Design-Led Custom Executive Programs

High-Impact Custom Learning Solutions for Organizations and Leaders of Tomorrow

“With Return on Design, we are saying design is part and parcel of your world as an executive, as a business leader. Innovation happens at the intersection of disciplines, and when you embed the concept of design at an organizational level in a way that’s more about the problems at hand and not so much about the product, you start seeing the levers of change used in a different manner.”

—Mariana Amatullo, Vice Provost and Academic Dean for Continuing and Professional Education

Learning Solutions Built Around Your Business Goals

Our world is changing faster than ever before. Globalization, supply chain disruption, rapid shifts in markets and economies, and the accelerating pace of technological development have created an environment where organizations must continuously adapt, evolve, and transform themselves.

For leaders, the path forward can be uncertain. Navigating your organization’s unique business challenges and competitive advantages and building sustainable growth requires mindsets and processes that transcend traditional models and strategies.

Parsons Executive Education custom programs will support your needs with dynamic intensive training that will equip your leaders and teams with the creative confidence and skills that drive result-driven change.

Collaboration is at the heart of what we do. We w0rk together with you to create customized programs tailored to your teams—programs that align with your organizational strategy and deliver on your business goals.

The Parsons Difference

Our programs are designed to deliver results. We effect change through a number of key interventions.

Return on Design

Our custom learning experiences are rooted in our signature approach— Return on Design (ROD), a user-centered, holistic concept that engages your teams in learning how to develop and design the systems, products, and experiences that will move your agenda for transformation forward.

Embracing equity, inclusion, sustainable impact, and purpose-driven innovation, the concept of Return on Design enables you and your teams to use design to develop strategy, address complexity, and drive transformation.

Learn from World-Class Leaders

Our programs are developed and taught by a diverse community of innovators, researchers, and industry leaders with hands-on, real-world experience across industries. These experts are not just leaders in their fields; they impart the knowledge most relevant to business leaders and reveal how it can be applied to drive change. At Parsons, we have addressed pressing issues in groundbreaking ways since our founding. Our commitment to sustainability and purpose-driven innovation is as important as our vision of making business a force of good in the world.

Co-creative Development Process

We collaborate with your team to create a custom curriculum, using interactive discovery methods to guide the development of bespoke content and delivery formats. We are focused on maximizing your learning experiences to suit your organization’s culture and way of working.

All custom solutions are informed by our shared analysis of your organization’s state, needs, and desired outcomes. These solutions reflect the latest in design and adult learning research, studies in design-led strategy and practice, tool kits, and frameworks, and feature engagement with our world-renowned faculty and network of experts and industry innovators.

Whether your organization is a start-up or a large enterprise, we can design and deliver the right custom experience for you and with you. Our intentional approach ensures that we are building your capacity to identify and manipulate the drivers and levers of change and to unlock Return on Design for focused performance and resilience, improved outcomes, and impact.

“We chose Parsons because it is one of the most renowned fashion schools in the world. The program’s format is very efficient and productive, as companies can verify in practice what is being presented in classes.”

—Rebecca Macedo, International Business Manager, FIEMG

Our Collaborative Process

Discovery

Employing Parsons Executive Education’s user-centered inquiry approach, we conduct a thorough assessment of your organization’s needs and goals to develop a roadmap for transformation that outlines the program’s scope, timeline, and outcomes.

Development

Using our proven methodologies, we create a program tailored to your organization’s unique requirements. We work with you, using in-depth consultation and an iterative process, to develop innovative learning solutions that address your organization’s needs.

Delivery

Participants dive into an immersive learning experience, deploying bespoke tools that produce transformative outcomes. Throughout this process, we work closely with your leadership team to ensure the progress and effectiveness of the program.

Evaluation

Feedback loops inform our mixedmethod approach to evaluating the impact of our collaboration at both the individual and the organizational levels. Our holistic process allows us to build a knowledge base for future engagements with your organization.

EVALUATION DISCOVERY

We Champion Leaders with Purpose

Our programs will equip you to discover new opportunities for positive impact in your organization. Acknowledging the complexity of leading in a rapidly developing world, our programs enable you to act with empathy, intention, agility, and confidence to produce work that matters.

Our Philosophy

Our custom programs are designed to be user-focused, immersive, and immediately applicable to your work, deploying bespoke methods that produce transformative outcomes. Rooted in design and contextualized by global events affecting your work, our programs integrate data, experience, research, and real-world input to identify key opportunities for positive impact.

Drawing on the deep expertise in leadership and innovation of our faculty and global network, we deliver capacity-building content in live, online, and hybrid formats, creating a uniquely customized experience for your communities. Participants learn to employ a unique approach to the potential of design and to use design as:

• Method and mindset

• The catalyst for strategy

• The driver of transformation

• The solution to complexity

With a distinguished record of delivering directly applicable outcomes for purpose-driven global corporations, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and educational institutions, we welcome your collaboration in discovering effective solutions.

Why Parsons Executive Education?

Parsons Executive Education operates at the intersection of design and the global socioeconomic trends transforming our organizations and communities. Our programs are designed for industry leaders and entrepreneurs who have the courage to engage in high-impact learning—those who come at challenges differently, celebrate creativity, and are capable of acting in the face of continuous change.

As the #1 design school in the United States, an institution that is leading the thinking and output of industries the world over, we offer a high-impact learning environment that will enable you to:

• Practice approaches to problem solving that will maximize your ability to adapt to change

• Acquire human-centered methods that will help you effect organizational transformation and create memorable experiences for your audience

• Harness new sources of value for building successful products and services while designing risk out of the process

• Master the art of prototyping and make ideas tangible to maximize stakeholder and customer buy-in

• Create multilevel impact by employing systems thinking and ecosystem business models, an approach well suited to the new era of complexity

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