Volute Is Using AI to Extend Executive Education

Higher education is under pressure. Budgets are strained, research funding is being cut, and the gap between what business schools teach and what industry actually needs grows wider every year. Executive education is the one corner of the university that has always had to face the market directly. Now it is also becoming the place where AI may finally close that gap for good. Today on The Angel Nest, we meet Volute, an AI-powered platform that is reimagining how business schools deliver executive education by creating live, real-time communities that connect industry leaders with faculty, alumni, and peers to solve the challenges they are facing right now, not six months from now in a classroom. We speak with Michael Croft, Volute's founder, Jean Hammond, one of his lead investors and a partner at LearnLaunch, one of the few venture firms in the country exclusively focused on edtech, and Elmer Almachar, Managing Director of the Kellogg Global Network and Executive MBA Program at Northwestern University, who is not only an early adopter of Volute but one of the pioneers helping to prove what this model can do. Together they explore why executive education is what Jean calls an island of profitability in a sea of challenged higher ed, how Volute's community-based AI differs fundamentally from content-based AI platforms, why business schools are both the most resistant and the fastest-following institutions when it comes to adopting new technology, and what it means to extend the learning beyond the classroom into the real moments when leaders most need answers. What makes this conversation particularly compelling is that Elmer joins not as a commercial partner but as a believer. Northwestern's Kellogg School is launching with Volute this fall, and what Elmer describes is not just a technology adoption but a rethinking of what a business school is actually for. Learn more about Volute at volute.education. Reach us with comments or questions at theangelnest.com. There, you can also catch up on dozens of past episodes.