NYU Steinhardt’s online Doctorate (EdD) in Leadership and Innovation convenes leaders across industries, sectors, and functions to solve pressing challenges in their workplaces. The program is uniquely designed for experienced professionals ready to implement change at their organizations, an opportunity facilitated by the program’s Problem of Practice (POP).
The cohort’s diverse backgrounds and perspectives add valuable insights to the POP experience throughout the degree program. Students challenge, question, push, and elevate themselves and each other, solving problems and innovating solutions through cross-sectoral collaboration.
This article explores how NYU’s EdD program equips executives with the skills to lead across diverse sectors and solve organizational issues.
What is Cross-Sectoral Leadership?
A new leadership style has emerged to design effective solutions for today’s complex world. Organizations across industries need leaders who can see challenges and opportunities and align teams, entire companies, or even communities toward a common goal.
Enter cross-sectoral leadership.
“With the rise in complex, interdependent, and emergent challenges, effective change to secure a brighter future will require transformative, collaborative leaders who can effectively lead cross-sector collaborations.”
– Stanford Social Innovation Review
NYU equips today’s leaders to meet this challenge through education. The online Doctorate in Leadership and Innovation brings together executives from various industries, including for-profit companies, nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, healthcare, public and governmental organizations, and education, to prepare them to embrace and leverage cross-sectoral collaboration and to lead with vision.
Explore the Online Doctorate in Leadership and Innovation
An engaged group of education professionals, faculty, and leaders gather in the virtual classrooms of NYU Steinhardt’s EdD in Leadership and Innovation. Drawn together by their mutual dedication to innovation in leadership, they choose NYU’s respected program for its emphasis on cross-sector leadership to effect sustainable and scalable change.
“We [leaders] need to know how to speak to each other in a common language. Our EdD in Leadership and Innovation creates the space where we can find a common language as we work across sectors to solve problems.”
– Dr. Noel S. Anderson, Founding Faculty
The online degree caters to working professionals with leadership roles within their organizations, focusing on the various operational aspects of leading successful organizations. Through its combination of immersive experiences, research, and synchronous and asynchronous instruction, NYU’s EdD delivers a rigorous academic experience with the flexibility today’s leaders need.
Students leverage the rigorous curriculum, knowledgeable faculty, and diverse perspectives of peers to solve a real-world challenge through their chosen POP. Throughout the program, students use academic and research tools and feedback from cohort and faculty members to formulate a cross-sector solution they can implement in their workplace at the program’s conclusion.
How an Online EdD Develops Leadership Skills Across Sectors
“We become better at what we do by hearing about the challenges in another industry; by learning about best practices and frameworks, and by rethinking theories and how they connect.”
– Audrey Kajumbula (EdD ’22), Director of Visiting Student Programs, NYU Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
NYU’s EdD program emphasizes cross-sector collaboration. Cohort members bring diverse perspectives from various workplace experiences to inform classroom discussions and individual POPs. Structuring the learning experience in this way shows students the benefits of breaking down silos by working together in the classroom and their workplaces.
Each student arrives with an idea about how to make a lasting impact in their organization. By the end of the program, graduates will have a thoroughly researched solution to that problem and a portfolio of work to implement in their workplace.
Some examples of past Problem of Practice topics include:
- Corporate/Private: How can I effectively transmit organizational culture throughout a series of mergers?
- District/Researcher/Philanthropy: What are the best examples and metrics that can inform a successful and fair teacher evaluation system?
- Pre-K-12: How do I implement strong employer and education partnerships that create meaningful pathways for high school students into careers?
- Higher Ed: Using technology, how may we coordinate student services to ensure effectiveness and affordability?
- Healthcare: How can my organization tackle long-standing inequities around healthcare and develop comprehensive solutions that improve healthcare access for all people within my community?
- Performing Arts: How do we create a collective vision for a future in the arts through community and civic engagement programs?
- Ed Tech: How do we use predictive analytics to help teachers personalize instruction for students with individualized education programs (IEPs)?
Graduates emerge with the cross-sectoral leadership skills required to solve today’s challenges and a strong network of peers and faculty dedicated to continuous improvement and innovation. High-performing leaders find such relationships essential for professional growth. Access to mentors at higher organizational levels has proven influential in the careers and lives of many industry professionals.
“[T]he program opens me up to a network from the US, as my class comprises many top professionals from there. It gives me a network into an area that I previously did not have, and it’s fascinating to hear different perspectives.”
– Nadir Zafar (EdD ’22), Founder, Real School, Singapore
The Importance of Cultivating Innovation in Leaders
In times of uncertainty, innovation becomes critical to long-term success. Many teachers and administrators saw the pandemic as an opportunity to reset American education, requiring leaders to oversee the reform.
“Persistent challenges require us to look beyond our silo for solutions. When we do so, we activate new networks of leaders eager and prepared to create innovative, cross-sector solutions to our most pressing issues.”
– Dr. Lisette Nieves, Founding Faculty
NYU Steinhardt’s online Doctorate in Leadership and Innovation leads the way in empowering leaders to tackle the challenge of innovating to enact change. The program fosters a problem-solving mentality from the beginning of the program through the POP.
“I interviewed 20 brave students who shared powerful stories about how they’ve lived with food insecurity, and I hope that their voices will pave the way to equitable and systemic change in our education system.”
– Dr. Felipe Henao (EdD ’21), Dean of Students, New York Institute of Technology, New York, NY
Entry into the program requires the ability to implement change in the workplace. The admissions committee carefully considers candidates’ professional experience to ensure they have the positional authority to enact their POP recommendations upon graduation.
Make a Difference as a Leader with an Online Doctorate from NYU
“NYU Steinhardt’s EdD program is an excellent platform for the cross-sector engagement that is so critical to solving the big problems facing us as executives today.”
– Dr. Jesse Jackson (EdD ’21), Chief Learning Officer, JPMorgan Chase, New York, NY
NYU’s innovative EdD program empowers cross-sectoral leaders to initiate positive change. Students in the program benefit from a cohort of peers with diverse perspectives, award-winning faculty and mentors, a flexible platform to support working professionals, and the opportunity to make a direct impact through a Problem of Practice.
If you are a current leader looking to innovate and effect change within your organization, take the next step and contact an enrollment advisor for more information, or start your application today.