Master of Arts in Creative Leadership | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Master of Arts in Creative Leadership

Create Transformational
Change Through
Progressive Leadership


MCAD’s Master of Arts in Creative Leadership is an accelerated fifteen-month, online program—bracketed by two week-long residencies in Minneapolis—for individuals who seek the knowledge and skills to navigate changes in their careers, organizations, and communities. With a focus on forward-looking organizational practices, the program cultivates empathic and adaptive leaders who ask bold questions, take educated risks, act with courage, embrace diverse ideas, and collaborate with others around a shared purpose. Whether your background is in non-profits, cultural organizations, corporations, start-ups, government sectors, or other fields, you will learn how to lead more effectively within a dynamic, complex world. The low-residency format provides maximum flexibility and accessibility while emphasizing the importance of building a strong network of peers in each cohort. 

Student in a zoom meeting

As a master's student in Creative Leadership, you will:

  • Master the management practices and principles of decentralized, collective, and adaptive organizations and teams.
  • Learn the skills of conscious communication and conflict resolution, following standards for cultural sensitivity in interpersonal interactions.
  • Be equipped to think, communicate, and act in an imaginative way, characterized by a high degree of risk taking, synthesis, and divergent thinking.
  • Collaborate with a cohort of diverse changemakers to use systems thinking to analyze complex challenges and design thinking to ideate, prototype, and test solutions that are socially just and environmentally sustainable.
  • Strengthen your storytelling abilities as well as your capacity to connect authentically with others and inspire them to action.
  • Engage with exemplars of creative leadership from across the world and a range of industries, gaining insights into their practices and thinking.
  • Advance your personal goals through a process of identifying the changes you want to make in your career, organization, or community, reflecting on your growth through the program, and developing your distinctive leadership philosophy and style.
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Class Highlights

This 30-credit Master of Arts program emphasizes project work, engaged discussions, and collaboration with fellow students. Required classes include:

  • Theory and Practice of Creative Leadership
  • The Culturally Competent Leader and the Inclusive Workplace
  • Design Thinking and Approaches to Address Complex Social Challenges
  • Managing Remote and Non-hierarchical Networks, Organizations, and Teams
  • Leading for Environmental Sustainability
Degree Information

After MCAD

There are many paths to explore with a Master's in Creative Leadership. Potential careers include:

  • Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Director
  • Non-profit Executive Director
  • B-Corp Leader
  • Start-up CEO
  • Community-Based Organization (Co)-Leader
  • Organizational Change Facilitator or Manager
  • Cultural or Social Entrepreneur
  • Association or Network Organize
Additional Careers

Address

2501 Stevens Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404

Contact Us

612.874.3700
800.874.MCAD (6223)
Fax: 612.874.3701

Campus Directory

Land Acknowledgement

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) acknowledges it is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. This is the ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, who were forcibly exiled from the land because of aggressive and persistent settler colonialism. We recognize that this place has a complex and layered history. As a community dedicated to creativity, MCAD is committed to ongoing efforts to support and advocate for American Indian Nations and peoples.