Detail-oriented with an eye on the future, Dr. Jitin Chadha, Founder & Director of IIAD (Indian School of Art & Design) and AND Academy, brings eighteen years of experience as an educational entrepreneur to the landscape of higher education in India.

The Indian Institute of Art and Design, New Delhi, in affiliation with Kingston School of Art (KSA), Kingston University, London, is a leading design school of the country that offers high-quality, international-standard undergraduate programmes in Fashion Design, Communication Design, Interior Architecture Design, Fashion Communication, Fashion Business Management and postgraduate programme in Fashion Business Management. Building and scaling multiple educational ventures with international collaborations, Dr. Jitin Chadha’s expertise lies in understanding the future of education and the potential of design learning that lies within it.

Committed to shaping design education as a means to a sustainable tomorrow, his vision is steeped in developing pedagogical methodologies that foster creative curiosity and encourage disciplinary knowledge through studio-based teaching. As a result, graduates are industry-ready with a skill-set that combines critical thinking with context and innovation with reason, while an array of unparalleled choices and opportunities beckon in several sectors that rely heavily on user-centred design. Under Dr. Jitin Chadha’s mission-forward leadership, IIAD’s consistent growth trajectory has paved the way for the inception of a 3800-student Design University to meet India’s rapidly growing design demand. A 4,00,000 sq.ft cutting-edge campus, both in terms of infrastructure and programme curriculum, has been conceived to transform studying design into a field of “doing and thinking” with a purpose to have a tangible impact on people, cultures and the environment. Inter-disciplinary engagement as a key element of design education can better prepare design professionals for the real world. It is with this thought that challenges theoretical approaches, that he aims to revolutionise design learning.

Dr. Chadha believes that with the advent of AI, we can expect to see technologies create immersive experiences that will help us teach and learn differently. In a changing world, designers have the crucial task of thinking about what our future will look like and how we will interact with it. In his view, design in the future will be a collaborative, inclusive, network-driven process inspired by digital-driven trends such as crowdsourcing, open access and mass customization. In this way, the paradigm shift will turn designers into strategists and visionaries. “One has to make the ‘art of making’ meaningful for larger audiences rather than perks for a smaller one. Design is serious business and it wants to make money. Designers must ask themselves … ‘ Who am I designing for ?’ It’s not just thinking about if you can realize a product and bring it to market; it’s also thinking about who will be using it in the end – this consciousness will emerge … ” says Dr. Chadha. In a recent diversification, he launched AND Academy, a design-upskilling platform in the ed-tech space which has met with a resounding response from the industry. A Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, London, Dr. Chadha is a Ph.D in Finance from Delhi University, has a Master’s in Economics & Finance from Warwick University, UK, and has an executive education in entrepreneurship from Stanford University.