About Us

It’s not what you know. It’s how you think. At the Academy, we teach for a world where human experience fuels purpose-driven technology and business innovation.

Welcome

The Next Generation of Founders is Here: Highlights from the 2025 Venture Showcase

Academy Alum Opens Resiliency Scholarship

Academy Students Win Makeathon and Attend Google I/O 2025

Visionary Designer and Academy Graduate Student Wins 2025 Red Dot Design Concept Award

Academy Students Take First at ImmerseGT Hackathon

Laurene Powell Jobs Announced as USC Iovine and Young Academy 2025 Commencement Speaker

Brick by Brick, Young Students Literally Build Their Own Futures

USC Iovine and Young Academy Partners with Microsoft for Startups to Power Next Generation AI through Innovation Quest

Presidential Medallion recipients exemplify USC’s goals in education, innovation and spirituality

At USC, AI stands for actionable impact

Partnerships that drive innovation, alumni making waves in the 21st-century workforce, and current students successes. Read up on the Academy’s latest news and updates.

The Latest from the Academy

Collaborate with diverse stakeholders to understand the problem spaces you are working within.

Discern

Prototype

Write a challenge prompt. An ambitious and open-ended question serves as the project’s North Star.

Prompt

Access insights from a diverse network of stakeholders; plan to improve/next steps. 

Feedback

Learning at the Academy is applied, hands-on, and adaptable to the needs of industry. Through a unique blend of challenge prompts, Academy students and faculty work together to respond to complex problems facing individuals, communities, organizations, and societies at large. To accomplish this, students work in and out, back and forth through these series of stages for innovation.

Our Learning Model

Walker founded Generation Connect — a social impact startup that pairs teens with seniors seeking virtual support services — in 2020.

Founder, Generation Connect | MSIDBT '20

Candace Walker

First Gen X is AI-powered support for first-gen success, helping first generation college students manage their academic calendars with AI.

CEO & Co-Founder, First Gen X | B.S. '23

Anthony Ramirez

Rain is the main community touchpoint for clients at Slingshot. She is also a published author and film producer.

Head of Community, Slingshot | B.S. '23

Kyla Rain

Akudinobi specializes in digital innovation, global strategy, and creative problem-solving.

Global Product Marketing, HP | MSIDBT, '23

Njideka Akudinobi

Who will you become at the Academy? Our students design and develop new products, create expansive interactions between humans and emerging technologies, and learn strategic methodologies essential for ideating, prototyping, and scaling solutions — all before they graduate.

Success Stories

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Our students seek a different style of education that empowers the creative spirit and leads to unprecedented combinations of knowledge and skill and builds innovation capacity. Discarding any remnants of the traditional ‘one size fits all’ program, each Academy degree facilitates an individual’s ability to engage differently and successfully with a dramatically changing, tech-driven global marketplace, and to have a genuine positive impact on the world.

Learn & Apply

Learn how to plan, develop, launch, or manage a product or service from conception to market.

Product Management

Develop the skills to create comprehensive plans to launch new ventures and set business objectives.

Business Strategy

IYA Innovation Quest

Become a Founder — students learn how to build and create their first startups and companies at the Academy. 

Venture Creation

Engineer, prototype, test, and manufacture a product from ideation to a high-fidelity prototype in our maker spaces.

Product Design Development

Explore the full landscape of front-end and back-end development. Learn how to build dynamic, user-centered applications that connect emerging technologies with the evolving needs of people and society.

Full Stack Development

Learn to design interactive interfaces and user experiences across mediums, including data simulations, extended reality, mobile and web applications and physical computing.

UI/UX Development

The Academy’s rigorous curricular and co-curricular programs are uniquely designed to drive student outcomes by preparing our students to adapt quickly to rapidly changing work landscapes, think boldly as an individual while working on intersectional projects across dynamic student teams, and take command of their future.

Career Pathways

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Mission and Values

Fusing technology, arts, and entrepreneurship to celebrate the enduring qualities of the human spirit.