Training professional with financial services depth, an MBA, and a decade of live delivery experience. I build learning programs that work — in fintech, banking, and regulated environments.
Financial Services L&D · Instructional Design · Live Facilitation · AI-Enabled Learning
MBA · FINRA SIE · 10+ Years Curriculum Leadership
What brings you here today?
I serve two adjacent markets with the same core capability: designing and delivering training that adults actually use. Choose the path that matches what you're hiring for.
Training Consultant · Instructional Designer · Director of L&D
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Curriculum Director · Department Chair · Master Trainer
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Or scroll down to explore the full body of work, the story behind it, and the speaking practice.
"My entire career has been one thing in different rooms: helping people understand something they could not understand before."
I'm a Training Consultant and Instructional Designer with an MBA, FINRA SIE certification, and over a decade of experience designing and delivering learning at scale. I work at the intersection of financial services, instructional design, and AI-enabled learning — translating regulated, technical, and complex content into training that adults actually use.
My background spans Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Operations Risk and post-merger systems migration), TD Ameritrade, multi-institution mortgage operations, and instructional leadership across several school districts. I've stood in front of classrooms of 20+ adult learners every working day for the better part of a decade. I've also coached teachers, designed curriculum at the district level, and now evaluate AI-generated learning content for accuracy and instructional quality.
The story behind the work
I came of age between two worlds that could not decide what to do with each other — rotary phones and cellphones, typewriters and Macs, Istanbul and Jacksonville. I'm from the generation that fell into the gap between analog certainty and digital possibility, and learned out of pure necessity to navigate without a map.
In my first year as a founding educator at a brand-new high school in Jacksonville — eight teachers, a trailer for a classroom, students who showed up anyway — I was pregnant with my second daughter. That year, one of my students died of leukemia. The same disease was quietly taking my father in Istanbul. I stood at the church with my colleagues, my student's face on a memorial poster, my unborn daughter inside me. It was the kind of moment that rearranges what you know to be true about time and urgency. I never fully unlearned it.
Three months after Arya was born, I flew to Istanbul alone — a newborn and a two-year-old, a bird flu scare, a plane held on the tarmac — to be with my father. He died seven months later. I came back. I finished what I'd started. I always do.
What I carried from that church, from that flight, from that loss, was a single fierce conviction: that the people in my care — my children, my students, my teams — need to be equipped richly and completely for whatever life might ask of them before they are ready. So I went back. I finished my MBA. I earned the credentials. I built the expertise. That conviction is what I bring to every learning program I design.
I work at the intersection of financial services, instructional design, and AI-enabled learning. Based in Jacksonville, FL — available for remote, hybrid, and on-site roles with up to 25% travel.
Designing structured, outcome-aligned learning experiences using ADDIE and SAM. Built to change what learners can do, not just what they know.
Integrating AI tools into learning ecosystems to reduce production time, personalize learning paths, and scale training across organizations.
Deep experience in regulated environments: FINRA, SEC, AML, HIPAA, and state education compliance.
Coaching frameworks that build real capability — for educators, professionals, and leaders navigating complex change.
Designing and delivering powerful live and virtual learning experiences across classrooms, boardrooms, and international conferences.
Helping organizations adapt to new systems with human-centered strategies that reduce friction and build lasting buy-in.
Specialized in bringing people into new environments with confidence — from new teachers and loan originators to seasoned doctors and department-wide teams.
"Learning happens at the moment of clarity. I design for that moment."— Beril Yabar
Learning Frameworks & Regulatory Environments
Learning frameworks across lending, investment advisory, and regulatory environments. FINRA/SEC/AML compliance concepts translated into scenario-based experiences that hold up under audit. Built from direct experience inside mortgage operations, financial advisory, and fintech platforms — including Encompass full lifecycle, RESPA/TRID/AML compliance, and multi-institution loan origination.
Request Sample3-Location EMR Implementation
Designed and delivered training for clinical staff during EMR implementation across 3 locations. Reduced errors, increased engagement, and achieved full staff adoption.
Request SampleLarge-Scale Audience Experience Design
Led audience experience design for multi-city campaigns reaching 495,000+ people across 82 cities, managing a team of 35.
Learn MoreOriginal Narrative-Based Learning Design · Beril Yabar
An original narrative-based learning design. Characters embody mathematical concepts: Graph World the hero, Mother X-Axis, Father Y-Axis, the Linear Clan. Story, sequence, and learning objectives built from scratch.
Algebra 1 Performance Planner · Instructional Systems Design
A standards-based instructional planning and project-management tool for Algebra 1. Organizes curriculum standards, weekly pacing, benchmark expectations, and assessment tracking into one practical workflow for training coordinators and program leads.
Request SampleSkills Demonstrated
Tools: Excel · Standards Mapping · Pacing Guide Design · Data Planning
Corporate eLearning Modules
New samples in Articulate Storyline and Rise currently in development. Onboarding, compliance, and soft skills modules launching Summer 2026.
Get NotifiedWritten for learning professionals, fintech leaders, and organizations navigating the future of workforce performance. 4,500+ followers.
What most platform training in mortgage technology gets wrong — and what it takes to design learning that addresses the regulated, time-pressured, multi-stakeholder workflow behind every loan.
Read on LinkedInThree disciplines shape every learning strategy: language, logic, and systems thinking. Together they build learning infrastructure that drives performance — not just training completion.
Read on LinkedInThe real opportunity in AI-enabled learning is not automated content generation — it is earlier signals, clearer diagnosis, and faster intervention. Intelligent performance enablement at scale.
Read on LinkedInThey show output, not thinking. What actually differentiates a learning designer is the ability to show the problem, the reasoning, and the business connection — not just the deliverable.
Read on LinkedInCompletion does not guarantee performance. How structured ADDIE thinking, cognitive scaffolding, and Kirkpatrick evaluation shift learning from information delivery to measurable behavior change.
Read on LinkedInOrganizations that can diagnose capability gaps earlier than the pace of change will win. The future of learning is better diagnosis, better timing, and stronger alignment to business outcomes.
Read on LinkedIn"The best learning is not information delivered. It is transformation designed."— Beril Yabar
I left Istanbul because the city had become a beautiful, claustrophobic archive of who I was — and I needed an ocean large enough to hold who I was becoming.
What followed was not a career. It was a curriculum. Istanbul to Nashville. Nashville to Austin. Finance to real estate to mortgage. Florida to Missouri and back again. Turkish Airlines at 30,000 feet. Television studios in Istanbul. A writers group in Corning, New York, in the middle of a snowstorm. A Bank of America operations desk during post-merger chaos. A high school mathematics classroom where I looked at a room of brilliant, restless teenagers and understood — with sudden and irreversible clarity — that I was teaching them how to survive a state exam inside a broken machine, instead of how to architect their own lives. And that by staying inside that machine, I was failing to model the very courage I was asking them to have.
So I left.
There is a precise mathematical line that connects the flight path of an aircraft, the volatility of a financial ledger, the architecture of a curriculum, and the cadence of a poem. I have spent my life mastering that line.
Most people see complexity as a barrier. I see it as raw material. My career has not been a series of separate pivots — it has been a singular, vertical obsession with systems translation: the rare art of entering a highly complex, chaotic environment, finding its core logic, and building the learning architecture that makes it scale.
The Trajectory
The Scale — In international aviation and luxury service, I learned to manage human dynamics under pressure and operationalize elite standards at altitude. Precision. Composure. Adaptability. No margin for error.
The Logic — In corporate finance, mortgage operations, and investment advisory, I learned the cold, uncompromising language of the ledger. FINRA/SEC/AML compliance. Encompass full lifecycle. RESPA. TRID. The gap between what is documented and what is understood — and what that gap costs.
The Architecture — In mathematics education and institutional leadership, I learned deep cognitive psychology: how the human brain processes difficult information, where logic breaks down, and how to engineer frameworks that turn friction into mastery. 40,000+ practice completions from 75 learners in a single semester is not an engagement metric. It is proof of design.
The Shift
The ceiling became too low for the scale of the problems I wanted to solve. True instruction is not about helping people survive a rigid test inside a broken room. It is about building the intellectual infrastructure that allows organizations, leaders, and teams to perform in unpredictable markets. Today I build the learning systems, AI enablement strategies, and knowledge frameworks that bridge the gap between complex technology and human performance.
The person reading this page who feels a sudden, undeniable clarity — that is the feeling I design for. In every room I enter. For every organization I work with.
I do not build generic training modules. I engineer operational clarity.
Istanbul
Built a foundation in analytical thinking, systems reasoning, and the discipline of following evidence wherever it leads.
Turkey — Media
Co-produced and hosted Seven Colors — awarded the 9th International Environmental Award. Led the Turkcell Signal Tour across 82 cities, managing 35 staff and reaching 495,000+ people. Won the Direct Marketing Association Leadership Award, Chicago.
Turkish Airlines
Certified on Boeing 737 and Airbus 310. Learned that high-stakes human performance must be designed, not assumed.
New York & Missouri
Held dual license in mortgage and real estate in Missouri — working across clients, underwriters, processors, realtors, and stakeholders simultaneously. Institutions included New York Life, Flagstar, Gershman, Cornerstone, Fairway Mortgage, and American Pacific Mortgage. Joined a writers group in Corning, NY that first opened her creative voice.
Florida — MBA
Secured a rare paid internship at Bank of America Merrill Lynch at the Charlotte, NC headquarters. Worked within Operations Risk during the post-merger integration of Merrill Lynch into Bank of America — systems migration, EMEA reports, regulatory compliance, and internal audits at enterprise scale.
2020 – Now
Six years leading math departments, coaching teachers, and designing professional learning systems at Frank H. Peterson Academies, Kernan Middle School (DCPS), and St. Augustine High School. Now pivoting into corporate learning design.
The same mind that designs learning systems also writes poetry, imagines films, and believes that stories are how humans actually change. Coming Summer 2027.
Stage Play — In Development
A Broadway play about memory, migration, and the things a daughter carries across continents from a father she never fully understood until it was almost too late.
◌ In DevelopmentFilm — In Development
A film concept following the transformation of a teacher whose unconventional methods force a school system to confront what learning actually is.
◌ In DevelopmentBook — In Development
A collection about identity, reinvention, womanhood, motherhood, and what it means to build a second life with full intention.
◌ In DevelopmentA self-portrait in third person. A life lived fully, fought fiercely, loved completely. — Beril Yabar
Türkçe — Orijinal
Bir öğünlük nefes gibi çekti içine son bir kez hayatı, Doydu bu ömüre. Güzel de yaşlandı, zaten bunu istemişti... Bir tapınak yazıtındaki gibi, Gürültü ve patırtının ortasında sükunetle dolaştı... Bir Amazon kadını gibi savaştı doğruları uğruna... Bir dostunun dediği gibi, "Yaşamak bir sanattı..." "Doğru zamanda, doğru şeyi, doğru bir şekilde ve doğru sebepler için yap!" "Kendini sev, kendine olan saygını asla yitirme ve asla kendine yalan söyleme!"
English — Translation
She drew life in one last time, like a single meal of breath, content with this lifetime. She aged gracefully, as she had always wished... Like an inscription on a temple wall, she walked calmly amidst the noise and chaos... She fought like an Amazon, for what was right... As a friend once said, "Living was an art..." "Do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons." "Love yourself. Never lose your self-respect. Never lie to yourself."
— Beril Yabar
Beril Yabar has spent her life in rooms where people needed to understand something they did not yet know. Classrooms. Boardrooms. Training floors. Television studios in Istanbul. And the quiet room where she sat with her father's illness on one side and a three-month-old daughter on the other. What she has learned — across five industries, three continents, and a lifetime of reinvention — is that transformation does not happen on schedule. It happens on the unknown roads.
A keynote for anyone who has ever felt off-course.
This is not a talk about having a plan. It is a talk about what happens when the plan disappears. Drawn from a life built across three continents, five industries, and the relentless practice of beginning again.
"One engaged person in a training room changes the whole room."— Beril Yabar
Inspired By
Wayne Dyer · Jim Rohn · Bob Proctor
Zig Ziglar · Earl Nightingale · Alan Watts · Chris Gardner
Alongside my work in learning and design, I write and record original music. A few pieces from a longer body of work — listen, share, or reach out about licensing.
Featured Track
A hidden prayer — original composition.
Streaming & Licensing
Spotify and additional streaming links coming soon. For licensing inquiries, performance bookings, or collaborations, please get in touch.
Music Inquiry →When a story is truly lived, it becomes unforgettable. The brain does not file it away. It starts sparking — making connections, rewriting memory, opening doors you thought were closed.
Was there something — while you were reading, while you were here — that took you back?
A person. A decision. A road you thought you had forgotten. A truth you are still carrying.
That was not by accident.
That means something connected. And when something connects, that is the beginning.
Reach OutWhether you are looking for an instructional design partner, a corporate trainer, or a keynote speaker — I would like to hear about your challenge.
beril@berilyabar.com