Kimo Kippen helped launch Hilton Worldwide University (HWU), the hotel chain’s first company-wide corporate university.
by Site Staff
November 19, 2012
KIMO KIPPEN
CLO and Vice President of Learning, Hilton Worldwide
Before Hilton Hotels was acquired and renamed by the Blackstone Group in 2007 as Hilton Worldwide, the global hotel chain’s learning and development team acted as an order taker. It delivered ad hoc training without thought as to how the learning impacted business strategy. This model proved costly, time consuming and ineffective. Further, the learning and development team had no solid budget data, measurement strategy and lacked a global course and training catalog.
Kimo Kippen, chief learning officer and vice president of learning, joined Hilton in 2010 and helped launch Hilton Worldwide University (HWU), the hotel chain’s first company-wide corporate university. At HWU, senior directors act as deans who manage colleges and report progress to the CLO. This organized process centralized oversight and standardized learning curriculums. HWU also has a team member focused on administration and finance and another who leads communication, marketing and curriculum design to prevent new programs from reverting back to the issues that plagued the learning team in the past.
Employees have embraced the new curriculum. In the first six months of 2012, employees completed 48 percent more training models than in the same period last year. Hilton plans to launch a new learning management system and a social learning strategy by the end of the year.