Wharton’s EMBA program is known for having a global focus with its International Seminar; however the addition of global modular courses has taken this to a whole new level. Launched in 2010, the week-long  mini-courses offer students opportunities to learn about topics such as financial institutions in Abu  Dhabi, supply chain management in Shanghai, innovation in India, and leadership and conflict resolution in Rwanda.

Having recently returned from the course in Rwanda, we asked EMBA students Marla Bleavins and Bill Williams to tell us about their experience. Here’s what Marla, a second-year student at Wharton | San Francisco who is a special projects manager for Los Angeles World Airports, had to say:

“Most Americans know about Rwanda because of the tragedy of genocide that happened there in 1994, but we aren’t as familiar with the progress the country has made since then. It’s the fastest growing economy in Africa and one of the safest and least corrupt countries on that continent so I was intrigued to learn more about it through this course, which was taught by Prof. Katherine Klein and called, ‘Leadership, Conflict, and Change.’

Congratulations to East Coast second-year Executive MBA student Mike Patterson for winning a National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Award!

Patterson and his teammates from the University of Pennsylvania were selected for their venture, Graphene Frontiers.  We asked Patterson to tell us about what it means to have won this award and how he became involved with this startup. Here’s what he said:

“Winning the NSF award was great.  Not only did we win $50,000 for our postdoctoral fellow Zhengtang Lao to work on the venture full-time, but we gained credibility.  The NSF picked only a handful of teams nationwide, and so the award is a validation that we’re onto something big.

When Brian Davis, a first-year EMBA student, signed up for a six-hour tour of the Gettysburg battlefield, it wasn’t because he’s a history buff. Rather, the director of communications for Allegiant Travel Company in Las Vegas, NV saw it as an opportunity to learn more about leadership and spend the day with classmates.  

“I’m still in awe at the opportunity to be here at Wharton and it’s such a short window that I want to say yes to any opportunity to learn that fits into my schedule,” says Davis, who recently spent a class weekend in Philadelphia with his fellow first-year classmates from Wharton | San Francisco. The Gettysburg tour was an optional Leadership Development Workshop offered to students from both coasts.

Each year, second-year students in Wharton’s EMBA program vote on a location for their International Seminar trip. With options including India, China, Turkey and Brazil, it was a tough decision, but in the end both the East and West Coast classes voted on Brazil.

The BRIC country’s position as Latin America’s largest economy and its strength in a diversity of areas such as steel, oil drilling, and renewable energy attracted the students’ interest. During the week-long trip, they visited local and international companies to learn more about challenges and opportunities in the region.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Christy Luquire is blogging about being a first-year EMBA student in Wharton’s East Coast program for the Poets & Quants for Executives Website. So far, the resident of New Orleans has written about everything from trading in jambalaya for cheesesteaks to using iPads in class to ordering takeout seven nights in a row.

Blogging after every class weekend, the vice president of Federated Sample, a market research technology company, shares anecdotes about her life as a student working full-time who commutes to school from Louisiana. A recurring theme in many of her posts is what it’s like to juggle school, work, home and other activities. She wants readers to know that although students have to make some sacrifices, it is possible and worthwhile. 

Wharton’s executive MBA program hosts a lot of events, but one of our recent panel discussions was particularly unique.  After all, it’s not every day that the School sponsors a women’s networking event  at a San Francisco Giants baseball game much less at a game against the Philadelphia Phillies.  

“The San Francisco Giants are a hot ticket in town,” explains Katherine Lilygren, who manages marketing and admissions at Wharton | San Francisco.  “This event was a great opportunity for us to raise awareness about Wharton’s EMBA program in San Francisco, particularly among professional women.  Diversity is very important in our classes so these types of events provide a wonderful venue for us to spread the word about our program to different audiences.”

A common question from students living in San Francisco and Philadelphia is whether they are required to stay over on class weekends. The short answer is: yes. Wharton’s residential EMBA program requires  all students to spend class nights either at a designated hotel in San Francisco or in the executive facilities of Wharton’s Steinberg Conference Center in Philadelphia. Not only does this provide the necessary time for groups to study and complete projects, it also fosters deep bonds among students as they get to know each other outside of class.

Bruce Crocker, a legal advisor and trustee for the Hillman family in Pittsburgh, applied to Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program in Philadelphia not only to enhance his understanding of the investment landscape, but also because he thought the rigorous academic program would be good for his “60-year-old brain.” So far, he’s gotten a lot more from the program than he originally planned, including a vast knowledge about India’s healthcare system, new friends in India, and first-hand experience as a consultant.

First-year executive MBA student Tim Goodwin, a program director at Yapstone in San Francisco, has always been involved in volunteer work. So when he heard about Wharton’s Nonprofit Board Leadership Program (NBLP), which selects and trains Wharton MBA students to serve on the boards of directors of nonprofit organizations for one year, he wanted to participate.

Applicants often ask what the “age limit” is for the Wharton MBA Program for Executives.  Often, they’re the ones who tell us that they think they are “too old” to undertake it.  So is there an “ideal age” to obtain an MBA degree?  Following are the perspectives of two more experienced students -- Bruce Crocker, WG’11, and Tim Withers, WG’12 -- who can help illustrate the value of an MBA at any age.

As social responsibility becomes a priority for both large organizations and new startups, the Wharton Program for Social Impact is likewise growing in popularity with current and prospective students. Raghavan Anand is a first-year Wharton | San Francisco Executive MBA student who has extensive experience in education- and healthcare-related non-profits.  He spoke to us about what social impact means to him.

Before Lan Luan even began the MBA for Executives Program at Wharton | San Francisco, she knew what topic she wanted to pursue in the first-year Field Application Project (FAP).  A senior product manager at Microsoft in Bellevue, WA, Lan wanted her education to make a real impact on her company and saw the FAP as an ideal vehicle for making that happen.  We asked Lan to tell us more about the FAP and how her team’s findings are benefitting Microsoft.

New energy and clean tech are hot areas these days, especially at Wharton. With so many students interested in these burgeoning fields, Wharton’s recent Energy Conference was a great opportunity for undergraduate students, full-time MBA students, executive MBA students, faculty, and alumni to connect.

Registrants from 30 states and 14 countries joined us last week for our first-ever Webcast event.  During the interactive presentation, streamed live from Philadelphia and San Francisco, participants heard from administrators, faculty, students, and alumni.  It was a great opportunity to learn more about Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives.  If you missed it, it’s not too late. You can watch the replay.

The interactive presentation began with Vice Dean Anjani Jain providing an overview of our program.  He was joined by Wharton Professors David Bell, Peggy Bishop Lane, and Witold Henisz who shared their experiences teaching in our program.  Students and alumni on both coasts then discussed the benefits of the Wharton MBA degree and how they handled the challenge of working while they earned it.

Although we covered a lot of topics during the Webcast, you still might have questions. If so, please contact us at either our San Francisco or Philadelphia Office. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Meet and interact with Wharton MBA for Executives professors, alumni, students and admissions staff during our first-ever webcast event, streaming live from both Philadelphia & San Francisco.

Thursday, January 20, 2011
7:00-8:00pm EST / 4:00-5:00pm PST
REGSITER FOR THE WEBCAST

Get a Taste of the Classroom Experience
Live from Philadelphia: Vice Dean Anjani Jain asks faculty about their experience teaching in the program, including current topics from recent classes. 

David Bell, Professor of Marketing
Peggy Bishop Lane, Professor of Accounting
Witold Henisz, Professor of Management 

Meet Admissions Staff
Live from San Francisco:  Vice Dean Anjani Jain introduces members of the Admissions Committee, including Bernadette Birt, COO of Wharton | San Francisco and Cathy Molony, Director of Admissions, Wharton MBA Program for Executives.

Interact with Students and Alumni
Live from both Philadelphia & San Francisco:  Alumni and students share their stories about the benefits, both personal and professional, of the Wharton MBA degree.

The webcast will include forums for posting questions as you watch.

We hope you'll join us!

When Emir Kiamilev entered Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives at Wharton | San Francisco in 2005, he was running a successful tea company in Uzbekistan with yearly revenue of $7 million.  His goal was to learn how to successfully expand the company into other regions not only to grow the business, but also to mitigate the risks of political instability in Uzbekistan.

At first, everything was going according to plan. He based his family in San Diego where his parents lived and commuted to Uzbekistan once a quarter to apply the knowledge he learned in school.  He even used the tea business as the subject of a consulting project in one of his classes.

But in his second year, the worst case scenario happened – he lost the company due to political instability.  “In those countries, it’s hard to finance anything so it was a cash-based business in which we reinvested all profits.  I was married with three kids, but had no income and we were really down to nothing.  I got loans for school, but our whole lifestyle changed overnight.”

The “up side” at the time, he says, was the fact that he was in school and could access Wharton’s extensive network and dedicated career management resources.    After meeting representatives from Mattel, Inc., he was offered a position as a finance manager.  “I was excited because I wanted to come into a consumer products company and learn how Fortune 500 companies do business in corporate America,” says Kiamilev.

Kiamilev and his wife shared an entrepreneurial spirit and also wanted to start up a business.  Attending several gourmet food shows, they decided their market niche would be in confectionaries so they took online classes on topics such as how to make chocolate and even flew to Paris for lessons from a high-end chocolatier.

Ultimately, they decided to focus on caramels and in 2009, with $50,000 from friends and family, they launched Amella.  Their artisan cocoa butter caramels are now in more than 200 stores and high-end hotels and the couple hopes to break even by the end of 2010.

Kiamilev says, “It would have been much harder to start over without my Wharton education.  I’ve seen other friends go through similar situations and they could not recover.  But because of Wharton, I have the tools, knowledge and network to one day be bigger than I was in Uzbekistan.  The executive MBA program opened a lot of doors and is helping me be a better businessman.”

While the second-year Wharton EMBA students recently headed to China for their international seminar trips, first-year students had a unique weekend of their own when the Wharton | San Francisco students flew to Philadelphia to attend classes. The annual Philadelphia trip is a highlight of the program and a chance for first-year students on both coasts to meet each other and expand their networks.

The weekend’s activities kicked off with a speed networking event. First-year Wharton | San Francisco student Eric Sheng, who is operations general manager at Nvidia in Santa Clara, explains, “We got to request the background of the types of people we wanted to meet at that event. I spent most of my life on the West Coast so I was really interested to hear about industry issues from people on the East Coast,” he says. “It was kind of exhausting to condense all of that into five-minute conversations, but during the hour I got to meet 12 really interesting people.”

After that, there were plenty of other opportunities to network and bond at dinners and happy hours. Sheng says, “We even had a dance off between the two coasts and I’m happy to say that the West Coast won.  It was fun watching everyone break out of their shell and getting to know them in an informal setting.”

Sheng, who arrived on Tuesday and departed the following Monday, says that he also made sure to tour the campus and meet full-time MBA students as well. “There is a sense of belonging that you get from visiting the main campus. That weekend, there were plenty of student activities going on like a club expo and happy hours organized by the full-time MBA students so  I attended a couple of those and plan to build the bond with that group too.”

On his last day on the East Coast, Sheng also participated in a Leadership Trek for EMBA students to Gettysburg, led by Prof. Michael Useem.  “About 40 students from both coasts went on the trek and I got to know even more East Coast students as well as participate in great discussions about leadership,” he says.

First-year East Coast EMBA student Jennifer McGrew, vice president of Brandywine Global Investment Management in Philadelphia and the social coordinator for her class, helped organize many of the social events for the weekend. She says, “Beforehand, I got in touch with my counterpart on the West Coast to talk about what we could do to keep students engaged with more social activities.  On Friday, we had a school-sponsored event and then we continued networking at a happy hour.  Starting with the speed networking event all the way through to the Gettysburg Trek, the whole weekend was filled with opportunities to get to know each other.”

McGrew adds, “The program is like a three-legged stool with academics, career progression, and the network.  The relationships you build in the program will last a lifetime and the weekend was a great time to make more of those connections. It really adds to the overall experience to build this amazing network of really interesting people who work in all kinds of different industries and locations.”

Igor Taber never thought too much about what his commute would be like to Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program in San Francisco. After all, his assignment for Intel Corp. in Moscow was scheduled to end soon after school began and he’d be living back in the Bay Area. But two months into the program, that all changed when he took a new job as investment director at Intel Capital and moved back to Moscow.

Having graduated this past May, we asked Igor to share his thoughts on what it was like commuting from Russia every other weekend. Here’s what he had to say:

“One of the main reasons I wanted to pursue an MBA was to move from a business development role into VC and private equity so when I was offered the job of investment director -- working with VC and private equity type of investments in Russia -- I didn’t want to turn it down.

Taking the job meant transferring to Wharton’s Philadelphia campus in order to shorten the commute and even then I was facing a 16-hour commute -- on a good day without any snow or volcano delays. I actually did consider deferring school since my wife and I thought it would be a little crazy to do that commute for two years. On the other hand, I didn’t want to give up something I had already started and I really wanted to earn my MBA from Wharton.

So I took the job and stayed in school. My typical schedule involved catching a flight from Moscow on Thursday morning with a connection somewhere in Europe or Washington, DC. I’d arrive in Philadelphia around 5:00 p.m. that same Thursday because of the time difference. Going back, I’d leave Saturday night after classes and get home by Sunday evening.

I joked with my classmates that having so much down time to study on an airplane might give me an unfair advantage, but I learned that you can’t spend an entire flight studying. Instead, I balanced out studying with sleeping and unwinding by watching movies.

As for my study group, it wasn’t that big of a deal for me to be in Russia because we did so much work online and through conference calls. Most people work in global organizations and have colleagues in various parts of the world and in different time zones so it wasn’t that novel of a situation to anyone.

A bigger challenge, aside from being gone from the office so much, was being away from my wife. The closer I got to graduation, the harder it was to get on that plane because the finish line was so near and the commute was so long. 

Another challenge was jetlag. Getting together with classmates on Friday evenings is just as big a part of the program as projects and classes, but unfortunately Friday night was when jet lag would usually hit.  Sometimes, I forced my way through it, but other times I simply went to bed.

However, looking back, it was all worthwhile.  I wouldn’t have done that commute for your average MBA program, but given all the benefits of Wharton and its international reputation, it was worth it. I’ve gained an ability to ask critical questions and look at things from a different perspective, which are important for a VC. Add to that the Wharton network not only around the world, but here in Moscow as well, and the benefits are huge.

And I gained quite a few frequent flier miles. A running joke with my classmates was that by the time I graduated, I had flown so many miles that I could have gone to the moon and back!”

Thanks to Igor for sharing his experience. We hope he uses some of those frequent flier miles to come back and visit us soon!

As director of Leadership and Management Programs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a senior lecturer at Columbia University, Lt. Colonel Todd Henshaw has taught leadership for more than a decade. During that time, he started learning more about Wharton’s leadership programs by teaching Executive Education courses and participating in Leadership Center programs. He even spoke at Wharton’s annual Leadership Conference.

Fortunately, he was so impressed by what he saw at Wharton that he decided to come on board after he retired from the military. Now, as director of Wharton’s Executive Leadership Program, he’s assessing and enhancing many of the leadership offerings for our MBA Exec students. To learn more about what he has in store for us, we asked him to share his thoughts on Wharton’s Leadership Program and his plans for the coming year. Here’s what he said:

“I’ve always been interested in working with leadership programs that I consider to be cutting edge. The program at Wharton is probably the best leadership program associated with an MBA in the U.S. and I say that based on the way it engages students and teaches and embraces leadership in different ways. It’s a comprehensive approach that is more than just a single course or coaching.

That said, there is still room to grow and I find that exciting. The first thing I will do is a needs assessment and that means talking to faculty, administrators, students, and alumni about what leadership looks like at the executive level. Executive MBA students need to be prepared for their current roles as well as their future roles as senior-level leaders. And within the EMBA classes, students are quite diverse, ranging from CEOs and entrepreneurs to vice presidents and senior managers. I need to design a program that works for everyone, but also allows tailoring to meet individual needs.

Students in an executive MBA program are typically expected to lead, but leadership isn’t something they’ve necessarily had a lot of instruction in. So when they are at Wharton, we want to prepare them for higher levels of responsibility with a grounding in leadership education and theoretical knowledge that they can apply to their own experiences.

In conjunction with classes, a way to achieve that is through experiential learning opportunities that we call the Wharton Leadership Ventures. The power of the ventures is taking people out of their normal routine and dropping them into a different context where the focus is on learning without distractions. Most people say these are life changing types of experiences. If they have a good learning experience, people tend to leave thinking differently about themselves, their organizations, and their roles as leaders.

I want to find out what types of Leadership Ventures might be best suited for an executive audience. I just took a group of Wharton executive MBA alumni on the Normandy Leadership Experience where we visited battlefields like Omaha Beach and talked about what happened there -- actually seeing how it looked at low tide. I want to design more experiential learning programs for EMBA students and alumni that meet their specific goals and objectives.

There are many great things going on at Wharton and the School definitely has the most progressive leadership program that I’ve seen at a business school in the U.S. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but rather make positive changes to ensure that our executive MBA students have the best experience possible.”

We welcome Todd to Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives and look forward to new Leadership Ventures and Experiences!

Related blogs:

Wharton MBA Exec Alumni Learn about Leadership and WWII History during Trip to Normandy
"Remote" Learning: Wharton EMBA Students Talk about Leadership Venture in Antarctica

In times of stress, Miriam Leigh has always turned to cooking as an outlet. So it’s not that surprising that she began to do a lot more entertaining when she started Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program in San Francisco.

“I felt like my life was thrown a bit into a tailspin with all the demands on my time from work and school. I found myself inviting people like my classmates over a lot to cook for them,” says Leigh, who is director of marketing and communications at Computers and Structures, Inc. “They started asking me for recipes so I decided to start a blog (http://www.mirileigh.com/) as a hobby.” But what began as a hobby and stress outlet has blossomed into a cooking blog read by thousands, popular cooking demonstration videos on YouTube, and a possible new TV show.

Leigh explains that her MBA classes inspired her to take her blog to the next level.  “It started as just a few postings, but in Prof. David Bell’s marketing class we talked about the concept of how to make your consumer feel that they are part of something and generate a sense of community. In my case, my product was the blog and I felt that videos would let people into my life – they would see me in my own kitchen – and I could do cooking demonstrations,” she says, adding that she went down the list of marketing techniques and thought about which ones she could apply.

When Leigh began receiving positive feedback from her videos and even comments that she should be on the Food Network, she thought it might indeed be worth a try. “I didn’t know anyone at that network, but I searched Wharton’s alumni database and found an alumnus who worked at Scripps Networks, the parent company of the Food Network, and sent him an introductory email asking if he could help put me in touch with anyone who might be interested in watching my videos,” she says.

Within a day, the alumnus had written back with an offer to introduce her to the creative director at the Food Network who was interested in seeing her videos. She says, “I didn’t think it would be that fast much less that I would be talking to the top guy there!”

After watching her videos, the creative director was very encouraging, giving Leigh specific pointers about what to work on and requesting additional materials as they were created. A few months later, Leigh sent more videos and landed a meeting with the network in New York.

At that point, all of her Wharton classmates had learned about the blog and her interest in creating a TV show.  She recalls, “At lunch one day, a friend casually mentioned that one of her kids goes to school with the kids of a guy who used to be a Food Network producer and asked if I wanted to be introduced to him. I said sure, and she emailed him my information. It turns out that he was the producer of a major show on the Food Network and I was so flattered when he wanted to talk.”

After finding an entertainment lawyer – again by searching the Wharton alumni database -- Leigh and the producer filmed a single episode of what will hopefully become a full TV series. Currently, she’s in discussions to see if it gets picked up by the Food Network.

Leigh, who graduated last May with her 90 San Francisco classmates, credits Wharton for much of her success. “Wharton has everything to do with what I’ve been able to do. The MBA curriculum helped me get the product off the ground and the Wharton alumni network is helping me turn it into a TV show and a career!”

Stay tuned for updates on Miriam Leigh’s blog and TV show!