Senior Instructional Designer with 10+ years of experience designing and scaling learning solutions for global organizations across technology, government, healthcare, aviation, and defense. Proven ability to translate complex systems and emerging technologies — including AI — into accessible, performance-focused learning across ILT, eLearning, blended, and video-based formats. Known for cross-functional partnership and delivering learning that supports adoption, operational readiness, and workforce upskilling at scale.
This experience was developed through a reflective research and design process grounded in over 20 years of professional instructional design work. Historical documents, project artifacts, evaluations, and professional records were reviewed to identify recurring themes, design patterns, and evidence of practice across multiple roles and learning environments.
Using those findings as a foundation, scenario-based structures, interaction flows, and narrative frameworks were iteratively developed through collaboration with multiple generative AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. AI tools were used to support prototyping, storyboard generation, accessibility refinement, responsive development, code validation, and iterative critique throughout the design process.
All instructional strategy, learning objectives, scenario architecture, visual direction, interaction design, content refinement, and final creative decisions remained human-led and were continuously reviewed, rewritten, refined, and implemented by Matthew K. Grunewald throughout development — including direct modification of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, typography, visual styling, accessibility adjustments, and responsive behavior across mobile, tablet, and desktop environments.
Matthew K. Grunewald is a senior instructional designer and learning experience architect with over 20 years of experience across defense, aviation, healthcare, enterprise technology, legal, and education — in environments where bad learning design had real consequences.
Before a slide is built, Matthew asks: is this actually a training problem? At the U.S. Department of Defense, diagnosing the real issue first produced a 70% increase in participation and a 40% increase in course scores — not from building more, but from building the right thing.
"Our sales team isn't hitting targets. We need a training course on the product line. Can you build it?"
Slack adoption and generative AI training for ~154,000 employees. Section 508 & WCAG compliant.
Pilot, maintenance & anti-terrorism training. U.S. and NATO standards. 70%/40% outcome gains.
ILT-to-VILT/WBT for RN surveyors nationwide. SCORM & 508 compliant. Beyond client expectations.
ILT & WBT for a major international airline's cabin crew. Managed global project teams.
Keiser University, July 2025. Dissertation: innovation diffusion in corporate L&D during COVID-19.
University of Phoenix.
PMI certification #4194755E2, 2016.
Certified mindfulness meditation teacher, 2026. Trained by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield through the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (Sounds True).
This was the 5-minute micro experience. The full macro version goes deeper — interactive scenarios, design strategy tools, global facilitation case studies, AI workflow transparency, and the complete career arc.