Coming Soon: JHU’s Center for Staff Life Design


A key tenet of Johns Hopkins University’s Ten for One strategic vision is to become a national employer of choice and to support staff in their professional and personal journeys.

A crucial step in achieving that goal is creating new opportunities and clear pathways for skill development, professional growth, and career advancement within and across the JHU system.

Enhancing Career Development Experiences for JHU Staff

The vision for the new Center for Staff Life Design (CSLD) is in alignment with JHU’s Second Diversity Roadmap and is modeled after JHU’s wonderfully successful Imagine Center, which engages JHU students to create moments of inspiration and opportunities for meaningful, experiential learning.

Similarly, the CSLD will enable JHU staff to explore career interests, develop skills and competencies, connect and build networks with peers and colleagues, and navigate JHU’s Career Architecture and internal recruitment processes.

By applying the fundamentals of Life Design, the CSLD will offer transformative experiences that encourage you to reimagine, design, and build your career in whatever direction your skills, goals, talents, curiosity, and interests may take you throughout JHU.

Inspired by the pioneering work of Bill Burnett and Dave Evans and their book, Designing Your Work Life, Life Design is an innovative new approach to reimagining your life and career. It applies the iterative thinking of designers to help you intentionally and purposefully figure out what you want to do with your life and how to get there.

What Will the Center for Staff Life Design Offer?

Development of the CSLD is already underway, drawing on the expertise of colleagues from across JHU. When fully operational in 2026, CSLD offerings will include:

  • Fundamentals of Life Design and other career navigation skills (for example, networking, résumé writing, interviewing, etc.)
  • Tools to help you understand your options and opportunities for growth and development
  • Tools to help you navigate JHU’s Career Architecture as you explore job families, roles, assessment of skills and competencies, etc.
  • Options for connecting and building professional networks
  • Options for facilitating exploration and development
  • Informal mentoring programs
  • Programming that is aligned by job family, not by JHU division
  • Connections to other JHU programs and services

We also plan to eventually expand the CSLD’s programming with your feedback and hope to pilot new offerings, like job shadowing and short-term gig assignments.

Check Back Here Often

In the coming months, you’ll hear more about the development and rollout of the Center for Staff Life Design. Bookmark this page to stay updated on this exciting new initiative.

Then get ready to reimagine the way you steer your career and to take advantage of increased visibility into opportunities for internal mobility across JHU.