Fish and wildlife professionals need high quality training to enable them to meet their professional challenges. Success in the workplace is critical for these professionals be they state or federal agency, nongovernmental organizations, industry or others. Yet the vast majority of employing entities are poorly equipped to provide their staff with such training. The science societies, notably The Wildlife Society and the American Fisheries Society, provide significant course offerings but it is highly dispersed among chapters, sections and nationally with limited coordination. Key training partners such as the Management Assistance Team, academic institutions, other nonprofits and even private industry also provide high-quality training courses however these opportunities are often hard to identify, are not coordinated with other providers and collectively leave gaps unrecognized or key training needs insufficiently met. Recent conversations with agency heads showcase these gaps with numerous topics of interest for which there are no existing training opportunities identified such as fish kill investigations. Based upon a structured and facilitated workshop on the future of professional development in the fisheries and wildlife profession with participants from a highly diverse set of organizations and agencies, it was clear that our profession would greatly benefit from a more collaborative and efficient approach to providing training. To create the foundation for this important effort, two key tasks were identified as fundamental to addressing the needs. First is to fully understand the constraints, opportunities and needs of state fish and wildlife agencies in providing comprehensive training opportunities for their staff. The ability of state agencies to provide training varies greatly with some states essentially having no capacity whatsoever while some states have strong programs with solid structures in place. The second major goal of this project is the development of a structured web-based open access clearinghouse of professional development training opportunities. This tool will allow training providers and users to search for and share courses already in deployment, craft training options and coursework plans, and allow for better utilization of qualified instructors across the profession. This clearinghouse will allow for better planning on course delivery, promote reduced duplication, and allow for more efficient sharing of instructional resources throughout the fish and wildlife profession. This project will approach this objective through a two-step process of developing a formal survey followed by a series of focused workshops that will engage fish and wildlife administrators in discussions and explorations regarding training provision support and needs. The primary beneficiaries of this project are state fish and wildlife agency staff at all levels with the eventual goal of ensuring that every state agency has the ability to provide staff with the training to be successful in their current position and in positions to which they aspire. This project will help our profession move to a much more thoughtful collaborative and efficient model that will benefit our people agencies and the resource.