
Be the Next Generation CDO
The NEXTGEN CDO Institute
The NEXTGEN CDO Institute
NEXTGEN Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) Executive Leadership Institute is a new, groundbreaking, 6-month development experience from Ivy Planning Group. Created for DEI leaders, this program builds critical business competencies for sustainable success.

Learn from DEI Practitioners
Develop best-in-class acumen, tools, and emotional intelligence needed to support sustainable business impact.

Business Growth Strategies
Designed so participants obtain the richest, most relevant experience.

Professional Development
Delivered in 12 courses: 2 half-day, virtual, instructor-led workshops each month for 6 months.
Who will benefit from the NEXTGEN CDO Institute?
If you want to learn the nuances of effective DEI leadership that are integral for business sustainability and growth, this program will help you elevate your DEI practice, harness your organizational impact, and secure your future. We can equip you to offer counsel to senior leadership, influence a board of directors, and more by immersing you in the complexities of DEI leadership in today’s global business environment.
Enterprise DEI Leaders
Senior HR or Talent Managers
CDOs who report to the CEO
Be an agent of transformation
We’re entering into a new era of diversity leadership. The field is growing rapidly, which presents a real opportunity for diversity executives to create substantive change, and help the world’s leading organizations chart a new, intentional path forward.
The NEXTGEN CDO Institute offers you a powerful way to create and advance change in your organization. This comprehensive six-month program will help you to move beyond your current role to the next level of impact as an agent of transformation. With our help, you will be able to accelerate organizational impact, and build a legacy that you can be proud of.

What do you teach in this program?
The NEXTGEN CDO program was built for enterprise DEI leaders, senior HR or talent managers with aspirations to lead DEI functions, and CDOs who already report to the CEO. If you want to learn the nuances of effective DEI leadership that are integral for business sustainability and growth, this program will help you elevate your DEI practice, harness your organizational impact, and secure your future.
The NEXTGEN CDO Institute is an immersive, practitioner-based experience, hyper focused on helping you create measurable, organizational impact. We teach strategy, and we teach you how to manage those who will support you in executing on a robust vision, plan, and tactics.
The curriculum for the NEXTGEN CDO Institute was designed specifically for a post COVID-19 business environment. The climate diversity executives must operate in today is marked by continuous workplace and marketplace disruption and social change. To create business impact, you need different tools, a more acute level of emotional intelligence and acumen than has ever been required before. You need to know how to:
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Navigate HR and legal
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Use data to assess and report the current DEI state of your business
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Deal with individual and organizational resistance
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Craft crisis and communication plans
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Communicate effectively with your CEO
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Develop partners internally and externally
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Prioritize different dimensions of diversity
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Drive business outcomes

What can you expect from the program?
We offer one-on-one, consultative instruction in a small, lab-oriented teaching environment. Our cohorts are small by design so that you have the space and time to get personalized attention, and ask all of your questions in a safe space. Community building is a critical component for any diversity executive’s success, and during this six-month long, immersive learning experience, you will meet lifelong friends and peers, and those relationships will have value long after you graduate.

“NEXTGEN CDOs must understand people and process, self and systems. They must operate with courage, skill, and integrity. The workplace and the marketplace demand it.”
Janet Crenshaw Smith, Co-Founder and President
Ivy Planning Group

"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus."
Martin Luther King, Jr.