Executive MBA Special Courses & Electives

Change Management Strategy in the Post-Covid World

This session will introduce key concepts and considerations for effective change management in a post-COVID context. Students will have an opportunity to discuss various change management frameworks and apply strategies through an interactive business simulation.

 

Strategic Communication Skills for Virtual and In-Person Leadership

This session will introduce central concepts and strategies for engaging in strategic leadership communication. Students will have an opportunity to reflect on one’s communication practices, expectations, and goals for engaging in leadership in an increasingly digital environment.

Instructor: Ralph Gilgliotti

Companies are increasingly challenged to stay on top in a competitive business environment while keeping customers central to their business strategy. Leaders within these companies need to develop a strategy that ensures seamless customer interactions that are able to create strong brand loyalty. Unfortunately, many companies are still struggling to make this an integral part of their strategy. There are numerous tactics and approaches that must be in place to maximize your customers’ experience and their interaction with your business and staff. Customer Centric Strategy topics include; Fundamentals of Customer Experience, Customer Experience Strategy, Aligning Customer and Business Value, and Customer-Centric Organizational Leadership and Transformation, all of which are necessary for an effective customer experience team.

This module is taught by senior executive and renowned international speaker, Professor Ronnie Battista. In addition to co-creating the Rutgers Mini-Masters in User Experience Design (where he is both program director and lead adjunct professor), Ronnie teaches the bespoke corporate training for the Rutgers School of Business Executive Education program, working directly with corporations to help train their personnel on experience-driven transformation.

This course is designed to provide future business leaders with the tools to properly understand the effect that the internet has on marketing strategy, product innovation, and comparative advantage. The course will examine how companies connect with customers, build brand value, and innovate in a new world of digital and social media. It will also address how leaders assess the investments and strategies required to build brands and drive revenue in a digitally enabled world.

This course also combines several Executive MBA subjects including marketing, strategy, and finance to delve deep into how digital and social media, mobile computing, and big data change the traditional conception of marketing, new product development, value added strategies, and maintaining a competitive advantage in the world of digitally connected customers.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, Digital Transformation is an imperative for most organizations. This training covers how technology alone will not achieve expected outcomes, unless combined with a well-defined big data strategy and a customer-centric approach.

During the session we will distill the topic of Digital Transformation into a practical guide and demonstrate how data can serve as a strategic asset to improve the customer experience and drive change in an organization’s operating model, while identifying opportunities for enhanced optimization.

At the conclusion of this course, participants will understand how a successful digital value proposition is shaped by an organizational culture of innovation and directly influenced by continuous improvement based on iterative market feedback.

This session is presented as a two-part module.

The fundamentals of Digital Transformation and establishing a Big Data strategy to provide Customer Value

Part 1:

• Understand digital transformation and its misconceptions
• Learn the 5 domains and key considerations of a digital strategy
• Get familiar with how to develop a value proposition and utilize innovation as an enabler
• Discuss value of ecosystems and business disruption

Part 2:

• Understand Big Data and its impact
• Understand the components of a Big Data Strategy and developing a value assessment methodology
• Learn how to turn customer data into business value and how to engage with customers in the digital age

Instructor: Professor Zeki Pagda

It is becoming increasingly clear-- if mature economies like the US, Japan, and Western Europe do not, or cannot, relentlessly innovate, they will be run over, displaced or disrupted by the juggernauts emerging from the most unexpected places from all parts of the world. But what drives innovation? Is it the Ecosystem? Genetics? Supply- chains? Regulation? Technology? And once we identify the drivers, how can we leverage them? How can we strengthen our peripheral vision? How do we unleash human capital through the lenses of innovative and creative thinking? This unique course delivers interdisciplinary perspectives on breakthrough ideas, innovation concepts, and the phenomena of creativity. It is a visual experience of entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial insights through engaging case studies. Through design-thinking, EMBA students will explore and analyze entrepreneurial mindsets, game-changers, technology trends, social networks, disruption, innovation for corporate enterprises, and "future-casting."

Instructor: Mukesh Patel

Excel I & II sessions will not only focus on exposing you to common Excel functions and features, but will also teach you how to think and problem-solve on your own. Many of the challenges you will face while using Excel will be unique. Therefore, these sessions will not only focus on exposing you to common Excel functions and features, but will also teach you how to think and problem-solve on your own. Sessions 1 and II will go over a few basic functions and formulas and teach you how to incorporate these concepts and solve challenges. We will begin from the Excel building blocks and work up to some of the more pinnacle features such as creating unique data sets, using conditional summations, and graphically representing data. This course is also accompanied by videos that directly correlate to the lessons being learned in class.

Instructor: Daniel Levy

In this module, students will get an overview of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). This hands-on session, leveraging the instructor's extensive experience in the world of indexes and ETFs on Wall Street, will equip Rutgers EMBAs with an overview of passive and active investment strategies implemented using ETFs, covering multiple asset classes while addressing the challenges, pitfalls, misperceptions, and opportunities involved.

Instructor: Professor Ronnee Ades

"Everybody speaks English…GREAT!…or is it?” The Integral Need for Cross-Cultural Know-How – especially in today’s English-speaking World

How often do we hear, “Don’t worry, everybody speaks English” before entering a meeting with international peers? In this context, Karen examines the question more deeply, “But are we all really saying and understanding the same thing?” The focus of Karen’s seminars is to maximize communication and minimize conflict when working in a multi-cultural environment. How can we most effectively work together with people from different cultural backgrounds while building trust and open lines of communication – the essential components of well-running global teams.

Focus points of Karen’s lectures are:

• What role does culture play in management, presentation, and communication styles and
• how can we work with these different styles effectively to maximize the outcome?
• How does culture affect how we solve problems, run meetings, express our opinions as well as socialize?
• Why do language barriers still exist when English has become a global language?
• How do we form and manage successful, well running global teams?

Instructor: Karen Fenner

This 3.5-hour overview by Pharma/Healthcare veteran executive, Prof. Gary Branning, highlights some of the major challenges, pitfalls and complexities of what you as a future/current CEO need to understand fully as you navigate your company in the years ahead. Clearly, Healthcare will come to demand even greater attention at the Executive level---both from an HR as well as a Strategic Finance perspective. And with the Biden emphasis on massive HC funding, your leadership role in this area will be critical. In addition, this module is an introduction to a full, highly regarded, 3-credit Healthcare Overview and Strategy course offered by Prof. Branning in this area, as a possible elective choice (in RBS, outside EMBA) in your last semester.

Instructor: Professor Gary Branning

In this presentation, Frank Gatti, Rutgers EMBA graduate and CFO of ETS, focuses on common mistakes that new board members typically make, the responsibilities and fiduciary duties of board members, and challenges that one may encounter when serving on high-level boards.

Instructor: Mr. Frank Gatti

Why do some products and ideas catch on and others fail? Why do some people and firms gain steadfast loyalty and others never do? This class provides a toolkit for creating and delivering persuasive communication that engages people and changes their behavior. This course will be especially useful for students who must pitch their ideas to customers, investors, and potential employees and for students in the nonprofit sector where resources for spreading ideas are often thin.

Instructor: Professor Kristina Durante

In this session, the instructor focuses on voice projection, eye contact, audience management, modulation and optimal PowerPoint presentations. Additionally, there is a session teaching Executive MBAs how to open, close and structure business communications to potential investors, boards of directors and hostile audiences.

Instructors: Professors Jim Smith and Matt Eventoff

Driving the firm's revenue line is one of a CEO's key responsibilities. Many EMBAs, while having substantial and impressive operating experience, often lack sufficient revenue-related experience to be serious contenders for the top leadership roles. Selling isn't about any given individual sale; it is about the relationship. Selling is a holistic thing. How does one build trust and sustain client relationships to drive steady and reliable revenue? In this digital online world, how is this even possible? And furthermore, Post-Covid, how is this even a greater challenge?

Instructor: Ben Sopranzetti

As an executive, your success will be determined by your choices and decisions. Prior to the ubiquitous nature of data, decisions were made by borrowing learnings from experience. The probability of the decision being correct was based on similarity of the current situation and previous experience.

In today’s world, where data is being generated and stored by every business process, data can guide your decision making with certainty. You can run experiments to collect and analyze data to inform your strategy, thus fulfilling your business vision. The most successful companies make this a repeatable process and by doing so,  they learn from data faster than their competition.

This powerhouse session will develop your data driven competency. It will empower you to build and lead teams to identify opportunities of strategic importance and will equip you with tools and techniques to transform organization data assets into insights and knowledge. By the end of this session, you will develop an analytical mindset to make decisions with confidence.

Instructor: Professor Rosa Oppenheim

You are the CEO of a multinational conglomerate. A press release was tweeted from a local environmental group stating that your manufacturing plant is improperly disposing untreated and toxic chemicals into the community’s waterway. While the press release is inaccurate, your stock price has tanked since the story broke. You have an interview on CNN in five minutes. What do you say?

As leaders rise through the ranks, they will face issues that thrust them into the spotlight and threaten the corporate reputation for which they are responsible. A recent study found that 9 in 10 business leaders (94%, to be precise) admit that the senior executives in their companies need more training in core communication disciplines, such as reputation management and corporate communication.

Are you prepared?

In this module EMBAs are trained to deal with corporate communication challenges via strategic issues management, media relations and crisis communication.

Instructor: Kathleen Donohue Rennie, Ph.D.

In this module, the Rutgers Master of Accountancy in Taxation Program Director presents a complete overview of the tax-sensitive decisions entrepreneurs must consider when establishing a business, concentrating on those planning aspects which are the most tax efficacious. This session covers a wide array of topics, including what qualifies as taxable income, allowable exemptions, and permissible deductions.

Instructor: Professor Jay Soled

Financial acumen is a key driver of the strategic decision-making process. Regardless of industry or function, high-level executives must fully understand areas such as Budgeting, Valuation, Cash Flow Maximization, Real Estate Finance, Implications of recent Fed policy and changes in Banking Regulations, Relationship Building and Hedge Fund Strategy. This elective deploys an optimal mix of distinguished in-house professors and veteran industry experts to present a finely balanced and constantly updated array of topics to our Executive MBA students.

The highly-experienced industry leaders include:

Lisa Kaplowitz: Assistant Professor of Professional Practice – Finance and Founding Director of the Center for Women in Business. Professor Kaplowitz is a former investment banker, Treasurer of Bed Bath & Beyond and CFO of various private equity backed retail and consumer products companies. She continues to advise executives, at all stages of growth, by using finance to help direct corporate strategy and decision making.

Dr. John Longo: Dr. Longo is Professor of Professional Practice, and Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager for Beacon Trust, a registered investment advisor with $3 billion under management. Dr. Longo is also a Visiting Professor of Finance at EMBA Global – the joint international Executive MBA Program of Columbia University, London Business School and The University of Hong Kong. He is the bestselling author of The Art of Investing: Lessons from History’s Greatest Traders, published by TheGreatCourses.com. He has won a total of four awards for teaching and research excellence at Rutgers Business School. He has led the RBS student team to four research case competition championships organized by the CFA Society of New York. He has also led Rutgers to personal visits with Warren Buffett in Omaha, Nebraska on four separate occasions.

Fred Hoffman: Professor Hoffman was previously a Managing Director and the Head of Corporate Credit Strategies at Napier Park Global Capital (“Napier Park”).  Professor Hoffman has managed almost all sectors of the fixed-income marketplace including ABS/MBS, Municipal Bonds, Interest Rate Products and Credit. Between 2004 and 2006, he was Deputy Chief Investment Officer of Northstar Financial Services of Hamilton, Bermuda. Professor Hoffman holds an MA in Econometrics from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a BA in Economics and Computer Science from Rutgers College, Rutgers University.

Darius Palia: Rutgers EMBA is fortunate to have Professor Darius Palia, the Thomas A. Renyi Endowed Professor of Banking at RBS, deliver two stand-alone sessions on "Fintech: Overview and Challenges" in the highly acclaimed 4th semester finance elective, Finance for the C-Suite. The confluence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Cloud Computing and Big Data have yielded "FinTech". Not just startups, but established financial organizations, individuals, and even central banks will be increasingly driven by developments in FinTech in the very near future. In these sessions, Prof. Palia will conduct an overview of FinTech and then outline its immense potential utility and the challenges FinTech poses to traditional financial institutions and to regulators.

Also included in this elective is extensive on-line training and familiarity with the Bloomberg Terminal. Bloomberg terminals are one of the main product offerings from Bloomberg L.P. They are one of the most heavily used and highly regarded professional investment systems to be created for the financial marketplace. You will find a Bloomberg terminal on almost every institutional financial professional's desk. Many EMBA students have Bloomberg at their desks already and find Professor Hoffman's usage and knowledge of the terminal to be exceptionally  helpful.

Atul Prashar: Venture Capital is an effective tool to reduce the friction from ideation to invention, with the main goal of unlocking tremendous value for the consumer and generating scalable profits for the company. In this session, we focus on the qualitative side of VC, storytelling (the who, what, how, and why you?). A founder guides investors through a structured Story, utilizing Data (establishing & proving addressable market), proving their product or service solves a current market gap, and why they are the best to execute this plan. This framework arms investors with the proper knowledge to use their imagination to envision the company’s market success 2, 5, and 10 years into the future. The session will begin with an explanation of capital deployment from a $100 million fund, followed by the Professor’s “Walk Me Through a Deal” scenarios, depicting real-world examples of why some of his deals were successful and what led to failure on others.

This module explores the theory and reality of mergers and acquisitions. Exploring differences in corporate governance philosophies, along with the role of financial institutions in an international setting, makes the inclusion of this module a testament to the timeliness of the Rutgers EMBA curriculum.

Instructor: Prof. Simi Kedia

This course explores critical emerging issues pertaining to marketing and brand management, such as: How can firms effectively differentiate their offerings to remain competitive in the marketplace? How does a firm optimize its product-market choice in this new globalized world? How does branding relate to marketing strategy in new and extant, large and small businesses? We will explore the Psychology behind consumption to bridge the gap between firms and consumers. Executives will employ business case studies and research projects to offer hands-on learning in marketing that allows participants to position themselves as brands and empowers them to be immediately effective in their cutting-edge business organizations.

Instructor: Professor Anubha Mishra

Students will also have the option of enrolling in a Capstone Consulting Project elective – an Experiential Learning course designed to apply academics to Real-World business projects within a tight schedule. This will provide students an opportunity to work on a project of their choice while enhancing project management, presentation, and team building skills, and utilize multifunctional methods and tools of analysis in problem-solving.

For the basic learning plan each individual or team is taken through a proven Innovation Process used by current Consulting practices:

1. Establish the Business Idea and project objectives
2. Conduct advanced Ideation as needed
3. Develop the competitive advantage
4. Identify and solve any Killer Issues that could result in an unsuccessful project
5. Conduct a Fail-Fast-Fail-Cheap, continuous learning process to help make the project more successful.  This step may utilize Alpha and Beta prototypes.
6. Write a business plan or pitch deck to enable the launch of the business

Some Examples of Recent Powerhouse Consulting Projects Under the Supervision of Prof. Brownstone:

• Team A Project: Bring new revenue streams into a private school to help offset declining revenue of schools especially due to Covid.
• Team B Project: Develop and launch an innovative sports site that uses advanced analytics and crowd sourcing.
• Team C Project:  Build a new business that offers a way for fast food restaurants to improve their customer satisfaction and increase sales.  
• Team D Project: Develop a website that informs that public of many health care programs that are currently available.  The goal is to improve the health outcomes of patients in the US.
• Team E Project:  Create a business that allows independent medical practices to increase profit margins via more efficient management of the office.

Read Story: Rutgers Executive MBA capstone consulting project launches group into real-life consulting

To survive and excel in today’s economy, executives need to focus on deploying their marketing and advertising dollars more effectively by validating the return of investment (ROI) of this spending. Digital marketing has proven to be a necessary and effective channel to showcase brands, reach customers, and build loyalty. Executives need to navigate today’s complex and fragmented digital marketing concepts and regulations to ensure that their organizations upgrade and adapt to the age of digitalization. This course highlights how it is imperative that digital marketing be integrated with powerful digital marketing analytics, which through data acquisition, exploration, testing, and application, produce insights to drive continuous improvements in digital marketing programs and maximize returns.

 

This course provides a comprehensive look at various aspects of digital marketing. Starting with foundational concepts across all aspects of digital marketing, including owned, paid and earned media channels, participants then do deep dives into measurement strategy, metrics, framework, concepts, issues, tools, testing and best practices. This highly applied course regularly adapts to reflect current marketing industry changes, trends and updates. A key focus of the course is to ensure that executives can learn digital marketing analytics through real-world practice by using industry-leading digital marketing analytics tools.

Topics covered include:

• How to link business objectives with digital marketing objectives and to develop a measurement strategy?
• How should executives manage vendor selection?
• What are the key digital marketing metrics and key performance indicators for different types of organizations?
• What are the owned, paid and earned media channels, and how to navigate through the complexity and measure marketing success?
• What are the latest privacy and technology changes on audience and data, and how to ensure that your organization is adopting these changes?
• How to utilize quantitative, qualitative and competitive tools to drive actionable insights?
• How to optimize digital channels by incorporating testing and experimentation?
• How to create and manage an analytics culture for your organization?

Instructor: Anubha Mishra

To meet the needs of today’s socially-connected, mobile-enabled customers, ALL marketers must be digital marketers. This course provides an overview of digital marketing, and the ways in which organizations adapt their strategies to manage customer relationships in our increasingly digital world. Students will learn the strategic aspects of the digital marketing ecosystem, digital content monetization, and online customer acquisition. They will also explore a range of digital marketing tools and tactics including search engines, social media, digital advertising, and more. The course uses a real-world approach, through case study discussions and completion of a client digital marketing project.

Instructor: Professor Stacy Smollin Schwartz

In this elective course, you will learn how to skillfully combine capital, opportunities, innovation and networks to disrupt industries, create wealth, and use innovation to solve consumer and social problems. In addition to the traditional topics of opportunity recognition, business planning, and entrepreneurial finance you will also explore the topics of corporate venturing, social entrepreneurship and the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development. This course will appeal to individuals who have a strong desire to become entrepreneurs, work in start-ups, or invest in early-stage companies. This course will also be immensely valuable to those who will work in venture capital, where they are dealing with new or relatively new ventures.

Instructor: Prof. Kristy Fall and Mukesh Patel

This is an advanced, modern finance course with the objective of studying indices and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and their application in investment management. The course is designed to be comprehensive in covering the economic space available to investors and the many investment objectives/strategies represented by indexes and ETFs. The contemporary and practical class content is enhanced by exposure to useful industry resources and participants. The course is divided into two major segments. The first provides a deep dive into the theories, methodologies and wide variety of products (covering all asset classes) that are the foundations of index-based investing. The second segment provides a thorough examination of ETFs from an investment strategy standpoint, including their anatomy, mechanics, application, availability, and the eco-system of industry participants. A semester project is required that involves working on either a current industry challenge or new investment opportunity that includes, portfolio design, calculation, backtesting and marketing. The class project includes working on teams, at times directly with industry experts, to practice the application of tools and material learned in class to actual real-world situations.

Instructor: Professor Ronnee Ades

This module is part of the special topics elective "Finance for the C-Suite."

Derivatives have often been unfairly blamed for financial disasters by people who misused these instruments. The objective of this module within the Options course is to introduce students to the possibilities, potential, and pitfalls, that derivative instruments bring to the table for corporate and individual financial planning. The topics covered in this new course include the valuation of derivatives, incorporating derivatives in corporate financial planning, constructing hedge strategies, and discussions of the risks and benefits of derivatives. A unique offering, derivatives courses are not usually part of EMBA programs around the world.

Instructor: Professor Suresh Govindaraj

This module is part of the Financial Strategy core course.

One of the key differentiators between an EMBA and a traditional MBA is that MBAs specialize in and are hired to fulfill a specific functional role within a firm, whereas EMBAs are hired to drive revenues and enhance cash flows. MBAs are needed on the bus, but EMBAs are hired to drive it. This module takes direct aim at this crucial skill by providing a holistic exploration of how C-level executives manage the entire balance sheet, rather than just assets, in order to drive revenues by creating and sustaining comparative advantages in their product market.  Even the most forward-thinking and innovative business strategies are worthless if the firm doesn't have access to the funds to implement them.

Instructors: Professor Ben Sopranzetti, Professor Braun Kiess

This course presents the unique and complex characteristics of marketing in global markets. EMBAs will be presented with organizational and environmental factors that have to be taken into account while formulating and implementing global marketing strategies. In addition, market selection, market entry, global market expansion, global market advantage, global product and brand development, pricing, advertising, and distribution in global markets, and alternative global marketing strategies and tactics are some of the topics that will be discussed.

Instructor: Professor Sengun (Shen) Yeniyurt

This module is part of the special topics elective "Finance for the C-Suite."

This module discusses the history of the hedge fund industry, its role in individual investment portfolios and several sample hedge fund trades. The highlight of the session is when several EMBA groups pitch their own investment ideas in front of the class. The investment ideas pitched by the EMBAs are captivating, with many taking copious notes to prepare them to put their own capital to work. A complementary work shop on investments has also been taught by this instructor.

Instructor: Prof. John Longo

This module is part of the core Executive Leadership course.

Session 1 – DESIGN THINKING: Organizing Creativity and Avoiding Strategic Inertia

Fostering creativity throughout the organization is one of the most critically important jobs of an organizational leader. While our culture and society celebrate the heroic genius of the individual inventor (e.g., Steve Jobs, Elon Musk), research suggests that having the right organizational structures and processes has a far bigger impact on innovative outcomes. In this session, we will examine the team and organizational-level conditions that enable leaders to maximize organizational innovation and creativity. In particular, we will focus on “design thinking” as a methodology that can foster creativity and innovation. A deeper understanding of the core principles behind “design thinking” will further help us understand why organizations and leaders often fail to change despite disruptive threats and environmental changes, and provide a framework for how leaders can overcome strategic inertia.

Session 2 – Building Resilient and Innovative Organizations in Times of Crisis

In times of crisis, innovation may seem like a luxury for many organizations. Yet, crisis situations are exactly when the capability to generate new approaches and solutions are most valuable. Building on the notion that “crisis management is innovation on steroids”, the session will examine what leaders must do to navigate novel threats and highly uncertain environments by leveraging innovation within and across organizations. Using a case study on the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, we will explore the common mistakes leaders make in high-stakes crisis situations, and discuss how leaders can build organizational cultures that prevent large scale errors, and exhibit resilience in the face of challenges.

Instructor: Professor Jerry Kim

This module is part of the core Executive Leadership course.

This module focuses on exploring practices and challenges faced by executives and their teams in today’s organizations through in-class discussion of fundamental concepts related to cultural diversity. The class discusses the importance of understanding and managing cultural differences and intra-group diversity in global organizations, and why effectively managing cultural diversity is a competitive advantage.

Instructor: Professor Loubna Erraji

This module is part of the core Executive Leadership course.

This module will focus on helping each EMBA student become more effective at leading and participating in virtual team interactions. Both common virtual team problems and realistic solutions will be discussed on topics ranging from early team interactions and building trust to coordination difficulties and leadership challenges. Problems created by electronic communication will also be addressed.

Instructor: Prof. Terri R. Kurtzberg