Future London Academy announces its Executive Programme for Design Leaders 2022

Imagine you could learn from the leaders at Wolff Olins, Monzo, Google, Huge and Pentagram, all in one place. Well that’s exactly what Future London Academy is offering this year to 20 lucky participants who get selected for its Executive Programme for Design Leaders 2022. Following on from its highly successful 2021 programme, in which attendees were given access to invaluable insights from industry experts such as Emma Barratt, executive creative director of Wolff Olins, Phill Burton, COO of Bloom & Wild, and Yuri Suzuki, partner at Pentagram, this year’s course will continue to offer in-depth teachings to those interested in redefining what it means to be a “Design Leader”.

Created to cater to the best and brightest, this programme is aimed at creative leaders with 15+ years of experience and has been specially curated by Wolff Olins founder Michael Wolff, Zaha Hadid Architects’ associate director Bidisha Sinha, and AKQA co-founder James Hilton, among others. Composed of five intensive two-week modules, taking place over one year between London and California, they cover a range of topics including finance, operations, sales, leadership and HR. In essence, Future London Academy is offering an experience similar to that of an MBA, but designed specifically for creative leaders. In doing so, it is helping participants to “take their careers to the next level” and finally get design to the boardrooms.

With companies and startups seeking to become visionary, design-led businesses, but also wanting to use the metrics to guide that change, it’s crucial that designers and creatives within the team understand how to pitch and execute their ideas accordingly. Increasingly, before rebrands can be carried out or the UX can be improved, data needs to be presented that clearly shows the possibility to bring in more revenue or save on costs. Future London Academy’s programme has been built with this in mind. Its group of inspired and inspiring teachers will share their experiences of navigating these roadblocks and show how to turn your weaknesses into strengths.

The teachers on the 2022 programme include Win Kwok, former brand director at made.com, Guy Duncan, CTO at Tide, Steve ‘Buzz’ Pearce, SVP Design at checkout.com, as well as leadership coaches including Kate Williams and Margaret Ochieng. Applications are now open and can be found on the Future London Academy website. If you have less time to invest, then make sure you check out its list of online short courses as well, which Extra Nice members can currently claim a 10 per cent discount on. Find out more about other exciting membership perks here.