Learning Design Jobs in Illinois (NOW HIRING)

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 Senior Manager, Learning Design & Innovation.

The Senior Manager of Learning Design & Innovation is responsible for leading the Instructional Design team while advancing innovative, scalable approaches that improve the quality, speed, and impact of learning solutions across TAG. Reporting to the Director of Learning Design, this role provides direct leadership, coaching, and development to Instructional Designers and ensures strong execution across the design and development lifecycle.

This role translates the broader Learning Design strategy into consistent team practices, high-quality learning experiences, and measurable results. The Senior Manager oversees design capacity, project execution, development standards, and quality while ensuring solutions remain aligned to business priorities, learner needs, and adult learning principles.

The Senior Manager also provides dedicated leadership for learning innovation across L&D. This includes 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 progression of innovation from ideas through implementation—defining opportunities, developing pilots and proofs of concept, establishing success measures, evaluating results, and scaling successful approaches across L&D. This ensures innovation remains grounded in practical application and produces reusable tools, standards, and methods that improve team capability and learning outcomes.

As a key leader within the Learning and Development organization, the Senior Manager partners closely with Learning Design, Learning Technology, Learning Optimization and Continuous Improvement, business stakeholders, and other L&D teams. This role helps connect learning strategy, design excellence, emerging capabilities, and day-to-day execution.

The Senior Manager is a strong people leader, learning strategist, and hands-on design practitioner who is comfortable balancing team leadership with direct involvement in complex learning initiatives. Operating in a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment, this role helps ensure learning solutions are engaging, scalable, innovative, and aligned to measurable business outcomes.

Essential Responsibilities:

Lead and Develop the Instructional Design Team

Provide direct leadership, coaching, performance management, and ongoing development for Instructional Designers. Establish clear expectations, support individual growth, strengthen team engagement, and build the capabilities needed to deliver high-quality and increasingly innovative learning solutions.

Oversee Learning Design Execution and Quality

Guide the design and development of learning solutions from initial discovery through implementation. Maintain visibility into workload, priorities, timelines, risks, and deliverables while ensuring solutions meet established standards for instructional effectiveness, learner experience, accessibility, accuracy, and brand alignment.

Translate Learning Design Strategy into Team Execution

Partner with the Director of Learning Design to translate functional strategy into clear team priorities, standards, operating practices, and development expectations. Help connect organizational goals to the team’s daily work and ensure design efforts remain aligned to business priorities and learner needs.

Lead AI-Enabled Learning Solutions and Efficiencies

Identify and implement responsible uses of AI that improve learning design, development, evaluation, and learner experience. Develop scalable workflows, tools, resources, and standards that increase efficiency, support quality, and enable the team to apply AI effectively and consistently.

Advance Innovative Learning Approaches

Lead the exploration and application of simulations, scenario-based learning, practice experiences, gamification, rapid-development methods, interactive solutions, and learning embedded within the flow of work. Ensure innovative approaches are selected based on the performance need rather than novelty alone.

Lead Pilots and Proofs of Concept

Design and manage structured pilots tied to defined learner or business needs. Establish hypotheses, success measures, timelines, stakeholder expectations, and evaluation plans. Use findings to recommend whether solutions should be scaled, refined, or discontinued.

Scale Successful Innovations Across L&D

Translate successful pilots and emerging practices into reusable tools, templates, standards, playbooks, training, and implementation guidance. Build adoption plans that enable L&D teams to apply proven approaches consistently and sustainably.

Explore Emerging Authoring Approaches and Platform Capabilities

Partner with Learning Technology and other internal teams to evaluate new authoring methods, tools, and platform capabilities. Define learning use cases, assess potential value, support testing, and provide recommendations based on learner experience, scalability, efficiency, and organizational readiness.

Build Learning Design Standards and Resources

Develop and maintain reusable design resources, templates, frameworks, quality standards, and development guidance. Promote consistency while enabling designers to select approaches that are appropriate for the audience, business need, modality, and desired performance outcome.

Measure Learning Design and Innovation Impact

Use project data, learner feedback, quality indicators, adoption measures, and business inputs to evaluate the effectiveness of learning solutions and innovation efforts. Translate findings into actionable improvements and communicate outcomes, recommendations, and lessons learned to L&D leadership and stakeholders.

Partner Across L&D and the Business

Collaborate with Learning Technology, Learning Optimization and Continuous Improvement, Leadership Development, Learning Experience, HR, and business stakeholders to align learning solutions, innovation efforts, technology capabilities, and operational practices.

Serve as a Senior Learning Design Partner

Act as a trusted advisor on complex or high-visibility initiatives. Consult with stakeholders to clarify performance needs, recommend appropriate learning strategies, influence solution direction, and ensure learning investments are aligned to meaningful outcomes.

Requirements/Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree required; master’s degree preferred. Equivalent experience in instructional design, learning experience design, or learning innovation may be considered in lieu of an advanced degree.
• 7+ years of experience in learning and development, instructional design, learning experience design, or a related field.
• 3+ years of experience leading, coaching, or directly managing learning professionals.
• Strong experience leading the design and development of medium- to large-scale learning initiatives from discovery through implementation.
• Demonstrated experience applying adult learning principles, instructional design methodologies, performance consulting, and learner-centered design practices.
• Experience exploring or implementing AI-enabled learning solutions, emerging learning technologies, or development efficiencies.
• Experience with simulations, scenario-based learning, gamification, rapid development, interactive learning, or other innovative learning approaches.
• Ability to move ideas from concept through pilot, evaluation, recommendation, and scalable implementation.
• Strong project and workload management skills, including the ability to balance team capacity, competing priorities, timelines, and quality.
• Experience developing reusable templates, standards, tools, frameworks, or design systems that improve consistency and scalability.
• Ability to use data, learner feedback, and business input to evaluate learning effectiveness and recommend improvements.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to connect learning design decisions to operational priorities and measurable outcomes.
• Ability to consult with senior leaders, business partners, and subject matter experts to identify performance needs and recommend practical solutions.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to partner effectively across functions and organizational levels.
• Comfortable balancing strategic leadership, people management, and hands-on involvement in a fast-paced, evolving environment.