All Genius Academy content is developed in direct collaboration with subject matter experts and professional consultants from start to finish alongside our in-house full-service media and instructional design team that has spent the past 15 years partnering with top-tier institutions in designing educational, experiential media to transform pedagogy for higher education.

Our fearless leader and Founder/CEO of Genius Academy, K. Rocco Shields, was recently named one of the Top 20 "Most Dynamic CEOS of 2021". For more than 15 years, Shields has collaborated with top-tier universities to create revolutionary immersive curriculum that heightens student engagement through experiential learning and narrative pedagogy. Shields saw a need to democratize online education, so she launched Genius Academy to provide affordable access to dynamic experiential learning assets for all learners.
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Shields has received many awards internationally, but is most proud of the Certificate of Merit she received from the United States Congress for her work coupling cinematic arts and social change for her internationally acclaimed film "Love is All You Need?". Shields has developed a following as a thought-leader regarding the impact of media on the individual and on society, which has made her an in-demand public speaker on multiple topics, including experiential education, cinematic engagement, and anti-bullying..

The learning objectives and academic content in each Genius Academy case study is designed under supervision of our Vice President of Curriculum, Dr. Gary J. Wood.
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Dr. Wood is an accomplished educator and the former Vice President of Curriculum and Academic Relations at 2U, Inc., where he oversaw the curriculum conversion, development, and ongoing operations of the management system for the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work’s web-based Virtual Academic Center.

Dr. Wood also served previously as a Clinical Professor of Social Work at USC, where he was on faculty for 25 years.  In 2007, his course in psychiatric diagnosing was awarded a Best Practices Gold Award for Online Distance Learning Programming by the US Distance Learning Association.