Education & Experience Design
Modularizing Leadership Development scaled to 1M+ participants
Leading design for McKinsey Academy's digital learning platform — establishing modular, mobile-first capability-building programs that embedded leadership development in daily work and scaled to serve 3,000+ organizations.
McKinsey Academy's new modular learning process and enterprise products delivered measurable growth for leaders and organizations — across Academy, Wave, and OrgLab.
Traditional corporate learning often disconnects daily work from long-term development. While it works for culture-building, it requires employees to divert attention from work to learn — creating friction in motivation, expectations, and responsibilities. These competing priorities leave leaders disengaged and organizations unable to build capabilities and sustain change at scale.
In McKinsey's People and Organizational Performance practice, three solutions needed UX impact: Academy — a customized learning platform with lengthy content, lack of modularity, unclear value, and a custom-built ops system; digital workshop support tools that were inefficient and not scalable; and a mobile-first solution ripe for learning enhancement. Academy also had an opportunity to integrate with the Wave platform for large business transformations, and OrgLab needed design thinking to integrate with Wave and enhance workflows.
As design manager, I led innovative changes to accelerate time-to-value for learning offerings. I introduced design principles focused on micro-learning, modularity, and ease of cognitive load — improving measurable growth journeys through design research and a new digital process for ready-to-deploy modular offerings. I led enterprise products integration: Academy x Wave for organizational financial performance and product design, and design recommendations for OrgLab. Contextual AI-assisted learning evolved the Academy's approach to a sustainable leadership development framework with shorter skill-application cycles.
"Leadership development succeeds when personal goals and organizational strategy intersect."
How might we help individuals and organizations set meaningful goals and develop skills that align with both strategic transformation priorities and personal growth needs?
Strategy & research
I improved McKinsey Academy's offerings by creating modular, scalable capability-building programs aligned with organizational strategy. I simplified digital solutions for self-paced learning, oversaw vendor partnerships to deliver optimized, mobile-first products, and launched initial AI innovation pilots to foster cross-team collaboration.
Execution & team
I established design standards and best practices, fostered a user-centric culture, and supported evidence-driven research that enhanced team performance and accelerated delivery. I managed and mentored a team of 10 designers and coached product managers on design thinking and agile — user journey mapping, user research, and agile methodologies. I dedicated 20% of my time to coaching multi-disciplinary teams, reducing time in define and discovery phases, building confidence in decision-making, and addressing 50% of talent gaps with reusable design and agile tools.
Daily leadership & modularity
I led the team in creating a mobile-first experience that embeds leadership development in daily work — connecting daily activities to long-term growth through milestone-driven feedback and reflection. We simplified the design of a modular learning system within a secure MOOC framework and improved asynchronous, self-paced features. I applied behavior design principles to align personal goals with team competencies, simplify the decision-making architecture, and reduce cognitive load. Data and feedback loops across platforms promoted reflection and sustained behavior change.
Enterprise products
Academy x Wave — I led capability-building features, AI coach adaptation, and improved the Initiative Owner experience through user research and simplification, advocating user-centricity in a leadership-driven environment. OrgLab — I connected Wave, Academy, and transformation tools, standardized design systems, and strengthened team capability through design ops and training. I also delivered research and workshops in the social impact and learning sector.
The modular leadership development work demonstrates how design can scale capability-building when learning is embedded in work and aligned with personal and organizational goals.
What I learned:
- Autonomy and milestones sustain motivation. Purposeful milestones and opportunities to connect learning to work, values, and peer exchange keep adults engaged.
- Rituals make learning visible. Embedding reflection and retrospection into workflows makes learning repeatable and measurable.
- Mobile-first and micro-interactions matter. While most work happens on desktop, mobile-first experiences — with gamification, mini-dashboards, and habit-reinforcement — can inspire a sense of community and change.
- Investment in learning drives organizational identity. Integrating service design, social learning, and professional development strengthens the connection between learning investment and an organization's core identity.
Leadership development succeeds when personal goals and organizational strategy intersect. Leveraging AI and analytics to tailor learning pathways in real time could shift fear of failure based on metrics into motivators for growth and innovation.