A private practice room for senior leaders
Where every session sharpens you for the next high-stakes room you walk into.
A closed room for senior leaders and CXOs to train, practice, and prepare – away from the audiences who only ever see the finished version of you.
25 years. 500+ executives coached – leaders who have gone on to become CEOs, raise funding, and lead boardrooms with full command. Trusted by leaders at Hexagon, CG Power, Marks & Spencer, Accel, and ST Telemedia, among others.
20 minutes. Membership begins only after we have confirmed, together, that it's the right fit – for you and for the room.
Speech Samurai Circle · Opens November 1, 2026
The higher you rise,
the less honest feedback you get.
No one interrupts a board update to say the story didn't land.
The room goes quiet, the meeting ends, and you are left guessing.
That's the gap the Speech Samurai Circle exists to close.
What The Circle Actually Is
A disciplined monthly operating rhythm – built around four things:
learning, practicing, solving, applying, and having the right tools on hand.
This isn't a curriculum you complete once and shelve. It is a repeating cycle, designed the way any high-performing operating rhythm is – regular inputs, regular reps, regular application – so the skill compounds instead of fading after one workshop.
What that looks like in practice:
LEARN
One live session a month, built around one of three pillars that determine whether a moment lands or falls flat:
The Speaker: how you carry yourself, your voice, your presence, your composure under pressure
The Audience: how you read a room, adapt to who's actually in front of you, and hold their attention
The Content: how you structure a message so it's clear, persuasive, and remembered
Every month sharpens one of these three. Over time, you build command of all three together. Recorded, so a scheduling conflict never costs you the session.
PRACTICE
A live coaching round where that skill gets tested in real time, in front of peers who are just as senior as you are.
You don't leave with notes – you leave having actually done it, corrected, in the moment.
Two time slots each round, because your calendar doesn't stop for this.
Never recorded, because real practice requires the freedom to get it wrong before you get it right.
Who This Is For
Wherever you are in the journey, this is still your room.
The Circle isn't organised by seniority.
It's organised by a shared commitment to keep climbing.
Early in your journey
You are new to L&D, or finding your footing. You need a place to ask the questions you are not sure are "smart enough" to ask out loud, and to see what good judgment actually looks like in practice.
Mid-journey
You are doing the work, but not yet trusted with strategy. You need a place to pressure-test real decisions before you make them, with people who have been exactly where you are.
Advancing to CLO
You are a senior IC or manager, working toward the top of the function. You need a place to think out loud about organisational-level bets, with peers operating at that level.
What You Get
What is inside the room.
Access built around practice, not just content.
Quarterly 90-Day
Skills Sprints
One shared goal, one focused outcome – everyone in the cohort working toward it together, not alone.
Monthly live sessions
with Zubin
Real questions, real challenges, whatever's actually happening in your job right now. Recorded if you can't make it live.
Guidance from people
further along the path
Ask a question and get a real answer – from Zubin, or from someone a few steps ahead of you in their own journey.
A community that
celebrates the wins too
Post a win, big or small, to people who actually understand what it took to get there.
Full access to the L&D
Academy course library
24+ courses across L&D, HR, interviewing, leadership, and career development – there when you need to build a specific skill.
A growing library of tools,
templates, and case studies
Added year-round, ready to use in real situations, not just theory.
Who is in the room with you
I am Zubin Rashid – Founder and Chief Learning Officer of L&D Academy, and the person who will actually be in this room with you, not just behind it.
I have spent 25+ years in L&D, consulting, and executive coaching – across India, the UK, Malaysia, Austria, and Germany. I have sat on both sides of the table: building learning strategy from inside organisations, and advising leadership teams from outside them.
I have worked with organisations like Mercedes Benz, BCG, LabVantage Solutions, ArcelorMittal, British Telecom, Atos, Sandvik, and Hoerbiger, and led intercultural consulting between India and Germany at ICUnet.AG – work that taught me how differently "good L&D" looks depending on who is in the room.
Today, over 25,000 learners across 158 countries have gone through my courses, and I am currently the #1-ranked Corporate L&D instructor on Udemy.
But the thing I have learned from all of it is this: courses can teach you a framework. They can't teach you the nerve to use it in front of a stakeholder who has already decided what they want, or the judgment to know when the framework doesn't fit the room you are actually in. That only comes from practicing it – out loud, with people who will tell you the truth.
That's why the L&D Academy Circle exists. Not as another place to learn about L&D, but as the room where you actually practice becoming the person your organisation trusts with its people strategy.
I will be there every month, live. Not lecturing – working through real problems with you, the same way I would want someone to work through mine.
What Happens When You Join The Waitlist
Join the waitlist
Reserve your place before the room opens on September 15, 2026.
Become part of the founding cohort
You are in the room from day one, alongside the first members shaping what this becomes.
Get an introductory month
Experience the room firsthand before making any longer-term commitment.
We will be in touch
Everything you need to know ahead of launch – no obligation, no pressure.
FAQs
A community for L&D and people-development professionals, built around live discussion, peer practice, and shared problem-solving. Members bring real workplace situations into the room and work through them together, guided by Zubin Rashid and the wider group.
To give L&D professionals, at every stage from early career to CLO-track, a place to practice their craft with peers, not just consume content about it. The objective is to build the judgment and confidence that come only from working through real problems out loud, repeatedly, with others on the same climb.
Members build the practical judgment that actually moves an L&D career forward, not just theoretical knowledge. Concretely, that means being able to run a real needs analysis with confidence, push back on a bad training brief, build a business case leadership actually listens to, and make decisions the way someone at the next level up would. It's the difference between knowing a framework and having actually used it under real pressure, with people watching your back.
Three things running together. Quarterly 90-day skills sprints, where the whole cohort works toward one shared, focused goal. Monthly live working sessions with Zubin, where members bring real challenges from their actual jobs and the group works through them together. And an ongoing community space in between, for questions, peer guidance, and sharing wins. Alongside all of this, members get full access to the entire L&D Academy course library, 24+ courses, tools, templates, and case studies, so whatever gap the room surfaces, there is something to close it.
L&D professionals are often isolated in their organizations, sometimes the only person doing the role, with no internal peer to sanity-check a decision or push back on a bad request. This gives them that peer group, plus direct access to someone with 25+ years in the field. Over time, it raises the collective capability of the profession itself, not just individual members, since senior members actively mentor those earlier in their journey inside the same room.
Yes. There's no readiness test for the room. Some of the most valuable moments come from people willing to say "I don't know" out loud, regardless of how senior they are.
More detail on format and cadence will be shared with the founding cohort ahead of launch. The short version: this is designed to fit around a working career, not compete with it.
The first month is complimentary, full access to everything included. After that, the investment is $19 per month, or $190 per year for those who would rather pay annually. No pressure either way, the room is best experienced first, then decided on.
No. The L&D Academy Circle is organised by commitment to the climb, not seniority. Early-career, mid-career, and senior professionals are all part of the same room.
September 15, 2026. Everyone on the waitlist before then is part of the founding cohort.