The Art of the Leap: How Victor Saad is Redefining Education, “Professional Development”, and What Comes Next
“I realized I didn’t want to color inside someone else’s lines. I wanted to draw something of my own.”
Victor Saad didn’t start his career set out to become an education reformer. Or a founder. Or someone who would eventually be working in finance, helping aging business owners transition their companies to a new generation of leaders. But when you are someone who is not afraid to take risks to solve big problems, you become somewhat of a transitions expert.
Victor’s journey began with a question many of us have asked: Is this all there is? After years working in nonprofits and wanting more experience, he considered business school but sensed there had to be another way to learn that didn’t require as much financial and time investment. So he invented his own MBA, his “Leap Year”.
That Leap Year would turn into a publicly shared project, a movement, and eventually a business: Experience Institute, a company that’s helped hundreds of professionals navigate transitions through hands-on, human-centered learning.
That Entrepreneurial Tick
Victor’s first leap wasn’t just a career shift—it was a philosophy shift. As the son of Middle Eastern immigrants growing up in the Midwest, he was expected to take traditional paths like medicine or law. But Victor knew early on that he didn’t want to follow someone else’s template. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, something clicked. He started a nonprofit art collective with friends, raised micro-donations to fund his alternative MBA, and began telling his story in a way that invited others to leap, too.
He wasn’t chasing buzzwords like “disruption” or “scale.” He was pursuing building strong teams and bringing adult learning into both the post-college experience and the corporate.
From Founder to Experienced Beginner
After a decade of building Experience Institute into a respected name in the world of experiential learning, Victor felt a new kind of restlessness. He loved his team, his mission, and the relationships they’d cultivated. But the itch to grow in new ways—specifically around people leadership—became big enough that he decided to step down as the active CEO.
He started doing what he knew was always the best to source your next leap — consult your network and start talking to people. Through a friend of his, Victor found a good fit for his next career expansion: a small finance company that facilitates succession plans between seasoned business owners and rising leaders.
He now serves as a chief people officer in a space where “people work” meets legacy, bridging generations and transforming the way leadership transitions happen in everyday businesses across America.
The Power of Mentors When Making Moves
What’s striking about Victor isn’t just his ability to reinvent himself—it’s how deeply relational his reinventions are. (I can attest to how personally he runs his teams, having worked with him at Experience Institute on his contract team of facilitators). Throughout our conversation, he shares stories of intergenerational mentorship, of the men in his life who became guides at pivotal moments, and of the importance of showing up consistently over time.
For anyone sitting in the in-between—whether it’s a career pivot, a personal evolution, or a question about what’s next—Victor’s story offers a reminder that there are many guides along the way and you don’t have to leap alone.
