represent our profession in a public-facing capacity. These experiences build competencies in leadership, communication, strategic thinking, and relationship management that translate directly to your career.
Whether you are attending a webinar, earning a certification, or volunteering your expertise on a committee, you are investing in yourself and in the vitality of the statistical community.
Community Engagement and Writing
The Communities in Action initiative focuses on community service that engages your professional skills. Teaching a workshop, advising a nonprofit, or mentoring students are all forms of professional development. They often bring a perspective that purely work-based experiences don’t.
There is a particular form of professional development available to anyone with curiosity and a keyboard. Writing a blog post, a newsletter piece, or a short article on a topic you are actively learning about is one of the best ways to consolidate your understanding and share it with others. The discipline of writing forces precision. You cannot be vague on the page the way you can be vague in your own head. In that sense, writing about something you’re learning is learning in a particularly active form. I encourage you to consider writing an article for STATtr@k or a blog post for ASA Career Connect.
Credentials and Certifications
In April, the ASA launched two new certification opportunities: Data Science Professional and Advanced Data Science Professional. A certification signals to employers, clients, and colleagues that you have met an established standard of knowledge and competency. It provides external validation that can open doors and support advancement. These opportunities complement the PStat and GStat accreditation programs, which also demonstrate an ongoing commitment to professional development. The built-in renewal requirement is one aspect that makes accreditation valuable. It keeps credential holders current and signals to others that the standard is maintained, not just awarded.
Integrating Multiple Development Strategies
The most effective professional development strategies are not single channel but rather draw from multiple sources and reinforce one another. A webinar might introduce you to a concept, a conversation with a colleague helps you apply it, writing about it cements your understanding, volunteering in the ASA gives you a venue to practice it at scale. Each opportunity feeds the next.
What makes this sustainable over a career is what makes it effective in the first place: your genuine curiosity. If you are chasing credentials purely for résumé value or attending webinars because your organization requires professional development hours, you will not benefit nearly as much as the person who is genuinely motivated by a desire to understand more and do their work better.
At its best, professional development is not a box you check. It is an ongoing orientation toward growth, learning, and contribution. Cultivate this, and the opportunities will present themselves in more places than you expect.
As an ASA member, you are already part of a community built on exactly this kind of commitment to growth and excellence. The opportunities described here are woven into the fabric of ASA membership. I encourage you to take full advantage of what the community offers and to give back to it, as well. The ASA is made richer by every member who shows up to learn, to share, and to contribute. Whether you are attending a webinar, earning a certification, or volunteering your expertise on a committee, you are investing in yourself and in the vitality of the statistical community.
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