Art of Learning Leadership Academy is a place where leaders: business executives, entrepreneurs, and small business owner come to for their bookish professional development. You'll find standalone courses as well as membership site.
Hi! I'm Avil Beckford
I’m passionate about helping people learn. Everyone can learn and grow, and I’m dedicated to helping people reach their full potential. My mission is to get 5,000 professionals reading a book a week to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems like gender parity, global poverty, clean water, climate change. And the Art of Learning Academy is one way I’ll achieve my mission.
At the Art of Learning, I provide members with key points, big ideas, and resources to help them foster a love of learning in their students. Members are my top priority, and I’m dedicated to providing them with the best possible experience.
Besides here, you can also find my work on Forbes and Medium. I’ve been featured in Investor’s Business Daily where I talked about reading broadly. I’m also the Recipient of the 2015 TIAW World of Difference 100 Award.
How the Art of Learning idea was born.
In 2004, I introduced Ambeck Edge, a monthly newsletter where I included a book summary. My intent was to get more professionals to read books. I didn’t achieve that goal. People told me I did such a great job summarizing the books that they didn’t need to read the books. After I stopped publishing Ambeck Edge, I published book summaries on my blog.
For years, I wanted to offer a book summary service. The problem was that there were already several services that did a good job summarizing books. Those book summary services were established, and it made little sense to compete with them. I needed to come up with a better alternative. Several people had complained to me that there were many times they had a problem to solve, but they couldn’t find the information they needed in the book summaries they had access to. The book summary service their employer was using wasn't working for them. I placed my idea to offer book summaries on the back burner.
Life continued. I wrote book study guides for a church’s magazine. In addition, one day I learned about the Heuristics Ideation Technique to generate product ideas. I subsequently created Bookish Notes, which will always be a work in progress as I continually look for ways to improve them to better serve your needs. And I believed the best model for providing Bookish Notes was the membership model. So, the Art of Learning Leadership Academy was born.
The first course I created was Creativity, Innovation, and the Art of Getting Ideas. It was gratifying to see the birthing of an idea. Being creative is a skill anyone can use to become successful. I've asked myself countless times, "How can I be of service? Which courses will benefit many professionals?" And I've asked others about issues that their clients are facing. I've created a few courses so far, and it's my intention to create many more.
John Emenecker, Creativity, Innovation, and the Art of Getting Ideas
"I am introvert, idea person, a reader and I enjoyed Avil's Bookish Notes from a variety of authors. I applied what I learned in Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young to solve a business problem I have. I enjoyed the structure of the Bookish Note, her summary of the book and her insights."