Phone chat tonight for women considering the MBA degree.  Wed., 1/4/12 6pm EST / 3pm PST

To hear the discussion:   1-270-400-2000* Access code 433559#

To pose questions before or during the chat:  email them to dsharp@wharton.upenn.edu or send them via Twitter using #WhartonEMBAchat

As a woman making your way forward in your career, you face a unique set of issues that require consideration.  Get clarification from an expert whose research has focused on these issues and reassurance from two Wharton alumnae who will share how the MBA degree has impacted them professionally and personally.

Panelists:
Prof. Monica McGrath - Wharton Adjunct Professor of Management
Cori Johnson, WG'09 - Sr. Global Platform Manager at Covidien
Rachel Cervantes, WG'11 - Director, Business Development at Merck
Cathy Molony - Director of Admissions, Wharton MBA Program for Executives
Kathy Lilygren - Director of Admissions, Wharton | San Francisco

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. 

We’re all excited about Wharton | San Francisco’s move in January to the Hills Plaza Building on the San Francisco Embarcadero. Not only will it provide us more space, but the facility will also feature “a 21st century learning environment.” To learn more about the technology going into the new space as well as other technology initiatives in Wharton’s MBA Exec program, check out Wharton CIO Deirdre Wood’s latest blog on the Wharton Magazine site:

“Kicking off a new academic year is always an exciting time, but that is particularly the case this year as we’re immersed in designing and building classrooms of the future. Wharton’s upcoming move to a new San Francisco facility has provided us an opportunity not only to design the most cutting-edge and connected classrooms possible, but also to bring that technology back to our campus in Philadelphia. As a top business school, our constituents expect a 21st-century learning environment, and we are providing that on both coasts.” more...

When Anne Libby entered Wharton’s East Coast executive MBA program in 1993, she knew she’d be in the minority as a female student. But what she wasn’t expecting was the supportive environment she found there. We asked Libby, who is now the owner of Anne Libby Management Consulting in New York City, to share her thoughts about her experiences at Wharton, her ongoing engagement with the School, and the value of the program for women. Here’s what she had to say:

Working in Los Angeles as the debt and treasury manager for LA World Airports, Marla Bleavins looked at several nearby business schools with EMBA programs when she decided it was time to pursue her MBA degree. However, in addition to wanting a high level of academic rigor, she also wanted to  differentiate   herself from others in the LA area so she set her sights on Wharton.

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.”

Welcome to our newest students in Wharton’s EMBA Program! Both the East and West Coast classes are comprised of exceptional students from near and far.

At Wharton | San Francisco, most of the first-year class is based in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco area, however students are also commuting from Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Washington. The class of 96 students brings an average of 11 years of work experience to the program with nearly 50% holding advanced degrees.

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.

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!

Whether it’s the legality of having your favorite clothes copied in China or the ins and outs of mortgage refinancing, second-year Wharton | San Francisco executive MBA student Jennifer Saranow Schultz covers it all as the lead writer for the Bucks Blog of the New York Times.  Writing three or four posts a day, Schultz provides tips and tricks to help consumers better manage their bucks.

While coming up with that many topics to write about every day might sound challenging, Schultz, who has been writing for the New York Times for a little over a year and was previously a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, says that Wharton has turned out to be a great source for blog ideas. “I find topics to write about from a lot of places, but being in school with 90 other people who are dealing with a range of issues like student loans and taxes has been great. Now that my classmates know that I write the blog, they’ll come to me with ideas and are really supportive,” she says.

Schultz has based several blogs on classroom discussions too. “We touched on IRAs in macroeconomics, which led to blog ideas,” says Schultz. “And my Negotiations class with Prof. Maurice Schweitzer has provided a wealth of ideas for posts including how we tested out what we learned in class about negotiating prices during our recent international seminar in China. Another topic that originated in class was whether it is legal to get clothes copied in Asia.”

As for balancing the deadlines with school, the San Francisco resident says that her East Coast hours have turned out to work very well with Wharton’s EMBA program. “I have to get my first post in by 7:30 a.m. Pacific Time so I can write before I leave for school. And on other days, it’s like a normal job, but on East Coast time which gives me a few extra hours to focus on school before the West Coast work day ends.”

If you have a personal finance question you’re wondering about, email it to Schultz at: Jennifer.saranowschultz@nytimes.com

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
 

We invite women in Southern California to join us for an evening with Professor Patti Williams as she speaks about the growing importance of managing and delivering consumer experiences.  She will offer examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts to create them and frameworks for strategically designing such experiences.  Prof. Williams will also discuss how these insights can be applied to thinking about developing your personal brand.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010
6:00 pm until 9:00 pm
The LONDON West Hollywood

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER AND FOR MORE DETAILS

Patti Williams is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School currently teaching in both Philadelphia and San Francisco. She is the recipient of multiple Wharton Excellence in Teaching Awards and the "Goes Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" MBA Core Teaching Award.

Her academic research focuses on the role of emotions in persuasion and consumer decision-making, in particular on when and why consumers feel mixed or conflicting emotions and how consumers manage their emotional experiences.

With a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in engineering, Joanne Medvitz loved her job in the innovative area of clean tech at PG&E in San Francisco. However, she wanted a better understanding of how business decisions drive technological advances. To fill in the holes of her “patchwork understanding” of business and be able to contribute more both to her role as product manager at the utility company and the startup she co-founded, Pop Outerwear, she decided it was time to look into MBA programs.

Being 28 and having gone to graduate school, she realzed her work experience would be similar to that of a typical full-time MBA student.  But after looking at full-time programs on both coasts, she realized they weren’t a fit for her. 

“Those students were often still in exploratory mode where I knew I wanted certain things in my future. I thought I might find similar clarity among the students in an executive MBA program.  Also, I didn’t want to lose more time out of the workforce. With the clean tech space moving so fast in the Bay Area, I thought it might look totally different if I left and came back,” she explains.

Reaching out to other PG&E employees who had gone through Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives in San Francisco, she saw how excited they were about their experience. “They talked about how good the professors were, the rigor of the curriculum, and how tight-knit their class was. I decided to sit in on a class and immediately felt the camaraderie that you’d expect in a full-time program. It was a fuller experience than I had expected,” she says.

Medvitz applied to the Wharton EMBA program in San Francisco and was accepted as a "Fellows," which is a category of students who have fewer than eight years of work experience, but are sponsored by their employers and demonstrate outstanding promise for advancement in a managerial career.

Currently a first-year student, she says she has no regrets about her decision. “I sometimes wonder what life might be like in a full-time program and I got a glimpse of that when my class recently spent a weekend at Wharton’s Philadelphia campus. I realized that at this point I don’t need things like career fairs. My classmates and I are all so passionate about helping each other in our careers that we network in a different way. As for being on a big campus, I thought I might miss that, but I realized that we love our own campus community in San Francisco even more.”

While she was a bit nervous about being less experienced than most of her classmates, Medvitz says that everyone has been “amazing. They share their experiences and connections and are so supportive.”

Medvitz described herself as pleasantly “shocked” at the professional diversity in her class. “The breadth of experiences is huge. We have everyone from entrepreneurs at startups and those recently acquired by big businesses to people in more traditional institutions. The range truly represents the West Coast and it’s awesome,” she says.

Medvitz, who was recently promoted to senior product manager, describes her experience so far as “priceless.” She says, “I was prepared to spend my own money for the entire tuition. Having the support and network of such intelligent, ambitious, positive people is invaluable. And I’m finally seeing all of the things that I can do. Not just in building my own abilities, but also what the possibilities are that might be open for me and what I can create for myself. Thanks to Wharton, I’m quickly realizing that they're limitless.”

For alumni of Wharton’s MBA for Executives program who also happen to be students of history, the recent Leadership Experience in Normandy organized by Wharton’s Leadership Ventures and Academy Leadership was the perfect way to combine experiential learning about leadership and World War II. The Leadership Experience - led by retired U.S Army Lt. Colonel Todd Henshaw, director of Wharton’s Executive Leadership Program, Dennis Haley, founder and CEO of Academy Leadership, and author Ed Ruggero – took alumni on a very unique tour of Normandy, focusing on critical leadership lessons for today’s executives.

We asked three of our alumni who went on the trip, Roger Crandall, a 2002 graduate of our East Coast program who is now president and CEO of MassMutual (he will become chairman of the board in December) in Springfield, Mass., Dr. Leslie Shaff, a 2006 graduate of our East Coast Program who is now chief surgical services officer at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass., and Celine Wei, a 2009 graduate of Wharton | San Francisco who is vice president of business development at Florens Container Services Ltd., to share some of the highlights of what they saw and learned.

Here’s what Roger had to say: “I had just joined the School’s Leadership Advisory Board when I heard about this trip. Not only am I a history buff, but I’m a World War II history buff and had never been to Normandy so this trip was a good fit.

“Starting at Pegasus Bridge, we worked our way from one end of the region to the other, talking about war strategy and tactics and looking at each piece of a battle in bite-size chunks.  And then we turned it around and looked at the German side and compared their leadership to the American command.

“I’m a huge fan of experiential learning so I got a lot out of this trip. It not only reinforced my belief that leadership is an integral part of the business school curriculum, but that the same leadership issues have been around for thousands of years. Leaders have always had to think about whether there is good communication, whether their troops understand their intent, and whether their troops are empowered to make decisions. Those things transcend time.

“While the history lessons were amazing, what really made this a great trip were the people. Other than my mother and sisters who joined me on the trip – we left spouses and kids at home - and a director of Wharton’s EMBA program, I didn’t previously know any of the other members of our group. It turned out that there were about 15 alumni and guests from very diverse age groups and backgrounds.  Todd, Dennis and Ed did a great job of actively involving everyone in robust discussions and there were takeaways for everyone. One of my sisters even found leadership lessons for parenting her teenage girls.

“After you graduate from Wharton, you sometimes lose sight of how powerful it can be to get a group of people together to learn and discuss a common topic of interest. To be able to recapture that on this type of trip was great.”

Leslie Shaff says, “I was interested in this trip because my husband loves history and has always wanted to visit the Normandy beaches so this was a great opportunity for both of us. And based on my experience coming to Philadelphia every other weekend during school, I knew that every detail would be well organized and our time and effort would be spent learning and experiencing rather than worrying about how to get to the next place.

“The five-day trip was wonderful! Starting with dinner at our superb hotel on the first night in Paris to our talks on the beaches, the trip was everything I hoped it would be. In Normandy, one could really imagine what it was like to have landed during D-Day, what people were feeling, and what the generals were thinking. We talked about what they did right, what didn’t work, and why D-Day turned out to be such a crucial event in the war. The experience was educational as well as fun.

“In addition, we spent our evenings at a beautiful chateau in Normandy and had lovely dinners where we talked with everyone in our group. It was a great way to experience the countryside and what happened there with a diverse group of people who have a similar interest in history.

“I would absolutely recommend this type of trip to other alumni. I want to know when and where Wharton will organize the next trip for MBA Exec alumni!”

Celine adds, “When I heard about this trip, I knew I wanted to go. Not only is Wharton known for its Leadership Program, but it was an opportunity to go to France and reconnect with other alumni. And coming from China, I wanted to learn about WWII history from the U.S. and European perspectives so this trip was particularly interesting to me.

“One of the highlights of the trip was the chateau. It was in the countryside in a quiet setting so our group had dinners together more like a family and could really talk about the day’s events. Each evening, we’d have a discussion about what we learned and how that linked to our own organizational experiences.

“Once you graduate, there aren’t that many chances to get back together with a group like this to discuss common topics. Being on this trip reminded you that you belong to the Wharton community, which is a special group. Plus, not too many people have the chance to visit Normandy with experts like Todd, Dennis, and Ed telling you about the history, leading discussions, and teaching leadership lessons – you’d never get all that on another tour.”

We’ll be sure to keep everyone posted on upcoming trips! Thanks to Roger, Leslie, and Celine for sharing their experiences.

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!

When Vicki Poponi was considering executive MBA programs, her primary goal was moving out of her operations position in a paper manufacturing plant – where her daily attire was jeans and steel-tip boots -- and into a business management role.  However, the chemical engineer knew that making this type of move would require an MBA from a top school so she applied to Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program.

“I had seen a bunch of people in manufacturing get MBAs, yet still couldn’t make that transition into the corporate side of the business.  But with Wharton’s reputation, I knew that my education would really open up doors for me – and it did many times,” she says.

After receiving approval from her employer to participate in career search opportunities, the first door opened toward the end of her time in Wharton’s EMBA program when she was going through the resume review process.  A classmate who worked at AlliedSignal saw her resume and thought she might be a good candidate for a management position there.  It turned out that she was a good fit and was hired after graduation in 1998 as director of worldwide operations for AlliedSignal’s Garrett Turbocharging business.

Once at AlliedSignal, she quickly moved into the position of director of acquisition integration thermal systems as well as general manager of thermal systems and vice president of strategic growth for the Garrett Turbocharging business. “Not only did I go from a local job to a global one, but I gained instant credibility. When people saw that I went to Wharton, I stood out and they viewed me as smart and capable.  Getting out of the paper plant would have been a lot harder and taken a lot more time without my Wharton degree and the connections I made in school,” says Poponi.

In 2005, her Wharton MBA helped open yet another door when she was hired by American Honda Motor Co., Inc. as senior manager of product planning in Torrance, CA.  She explains, “Honda took a risk on me because most people at Honda start right after college and never leave.  There is very little turnover and it’s rare for them hire from the outside for senior management.  But I think they recognized that I have a skill set that is transferable – my toolbox was extended because of my Wharton education and the tools I gained at Wharton can fit anywhere.”

Since then, her position has been expanded to assistant vice president of product planning with additional responsibilities for strategic planning, market research, and quality assurance.  Given her success at Honda, it’s not surprising that Poponi recently was selected as one of the top 100 leading women in the North American auto industry by Automotive News.

Poponi says that in addition to her ability to move across functions and up the corporate ladder, her MBA degree also has greatly increased her confidence. “Just knowing that I was able to get admitted and then succeed in such a rigorous program with all of the challenges that come with having a full-time job and family helped me realize that I can accomplish anything.”

When Rachel Cervantes was thinking about applying to executive MBA programs, her biggest concern was how she would balance school with her job at Merck outside Philadelphia and two young children.   “I thought about things like if my kids would notice that I was studying all the time and how it would impact our family dynamic.  Life was already pretty hectic and I was thinking about throwing another ball into the mix,” she says.

We asked Rachel Cervantes, who is now director of business development in Merck Vaccines with kids ages 7 and 4, to share some of her experiences as a parent and second-year student in Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program in Philadelphia.  Here’s what she said:

"The first step was talking to other parents who were currently in Wharton’s program to see how they handled everything.  Then it was all about managing expectations starting with my husband since there were some things I might not be able to do around the house that he would either need to take over or we would need to outsource.  And I had to discuss my work schedule with my management because I might have to leave early on a certain day to see my daughter’s recital if I knew I would miss another event on the weekend because of school.

For the kids, I had to make sure there was a core of babysitters and friends in place so that if my husband couldn’t pick up my daughter at cheerleading then someone else would be able to do that.  And of course I had to talk to the kids about how I would try my best to be at their soccer games or help with homework, but that it might not always work out.  They had a lot of questions about why I needed to be in school.  I had a PhD so wasn’t I finished already?  I had to explain that adults are always learning and now I’ll be learning new things that I hadn’t learned before.

That first year was challenging because everyone had to adjust to the new schedule.  But after a while, we got into a rhythm and it’s gotten a lot better.  The girls have been more understanding about it than I expected.  They’ve even come to stay with me on campus a few times, which is nice because for them it’s a vacation in the city.

If you are the parent of young children, this program can be done successfully and happily.  It’s challenging, but definitely not as difficult as I made it out to be and my kids are just fine.  My 7-year-old is actually learning quite a bit about economics since she always wants to know what I’m studying!”

At Wharton | San Francisco, we asked second-year student Maia Hightower, who is a doctor in the Associated Internal Medicine Medical Group in Oakland, CA and whose kids are 2 and 5, to talk about her experiences as a parent in the program as well.  Here’s what she said:

Last year, things didn’t change too much for the kids because I have a rule where if they are awake, there are no books open.  I study after they go to bed so it’s a lot of late nights.  The thing my kids notice the most is when I’m gone every other weekend.  But they came to campus four times last year to spend the night at the hotel with me, which was great.

Other than fitting it all in, the biggest challenge has been supporting my husband on the weekends when I’m not there, especially because our kids are so small.  I’ve tried to get him more support, like asking my mom to help him out for a few hours or hiring a babysitter on some Saturday mornings.

Overall, it’s gone shockingly well.  We’ve formed a network with other parents in the program and in addition to the school events, we frequently attend their kids’ birthday parties, which are a nice informal opportunity to hang out and create a community bond.

I would definitely recommend the program to other parents and wouldn’t see having young kids as a barrier to going to Wharton.  If anything, the program’s residential format being every other weekend is great for parents.  You only meet on class weekends and then you can go through the material at your own pace even if that means studying at alternate hours like when the kids are sleeping.  It’s a lot of hard work, but the flexible schedule gives you options in terms of how you juggle it all.”

Thanks to Rachel and Maia for sharing their experiences!  We look forward to more fun family events this year!

For Wharton MBA Exec alumna Maxine Gowen, staying connected with the School is very important. Most recently, the founding president and CEO of Trevena, Inc., a privately held pharmaceutical company located in King of Prussia, Pa., came back to the Philadelphia campus as a judge in the final round of Wharton’s Business Plan Competition. We asked her to talk about her interactions with the School and why she stays involved. Here’s what she said:

Contrary to what might be believed about student life in an executive MBA program, Wharton MBA for Executives students cite the friendships forged with classmates as one of the highlights of their Wharton experience. So how are students able to create such strong bonds?

A civil engineer by training, Nichole Jordan wanted to gain more business knowledge in order to further her management career at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).  However, with several promotions under her belt, she didn’t want to take two years off to pursue a full-time MBA -- not to mention she had a mortgage to pay.

Based in San Francisco, she was particularly interested in the MBA for Executives Program at Wharton | San Francisco, but she faced two significant challenges. The first was that no other PG&E employee had ever attended Wharton’s West Coast program so she was in new territory asking for every other Friday off to attend classes. The second hurdle was that there was no sponsorship program in place yet at her company.

Not one to shy away from challenges, Jordan not only approached her boss about needing a modified schedule for two years, but she also took it upon herself to help create a fellowship program for employees interested in pursuing their executive MBA degrees at top schools in the region.

“Overall, the company was very supportive of my attending Wharton’s EMBA program and very receptive to the idea of a fellowship program, which was officially created during my second year at Wharton,” she says.

Rand Rosenberg, who is a senior vice president of strategy and development for PG&E Corporation and oversees the fellowship program, says, “To start a program like that required a herculean effort at a big corporation like ours and it  took a high performer like Nichole to enable this to happen. An appealing aspect of this fellowship program is that we already know who these participating employees are and, more importantly, they know us and what they are getting into. That is a huge benefit. I’d like to see us do more fellowships as time goes by.”

The company’s expectation, he notes, is that sponsoring employees will help develop senior leaders. “The skills and insights that they gain through attending the Wharton program have direct applicability to running and leading our business.”

Jordan, who graduated from Wharton in 2008, says that the fellowship program reflects how committed the company is to leadership development and continuous education. “’I’ve been promoted three times since I began the MBA for Executives program at Wharton and now am director of contact center operations where I oversee all four of our contact centers in California.

”Tanya Moniz-Witten, who is currently in her second year at Wharton | San Francisco and sponsored by PG&E through the fellowship program, credits Jordan with paving the way for other employees. “The company was very supportive. They view the fellowship as an investment in human capital and a way to strengthen and build internal leadership,” she says.

As for why she wanted to attend Wharton, she explains that she wanted a program that would work for her schedule, but also maintain the rigor of a full-time MBA program.  And she wanted classmates with similar amounts of work experience to enable more knowledge sharing. She says, “Sitting in on a class, I loved the engagement of the students and the deep level of detail they went into as well as the applicability of the curriculum to what was going on in the world.”

Looking back, she says the Wharton Executive MBA program has been an “amazing” experience.  “I can bring concepts from my finance classes into discussions with my team or our CFO because my knowledge base is so much stronger now. My questions are more insightful and can help the company with business decisions.”

Even though Anastasia Pozdniakova wasn’t admitted the first time she applied to Wharton’s East Coast Executive MBA Program due to her of lack of work experience, she knew it would one day be the right program for her.

“The feedback was that they were looking for something more in EMBA Fellows candidates and it was a tough applicant pool. I had to improve my GMAT score too,” she recalls.

She waited a year and reapplied. By then, she had been promoted from an associate at her firm, Fieldstone, to vice president. She also retook the GMAT and provided a list of the deals she worked on to show the type of experience and perspective she would bring to the classroom. “We advise companies who seek capital for opportunities in the power and infrastructure industries. I work with developers who have ideas to develop technologies or renewable power plants but don’t have the necessary capital, so they retain my firm to find the money so they can implement their ideas,” she says. “Some of the projects are very unique and will hopefully be the future of power generation in the U.S.”

It turned out that a year made a big difference and she was accepted in 2007 as a Fellow. The program was a “perfect fit,” says Pozdniakova. “I’ve learned a lot from my role models in my company, but I wanted another source of inspiration and knowledge. At Wharton, I met interesting students and faculty who inspired me to look at the world differently and apply new tools to my work without having to risk leaving my job for two years.”

Looking back, Pozdniakova says that it was definitely worth the time and effort it took to apply to Wharton’s EMBA Program twice. “It’s great that the Fellows program exists to allow those of us with fewer years of experience to have this incredible opportunity,” she says. “My life would have been very different without this program.”

Related Blogs about Fellows:

Wharton EMBA Fellows Mean Business