Director, learning and development, learning design and innovation

The Aspen Group (TAG) is one of the largest and most trusted retail healthcare business support organizations in the U.S. and has supported over 20,000 healthcare professionals and team members with close to 1,500 health and wellness offices across 50 states in four distinct categories: dental care, urgent care, medical aesthetics, and animal health. Working in partnership with independent practice owners and clinicians, the team is united by a single purpose: to prove that healthcare can be better and smarter for everyone. TAG provides a comprehensive suite of centralized business support services that power the impact of five consumer-facing businesses: Aspen Dental, ClearChoice Dental Implant Centers, WellNow Urgent Care, Chapter Aesthetic Studio, and Lovet. Each brand has access to a deep community of experts, tools and resources to grow their practices, and an unwavering commitment to delivering high-quality consumer healthcare experiences at scale.

As a reflection of our current needs and planned growth, we are pleased to offer a new opportunity to join our dedicated L&D team at TAG as a Director, Learning Design & Innovation.

Job Summary:

The Director of Learning Design & Innovation is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the Instructional Design function while driving innovative, scalable approaches that improve the quality, speed, and impact of learning solutions across TAG. Reporting to the VP of Learning & Development, this role provides senior leadership, coaching, and development to Senior Managers, Instructional Design leads, and their teams, and holds ultimate accountability for execution across the design and development lifecycle.

This role defines and owns the Learning Design strategy, translating it into team practices, quality standards, and measurable business outcomes. The Director oversees design capacity planning, portfolio-level project execution, development standards, and quality governance, ensuring solutions remain aligned to business priorities, learner needs, and adult learning principles at scale.

The Director also serves as the senior leader for learning innovation across L&D. This includes setting the innovation agenda and identifying opportunities to apply AI-enabled solutions, rapid-development methods, simulations, gamification, practice-based learning, emerging authoring approaches, and new platform capabilities to real business and learner needs.

The role owns the full innovation lifecycle across the organization—from opportunity identification through implementation and scale—defining strategic priorities, sponsoring pilots and proofs of concept, establishing success measures, evaluating results, and institutionalizing successful approaches across L&D. This ensures innovation remains grounded in practical application and produces reusable tools, standards, and methods that elevate team capability and learning outcomes organization-wide.

As a senior leader within the Learning and Development organization, the Director partners closely with Learning Technology, Learning Optimization and Continuous Improvement, senior business stakeholders, and other L&D leaders. This role connects learning strategy, design excellence, emerging capabilities, and day-to-day execution at an enterprise level.

The Director is a strong people leader, learning strategist, and seasoned design practitioner who is comfortable balancing organizational leadership with direct involvement in complex, high-visibility learning initiatives. Operating in a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment, this role ensures learning solutions are engaging, scalable, innovative, and aligned to measurable business outcomes across the enterprise.

Essential 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.

Requirements/Qualifications:

Education Level: 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.

Graphic design or visual design skills preferred.

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.

Salary Requirements:

$153,000 ~ $180,000 + 25% bonus

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