Global Affairs: Diplomatic Training for Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Client
28 Foreign Ministers

Project Duration
5 Full-Day; In-person

Instructional Design

Program Management

Budgeting

Facilitation

Collaboration with SMEs

Hosting

Event Planning

Website Building

Communication

Cultural Competency

Introduction: 

As Assistant Director for Learning and Design at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, I design, manage, and often facilitate learning experiences for diplomats around the world. Collaborating with faculty subject matter experts in climate, risk mitigation, and strategic leadership for impact, I work to provide programming in a variety of modalities for clients in foreign ministries, development banks, non-profit organizations, and private corporations. Some programs are 5-day intensive in-person leadership academies; other programs are 4-6 week asynchronous online courses; and some are a hybrid model. 

Because this work is confidential, I will leave out the name of the ministry in this example: 5-Day Diplomatic Leadership Academy at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. For this project, I coordinated with 27 diplomats, managing their program–from hotels to visas to registration forms to schedule to website creation. The heart of the program, however, was in the learning design. I collaborated with 10 professors to create an engaging, advanced, and interactive experience for the participants. Topics included everything from climate finance to technology and innovation to multilateral leadership to counterterrorism. Each session included 2-3 learning objectives, expert faculty lecture, and interactive applications. In addition, I created an Instructor Guide for the faculty and a Facilitator Guide for me. 

Importance: 

Executive Education rewards everyone involved–the learner receives an incredible learning opportunity from leading experts, and the experts have the opportunity to share their latest research and help make real change happen. Being a designer in this field, and often a project manager, I am able to see the impact of learning on a global scale. 

Insight: 

As a designer, I utilized a plethora of skills and learning science: from taking a constructivist approach to the design to researching cultural norms to practicing community building to conducting robust needs assessments to facilitating an entire program. In addition, I designed and led an orientation workshop, which gave spaces for discussions on cultural norms and cultural approaches to learning. To me, it was important to begin the week understanding how the American approach to education both differs and connects to the participants’ country’s educational structures.