My approach to Learning Experience Design …

My background is in anthropology, social-organizational psychology, and human-centered design. I’ve worked within private and nonprofit structures. International, national, and regional organizations. I have worked with an assortment of frameworks and theories. I really love the messy, complicated way adults learn new content in order to adopt new behaviors. I take a flexible and systemic approach, so learning experiences can expand to include learning outside of a training room.

• Make it playful + relevant. We start as curious little people eager to learn. And then adults accumulate life experience. Luckily, there are some specific adult learning strategies and structures there can help us integrate new information into what we already know and believe (or think we know). This means things like: (1) setting clear learning objectives, (2) using icebreakers so we can bring our experience into the room, (3) quickly providing opportunities to apply learning and “try it on”, (4) finding opportunities to embed storytelling, and (5) ensuring the learning is self-directed.

• Make sure the right people are in the room with the right content. I embed stealth change management techniques and strategies from day one. What behavior change is the organization really trying to influence with this new information? Create the learning event and learning structures to support people in adopting the new behaviors. Think outside the training room and don’t limit the design to just delivering the learning content; provide support for implementation.

• Structured whimsy is my facilitation jam. Before any learning experience, my facilitator and planning agendas are tight and planned to the last minute, with every activity and transition mapped to an objective. But once in the room? Then the magic of people coming together and collaborating happens. I let the whimsy unfold. This may mean we don’t hit the specific beats 4, 5 and 6 of the agenda … but I will flex to the group learning dynamics and make sure we meet the learning objectives.

Learning Experience Design #1

How might we … create a high-impact experiential learning event that kicks off a year of learning and a new strategic direction?

Organization: KIPP Foundation

Background: KIPP is a national network of 32 high-performing charter school regions, each an independent 501.c.3 and led by a governing board and CEO. In December 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has been signed into law, reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). KIPP had been part of a coalition to ensure that the Charter Schools Program (CSP) was included as part of ESSA, and CSP now included dedicated funding for the replication and expansion of high-performing charter schools. Because of this success at the national level, KIPP was shifting its advocacy strategy and focus. This meant a new strategy and resources for regional boards and CEOs had to be shared across the network and new expectations shared for what advocacy looked like for KIPP - both nationally and locally.

Goal: Create a 2-day experiential learning and advocacy event for CEOs and Board Chairs in Washington, DC to kick off a year of shifting to a new advocacy strategy

My role: As leader of Executive & Board Learning and Strategy, my role was to design and lead this cross-functional event, including leading the program, operations, and government affairs teams in coordinating an impactful, high-profile, and multi-day event for KIPP’s most senior leaders. My role was also to use this event as a kick-off to a year-long learning strategy, which included codification of key resources, an online learning system, and creating an individualize coaching/learning plan for boards in key regions for 2016.

Outcomes: 60+ Board Chairs, CEOs and executive leaders from across KIPP attended a Board Chair Retreat/Hill Day in Washington, DC in March 2016. This 2-day event kicked off a year-long learning strategy and included deep and experiential content for both advocacy and governance. The advocacy agenda included: attendees visited the offices of 14 US Senators; a community dinner at the home of David & Katherine Bradley; private presentations by Cory Booker (US Senator, NJ) and Arthur Brooks (President, American Enterprise Institute). The governance agenda included: governance consultancies to surface peer expertise on key local issues; matching of executive coaching resources; workshops for deeper understanding of the Board Chair/CEO partnership.

Learning Experience Design #2

How might we … truly engage school district leaders in design thinking and as partners in the co-design of a new service?

Organization: Playworks / Stanford d.school

Background: Over the past 20+ years, Playworks had grown from serving 4 schools in Berkeley, CA to serving 2000+ across the country. This growth had been largely through a school-by-school selling strategy to principals. By 2016, Playworks realized district superintendents were starting to pay attention to the outcomes their elementary schools were seeing. Which meant that Playworks needed to create a “district as customer” strategy and potentially had the opportunity to design a new service specifically for a district customer who may want to scale and invest in the outcomes provided by Playworks approach across their district.

Goal: In partnership with Stanford d.school, create a 2-day design thinking / design sprint hybrid event to test and co-design with 12 district superintendents. This event would serve as a kickoff for a small group of district leaders across the country who could serve as a district steering committee for future strategies.

My role: As Director of Service Design, my role was to take this idea from concept into action. This meant cross-functional coordination to determine objectives, participants, creating design and content of the day(s), facilitating and follow-up with all participants. My role was also to lead the “now what” work within Playworks to share and embed new learnings, in particular new insights into sales, partnership, and development strategies for this newly identified customer group. In this kick off event, I took district leaders through the design thinking framework, from empathy interviews all the way to prototyping and testing their ideas. District leaders participated in virtual user feedback sessions a month later to further refine service prototypes. I also became the internal coach and thought partner for regional district partnerships and contracts.

Outcomes: A 2-day learning experience event, which was a hybrid of design sprint / design thinking training, was held at Stanford d.school in October 2018. A new “district champions” team was created as a sounding board for new service strategies. Internally, learnings on district-as-customer were embedded into new sales, development, and partnership strategies across Playworks (see case study of systems change here) See project resources here