Global Head of Learning & Development, IDEO
Heather Currier Hunt is IDEO’s Global Head of Learning & Development. She leads the strategy, design, and implementation of a promise—namely, to make sure IDEO is an organization that offers everyone, regardless of role or tenure, the opportunity to become a world-changing creative leader.
Heather has led extraordinary teams in creating IDEO’s first global leadership development programs. These are epitomized by the “Ones”: from IDEO 101, a three-day retreat for new hires, to IDEO 501, which focuses on the intersection of design and strategy for Partners. These beacon events target moments of career transition. Most often, the tools and mind-sets of what got you to one level of leadership won’t get you to the next, so her teams anticipate what will make IDEOers successful in every context at the right time.
Partnering with an external consultancy in 2017, Heather led a team to assess IDEO’s people data in service of being a more diverse and inclusive organization. In addition to presenting recommendations to support and energize local efforts, she made sure organizational commitments moved IDEO past research to action. She is proud to be a part of such a critical global conversation and to join the ranks of people driving decisions around how IDEO attracts, retains, and develops employees from every background.
As a member of IDEO’s global talent leadership, Heather is responsible for the evolution, implementation, and support of the firm’s career development system, IDEO Journeys, across nine locations and cultures. Journeys puts the focus on transparency, storytelling, and human-centered development.
What catapults Heather out of bed every morning is the chance that her work enables others to find their strengths, seize agency, see things for themselves that were previously unimagined, and make a plan to achieve it. There is a present, emerging, or future leader inside every one of us. Heather makes it her mission to ensure everyone finds their authentic expression, expanding the definition of what good looks like, and inspiring the world to grow a little more every day.
Session: Asking for Help When You Need It
