This year’s plenary speakers can help you gain a better understanding of EMBA – its current and future possibilities – as well as practical tools and insights for advancing your program and shifting your thinking in exciting new ways.
Shifting Mindset
- Gigi Wang
Industry Fellow and Faculty Member at University of California-Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship, Managing Partner, MG-Team
Lifelong learning in the digital age
- Nick van Dam
Partner and Global Chief Learning Officer at McKinsey and Professor at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands
Where are graduate management programs headed in an ever-changing world that continues to demand more from its leaders? In what ways are business schools changing graduate management education, and can they change fast enough to stay relevant? And where do EMBA Programs fit in the evolving landscape of executive education?
At the helm of today’s business schools, deans face many challenges, and their decisions decidedly impact graduate management education. In this plenary, four deans from business schools in Europe, South Africa, and Latin America share their thoughts on the path forward for graduate management education, the trends they see, and the changes they anticipate, and offer their perspectives on what the world might look like for EMBA Programs in the emerging future.
Esteemed leaders
Antonio Batista da Silva, Jr., dean of Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC), previously served as executive director of custom programs, director of process, people, and development, and corporate partnership coordinator at FDC. As professor of corporate and competitive strategy and strategic alliance, he led many organizational and team projects for private companies and public organizations. His areas of interest include strategy, nets, alliances, and partnerships. He received his Ph.D. in business administration from Fundação Getúlio Vargas – EAESP/FGV in Brazil.
Martin Boehm, dean and professor of marketing at IE Business School, previously served as the dean of programs, the associate dean of undergraduate studies at IE University, and the associate dean of the Master in Management at IE Business School. His interests focus on customer management, helping quantify the impact of various customer management activities on a customer’s lifetime value. As a consultant, Boehm works primarily with firms in the financial service industry. He has taught in IE’s Master in Management, MBA, Executive MBA, and Ph.D. programs. He received his doctorate from Goethe-University in Frankfurt.
Marion Debruyne, dean of Vlerick Business School, was a visiting doctoral fellow at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, visiting scholar at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and assistant professor at Goizueta Business School, Emory University before joining Vlerick. Her interests lie in the intersection between marketing strategy, innovation, and competition. Her diverse educational background includes a degree in civil engineering, a master’s degree, and a doctoral degree in applied economics. She has worked with companies in the pharmaceutical, health care, energy, and financial services industries.
Nicola Kleyn, dean of GIBS at the University of Pretoria, joined the school as faculty member in 2004 and was appointed associate professor in 2012 and deputy director in 2014. She previously worked in industry and also was a faculty member at the University of Witwatersrand. Kleyn teaches and researches in marketing, focusing on corporate branding and reputation management. She is president of the South African Business Schools Association and a board member of the Central and East European Management Development Association (CEEMAN). She received degrees from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Pretoria.
MODERATOR: Carsten Linz leads the build-up and scale-out of new businesses as business development officer at SAP SE. He drives SAP’s own digital transformation in his role of global head of the Center for Digital Leadership and advises C-suite executives. Named a Top-100 Digital Influencer, Linz also teaches in executive programs at the Mannheim Business School, University of St. Gallen, and Standford Graduate School. He wrote the bestseller Radical Business Model Transformation: How to Gain the Competitive Edge in a Disruptive World, and serves as a member of Europe’s largest seed stage fund investment committee.
Are your experiential experiences hitting the mark with your students? Are they applying what they are learning to the benefit of their organization? And how do you instill the ever-vital innovative mindset in your EMBA students?
Discover new ways to improve your efforts: In this plenary, Gigi Wang from the University of California-Berkeley will explain how the Berkeley Method of Teaching Entrepreneurship (BMOE) helps students learn by doing and how the Berkeley Innovation Index helps determine the impact of BMOE.
Built on a framework of lectures, interactive exercises, project work, and networking with industry experts, BMOE teaches students how to develop a start-up venture and how to also develop more innovative mindsets. BMOE focuses on experiential learning where students hone their inductive thinking skills and learn through their experiences. Developed in parallel, the data-driven Berkeley Innovation Index measures the innovation mindset and impact of programs and experiences on improving the students’ innovation mindsets.
Innovative expert
Gigi Wang has lived the entrepreneur’s life and now shares her expertise in innovation with students and practitioners.
As an industry fellow and faculty member at the University of California-Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship, Wang teaches a start-up boot camp and executive innovation programs. She also runs a consulting firm, MG-Team, LLC, which delivers programs for entrepreneurship and innovation, and services for international business development.
She has contributed to diverse organizations, such as the Amsterdam Center for Entrepreneurship; Ecole d’ Ponts Business School; Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO); innovation facilitator SRI International; Verizon Wireless; Lagardere, the second largest media company in Europe; SAP; and several global incubators. She coaches and mentors dozens of start-ups throughout the world.
Before establishing MG-Team, Wang served on the management team of several tech ventures. As an Internet pioneer in the 90s, she launched Pacific Internet in Singapore (IPO on NASDAQ in 1999) and began the internationally renowned TRUSTe Internet privacy program in 1996.
Wang received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Standford University and her MBA from the University of California-Berkeley. She frequently speaks at entrepreneur and innovation conferences, including the Food Executive Europe, World Investment Conference, Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics, IBM Global Start-Up Camp, and Global R&D Conference.
The World Economic Forum dubbed this era, marked by constant technological breakthroughs that repeatedly disrupt the business world, as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In this era, only the nimblest companies will survive – and only the workers who constantly re-educate themselves will continue to find jobs. If lifelong learning becomes the standard operating procedure for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, business schools will have tremendous opportunities to serve a wide variety of learners.
In this plenary, Nick van Dam will discuss advances in technologies over time, the implications of these developments during the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and their impact on current and future jobs and skills. He also will make the case for embracing lifelong learning strategies at a corporate and institutional level, as well as on a personal level.
Learning leader
Internationally recognized thought leader, advisor, researcher, author, and speaker on corporate learning and leadership development, Nick van Dam serves as the global chief learning officer and client advisor at McKinsey & Company. He has worked with more than 100 clients throughout the world during his professional career. Before joining McKinsey, he was partner, global chief learning officer, and director of human capital for Deloitte.
He also helps executives on their learning journey as a professor at Nyenrode Business University and adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s executive doctoral program for chief learning officers.
As an internationally known thought leader in human capital development, van Dam has written articles and has contributed to articles in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Business Week, The India Times, Information Week, Management Consulting, CLO Magazine, and T+D Magazine. He has authored and co-authored more than 17 books and numerous articles on innovation in learning and leadership development.
He received the 2012 Lifetime Learning Leadership Award from The MASIE Center, a think tank on workforce education and performance. Under the patrons of the European Parliament Federal Ministry of Education & Research, he received the 2013 Leonardo European Corporate Learning Award for shaping the future of organizational learning and leadership development. He also founded the e-Learning for Kids, a global non-profit foundation that has provided digital lessons for more than 20 million underprivileged elementary school children.
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