Launching Microsoft's AI Executive Program
I directed the creative campaign launch for CxO Edge: Run Your Business on AI — Microsoft's new executive education program on edX. 80+ assets across email, paid media, social, web, and sales collateral, delivered on a compressed timeline despite no official brand guides or brand systems.
I served as Creative Director, leading a cross-functional team of designers and creatives through the full campaign build. This project sat within my role at 2U, where I oversee creative for edX/GetSmarter — the platform brand through which the program is delivered.
I directed the overall visual strategy, managed brand alignment across all brand systems, and oversaw production of every asset from concept through delivery.
My Role
Microsoft was launching CxO Edge, a new online executive education program designed to help C-suite leaders move from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide transformation. The program — a collaboration between Microsoft and 2U — would launch on edX and be delivered through GetSmarter, positioning it at the intersection of three distinct brands.
My team needed to build the full go-to-market creative campaign: landing pages, email sequences, paid media, social content, web assets across multiple applications, and sales collateral. The scope was large, the timeline was compressed, and the stakes were high — this was Microsoft, and the program was being announced at Ignite, one of the biggest tech conferences in the world.
The catch: we had no official Microsoft brand guide for this product. What we had was a third-party partnership guide with basic logo placement direction and an outdated campaign guide. That was it. Every visual decision — color application, typography hierarchy, image direction, layout systems — required my team to interpret Microsoft's makeshift brand standards and make confident creative calls without a safety net.
The Challenge
The first challenge was solving the brand problem. Without an official guide, I established a working visual framework for the campaign — studying Microsoft's broader brand ecosystem, referencing the limited partnership materials we had, and making deliberate creative decisions about how the CxO Edge identity should look and feel across channels. The goal was to create something that felt authentically Microsoft without overstepping, while also maintaining alignment with edX and GetSmarter's established brand systems.
That three-brand balancing act ran through every asset. Microsoft-branded paid ads needed to meet partnership guidelines. GetSmarter landing pages needed to feel connected to the same campaign. edX-branded deliverables needed to hold their own identity while sitting within the same launch ecosystem. Every touchpoint had to feel cohesive without collapsing the brands into one another.
From that foundation, my team produced 80+ assets spanning the full marketing funnel: email campaign sequences to drive awareness and enrollment, paid media and digital ads targeting executive audiences, landing page and microsite designs across multiple web applications, social media content, and sales collateral for enterprise outreach.
The Approach
The full campaign launched on time, supporting the program's market debut following its unveiling at Microsoft Ignite. CxO Edge is now live and enrolling C-suite leaders globally through edX.
This case study will be updated with enrollment and campaign performance metrics as they become available.
