Operations at scale / Academy of Art University
The systems behind a large online program
For fifteen years I have built the operational backbone of a 23-department online education program: faster production cycles, centralized contracts, and a clean migration of thousands of courses with no content lost.
- Role
- AVP, Production & Innovation
- Context
- Academy of Art University
- Scope
- 23 departments
- Tenure
- 15 years
Scaling course production with new workflows
Redesigned a 30-week course production cycle across 23 academic departments into a 15-week cycle, pairing the new schedule with revised contract terms and Agile practices.
- Cut production timelines by 50% and raised productivity by 30%.
- Reduced build postponements from 41% average (2019 to 2023) to 21% in 2024 and 16% in 2025.
- A 61% relative reduction in course build postponements over two years.
Digitizing contracts and building a tracking system
Replaced fragmented, paper-based agreements for 200+ annual subject matter experts with a centralized system that gave leadership visibility into builds, utilization, and cost.
- Created a single source of truth spanning six years of build and contract history.
- Enabled tracking of builds per cycle, contributor frequency, and annual contract cost.
- Strengthened compliance and built a foundation for accurate budget forecasting.
Large-scale LMS migration and content governance
Directed the migration of more than 3,000 courses into a new learning management system, designing a custom version-tracking layer to cover a gap the new platform did not handle.
- Migrated all 3,000+ courses on time with no content lost.
- Gave every department real-time visibility into its migration status.
- Maintained consistent version continuity throughout the migration.
See the AI products these systems support.
AI case studies