Director, Learning and Development, Learning Design and Innovation

TAG - The Aspen Group•IL - Remote, IL

1d•$153,000 - $180,000

About The Position

The Aspen Group (TAG) is seeking a Director of Learning Design & Innovation to lead the Instructional Design function. This role is responsible for setting the strategic direction, driving innovative and scalable learning solutions, and improving the quality, speed, and impact of learning across TAG. The Director will provide senior leadership, coaching, and development to their teams, overseeing the design and development lifecycle. This position defines and owns the Learning Design strategy, translating it into team practices, quality standards, and measurable business outcomes. The role also serves as the senior leader for learning innovation, exploring opportunities to apply AI-enabled solutions, rapid-development methods, simulations, gamification, and emerging technologies. The Director will manage the full innovation lifecycle, from opportunity identification through implementation and scale, sponsoring pilots, and institutionalizing successful approaches. This senior leader will partner closely with Learning Technology, business stakeholders, and other L&D leaders to connect learning strategy, design excellence, and execution at an enterprise level. The ideal candidate is a strong people leader, learning strategist, and seasoned design practitioner, comfortable balancing organizational leadership with direct involvement in complex initiatives, ensuring learning solutions are engaging, scalable, innovative, and aligned to measurable business outcomes.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s Degree preferred.
A minimum of 7+ years of relevant learning design experience in a fast-paced organization with a distributed workforce.
A minimum of 5+ years leading a team of L&D professionals.
Advanced understanding of adult learning theory and principles demonstrated application of instructional design and human performance improvement principles.
Strong ability to create process, organizational systems, and operating procedures.
Exceptional project management skills and proven experience partnering in large-scale organizations.
Advanced problem solving, decision-making, and critical thinking skills.
Proven experience influencing stakeholders across a variety of functions and levels.
Proven design experience across learning modalities (ILT, eLearning, Virtual, Performance Support, Mobile, Social).
Well versed in digital learning, just-in-time / micro-learning, and blended learning strategies and advanced understanding of design and delivery methods.
Strong proficiency with AI enabled design tools and high learning agility for new and emerging technologies.
Experience with HTML, Captivate, Articulate or comparable software development tools.
Experience with Adobe (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) or comparable tools.
Experience with LMS preferred.
Flexibility and agility to be proactive in a fast paced, ever changing environment.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Excellent collaboration and influencing skills; ability to work with multiple internal and external customers and subject matter experts.
Proven experience managing design vendors.
Ability to travel as needed.

Nice To Haves

Graphic design or visual design skills preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead and Develop the Instructional Design Function: Provide senior leadership, coaching, and performance management to Senior Managers, Instructional Design leads, and their teams. Establish clear expectations, build leadership bench strength, strengthen organizational engagement, and cultivate the capabilities needed to deliver high-quality and increasingly innovative learning solutions at scale.
Own Learning Design Execution and Quality Governance: Set the standards and operating model for how learning solutions move from discovery through implementation across the function. Maintain enterprise-level visibility into capacity, priorities, timelines, risks, and deliverables, and hold the organization accountable to standards for instructional effectiveness, learner experience, accessibility, accuracy, and brand alignment.
Set and Drive Learning Design Strategy: Define the Learning Design strategy in partnership with L&D leadership, and translate it into functional priorities, standards, operating practices, and development expectations across teams. Ensure organizational goals are directly connected to design execution and that all work remains aligned to business priorities and learner needs.
Lead the AI-Enabled Learning Agenda: Set the direction for responsible use of AI across learning design, development, evaluation, and learner experience. Sponsor the development of scalable workflows, tools, resources, and standards that increase efficiency, ensure quality, and enable consistent, effective AI adoption across the function.
Champion Innovative Learning Approaches: Set the vision for how simulations, scenario-based learning, practice experiences, gamification, rapid-development methods, interactive solutions, and learning embedded in the flow of work are applied across L&D. Ensure innovation decisions are grounded in performance need rather than novelty and hold teams accountable to that standard.
Sponsor Pilots and Proofs of Concept: Oversee a portfolio of structured pilots tied to defined learner or business needs. Set expectations for hypotheses, success measures, timelines, stakeholder engagement, and evaluation plans, and make final calls on whether solutions scale, get refined, or are discontinued.
Institutionalize Successful Innovations Across L&D: Own the organization-wide adoption of successful pilots and emerging practices, ensuring they become reusable tools, templates, standards, playbooks, training, and implementation guidance. Sponsor adoption plans and drive change management that enables consistent, sustainable use across L&D.
Shape Emerging Authoring Approaches and Platform Strategy: Partner with Learning Technology leadership and other senior stakeholders to evaluate and prioritize new authoring methods, tools, and platform capabilities. Define enterprise use cases, assess strategic value, sponsor testing, and make recommendations grounded in learner experience, scalability, efficiency, and organizational readiness.
Establish Learning Design Standards and Resources: Set the framework for reusable design resources, templates, quality standards, and development guidance across the function. Drive consistency organization-wide while empowering teams to select approaches appropriate to audience, business need, modality, and desired performance outcome.
Measure and Communicate Learning Design and Innovation Impact: Establish the measurement framework for learning design and innovation effectiveness, drawing on project data, learner feedback, quality indicators, adoption measures, and business inputs. Translate findings into strategic recommendations and report outcomes, impact, and lessons learned to senior L&D and business leadership.
Lead Cross-Functional and Business Partnership: Serve as the senior point of partnership with Learning Technology, Learning Optimization and Continuous Improvement, Leadership Development, Learning Experience, HR, and business leaders to align learning strategy, innovation priorities, technology capabilities, and operational practices at the enterprise level.