Berkeley ExecEd
- Jun 16
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 14
Reframing Organizational Solutions Through Strategic Messaging & Experience Design
Project Lead | Research, Strategy, Messaging & Experience Design | 2026
Over the past decade, I've partnered with Berkeley Executive Education across a wide range of initiatives spanning UX strategy, program messaging, content systems, educational communications, website experiences, and marketing campaigns.
While my work has supported both Open Enrollment and Custom Programs across numerous projects, this case study focuses on one of the more strategic engagements: rethinking how Berkeley Executive Education's Custom Programs were positioned, communicated, and experienced by prospective organizational clients.
My Role
I led the strategic discovery, research, and experience reframing effort that transformed the project from a webpage redesign into a broader positioning and experience strategy initiative.
Working closely with stakeholders, I conducted research, facilitated discovery efforts, synthesized insights, and helped shape a more effective approach to communicating Berkeley ExecEd's organizational offerings to prospective buyers.
My contributions spanned:
Competitive and market analysis
Audience research and insights
Experience strategy and journey mapping
Messaging and positioning
Information architecture
Content and narrative systems
Experience concepting, wireframes, and visual direction
The Challenge
The project began as a redesign of the Custom Programs webpage. Leadership recognized that prospective organizational buyers often struggled to understand what “Custom Programs” actually were, who they were for, and exactly how they could help address their organizational needs.
As I conducted stakeholder interviews, buyer journey analysis, competitive research, and messaging audits, it became clear that the issue extended far beyond a single page.
The issue ultimately proved to be less about a webpage and more about how the broader ecosystem was being communicated.
The experience lacked clear pathways for prospective clients to recognize themselves, understand which offerings were most relevant, and determine how Berkeley Executive Education could help address their challenges.
Research & Discovery
The work began with a broad discovery phase that included stakeholder interviews, buyer journey mapping, UX and content audits, organizational audience research, and competitive analysis across both executive education providers and adjacent learning platforms.
The goal was to identify how prospective clients navigated the experience, where confusion emerged, and how Berkeley ExecEd's organizational solutions could be positioned more clearly.
Several key insights emerged early in the discovery process.
The confusion began much earlier in the journey than the Custom Programs page itself. The distinction between Berkeley ExecEd's two primary offerings—Open Enrollment programs for individual learners and Custom Programs for organizations—was not clearly communicated. While these categories made sense internally, they did little to help prospective clients understand their options or identify the path most relevant to their needs.
Organizations weren't simply looking for programs—they were looking for solutions to complex challenges and learning needs. While the experience acknowledged these challenges, it didn't lean into them as strongly as it could and remained largely organized around program structures rather than buyer needs.
The current experience primarily spoke to a single organizational audience and did not adequately reflect the broader range of buyers Berkeley served.
Many of the questions buyers naturally ask during the evaluation process remained unanswered, creating additional friction and uncertainty as they explored potential solutions.
There was a significant opportunity to more clearly differentiate Berkeley's offerings and communicate the unique value they provided relative to other executive education providers.
As a result, the driving question of the project became:
How do we create a clearer, more buyer-centered experience that helps prospective clients understand their options, recognize the value of Berkeley's offerings, and identify the right path forward from any point in the journey?
Strategic Reframing
Alongside creating a clearer buyer journey, a key goal was to strengthen Berkeley ExecEd's position as a strategic partner helping organizations navigate moments of transformation—not simply a provider of executive education programs.
This involved moving the experience beyond traditional academic framing and toward a more outcome-oriented narrative structure centered on organizational challenges, business impact, and measurable outcomes.
As part of the process, I examined how adjacent learning platforms positioned learning as a tool for driving organizational change rather than education alone. These insights helped inform a more modern and accessible communication approach while preserving Berkeley's authority and academic credibility.
The result was a much stronger partner-oriented narrative that better connected Berkeley's offerings to the challenges organizations were trying to solve.
Experience & Content Design
The redesign expanded to address the broader experience architecture, audience recognition, and communication strategy across the site, including:
Creating clearer audience recognition points and navigation pathways
Clarifying the relationship between Open Enrollment and Custom Programs
Strengthening challenge-based and solution-oriented messaging
Simplifying and modernizing content and communication systems
Developing revised content architecture, CTAs, and modular page structures
Creating clearer engagement and conversion pathways
Increasing process visibility to reduce ambiguity and buyer friction
Particular attention was paid to helping buyers more clearly understand:
Which offerings were most relevant to their needs
What Custom Programs are and who they are designed for
How engagement and partnership work
The organizational challenges Berkeley ExecEd helps address
How Berkeley ExecED differs from other providers
The outcomes organizations could expect
Reflection
What began as a webpage redesign ultimately evolved into a broader strategic reframing initiative that connected research, UX, messaging, organizational psychology, and service design thinking.
More importantly, the project reinforced something I've observed repeatedly throughout my career: people rarely experience organizations the way organizations understand themselves. Internal structures, categories, and terminology often make perfect sense from the inside, but can create confusion for the people they're intended to serve.
While implementation is still ongoing, the project produced a strategic framework, experience recommendations, messaging direction, and audience insights that continue to inform future planning and decision-making.