EMBA Student Testimonials

About Professor Jerry Kim:

I have colleagues at work who were enrolled in two of the other competing EMBA programs, "across the river" in NYC. Consequently, I could compare and contrast the Rutgers EMBA courses with these other two programs.  It became abundantly clear that none of the others update their course curricula every semester as the Rutgers Powerhouse Emba program does!  For example, in Prof. Jerry Kim's two courses---Innovation Strategy and his main Course on Corporate Strategy—Jerry actually "baked in" big data, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and a host of cutting-edge analytical techniques into his state-of-the art Strategy courses.  It is no wonder that Strategy (along with so many other subjects) has been ranked in the Top 5 globally in EMBA programs by Financial Times in the past.  The other programs do indeed cover these topics, but they are discussed  in isolation—in separate silos---and not comprehensively as tools designed​ for Strategy, which is really the only way to study them.  Thank you, Prof. Kim.  I have been promoted from Operations to the C-level here at work, and, seriously, your class notes are with me in my office at work and I refer to them all the time!

About Professor Farrokh Langdana:

I had been hearing about Prof. Langdana from executives from my company who have graduated from Rutgers EMBA Powerhouse over the years.  Now I know why.  And also why Prof. Langdana has over 30 teaching awards, and even a large lecture hall at RBS named after him! His lectures are amazing! There were many instances when we were analyzing the impact of macroeconomic policy on our businesses from Wall Street Journal articles published on that very day itself! Some “older articles” were actually 3-5 days old! When does that happen!? In addition to the macroeconomics, the refreshingly different and unique Leadership Lessons from the Cycle of One course that he has created as part of the Executive Leadership series, have changed the way I now look at Leadership forever!

About Professor Terri Kurtzberg:

Having negotiated a large number of very large global contracts at work, I thought I knew all there was to know about Negotiations. Wrong!  Prof. Terri Kurtzberg’s lectures in the Executive Leadership course have taken my effectiveness at a global pharma-related supply chain operation to a whole new level.  Now my negotiations are not just about the final dollar amount, but, thanks to Terri, they form part of a unified overall strategy designed to attain the key goals at work. I have been promoted twice in the 10 months since graduation! In addition, her discussions on how to manage global teams, and how to assign accountability in a business world compiled of virtual teams, was absolutely brilliant.

About Professor Lewis Kerman:

Having a bona-fide Yale Law professor for your first law course at Rutgers EMBA, is truly a blessing. Lewis is fantastic. When my three classmates and I began our consulting company, we had his notes besides us as we set-up our partnership, then later as we scaled it up tremendously. Aspects of contract law covered by Lewis have saved us so many times in our new business. But here is the main point---Lewis is not just your professor for the one Law course in the Executive MBA program. You have him for Life, and for all the complications that Life may throw at you. The man is just an email away, and he has come to the assistance of so many of our alumni with their business and legal issues as their companies grow and diversify, that I could fill pages with examples. Truly a lifelong friend, and star professor!

About Professor Suresh Govindaraj:

I will never view a financial statement in the same way again. His courses changed all that. His approach is totally case-based, with cases (all financial statements from actual companies) sometimes just a few weeks old! Suresh is totally brilliant, his courses are tough, he packs in the material, he is intense, and he has an amazing sense of humor. In fact we have a list of ‘Sureshisms!’ A 3-hour class zips by leaving you exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

About Professor Rosa Oppenheim:

Dear Rosa,

This may be over 20 years late; but I really need to thank you. I was a medical practitioner and teacher transitioning to management when I took my EMBA. I subsequently became Regional Medical Director at CIGNA, and for 13 years Chief Medical Officer for Medicare for Aetna. In this capacity I was able to create new programs and approaches to medical management that had real impact on Health Policy.  In 2002 we created the first large scale program to ID and manage Advanced Illness that showed dramatic impact.  Encouraging and facilitating this is now national policy.  In 2005 I created one of the first programs in Provider Collaboration, which likewise showed real impact.  This concept is now Accountable Care. What you taught was helpful. Learning to understand techniques and "thinking" management enabled me to lead teams that resulted in programs with real and lasting impact. In summary - a belated "thank you."

About Professor Barry Karafin:

I was honored and humbled that our group received the Karafin Strategy Award yesterday! Thank you again for always challenging us. The level of critical thinking that you demanded from us is exactly what I sought when I joined the program. The balance of content between theory and real world application was especially valuable. 

About Professor Mark Castelino:

When the stock market has one of its convulsions, most of us EMBAs immediately think of our guru, Mark Castelino, and what he taught us. He is a natural teacher with his effortless style and total mastery of the subject. After I graduated from Rutgers EMBA, I fired my financial advisor and cancelled my two (expensive) financial newsletters. All I need now to manage my portfolio are Professor Castelino’s notes, and the REMBA financial calculator that I really learned to use in his classes!

About Professor Jing Suk:

I work for a data-driven company that relies heavily on a web-based portal for its business. Professor Suk's course on Web Analytics has started a movement in our business development division to pace it at a whole different level. All eyes are on me to leverage the power of big data through web analytics. This course empowered me to look behind the scenes of the online world, and I am hoping that this will lead to that "big transition" at work that everyone dreams about.

About Professor Ben Sopranzetti:

His course is really the foundation of real-world Financial Strategy, and we can clearly see why he is ranked in the Top 25 Finance Professors in the US by BusinessWeek. In addition to actually designing Financial Strategy in class with real-world cases, “Dr. Ben” also covers the whole Entrepreneurship spectrum: How to get Venture Capitalists interest in your business plan, how to “pitch” the plan differently to them, how to then scale up your business, and finally how to sell or franchise your operation. And all this against a backdrop of his personal experience as a CFO, business-owner, investment banker, and professor.

About Professor Simi Kedia:

Prof. Kedia leverages her reputation as one of the most prolific publishers and biggest researchers at RBS and in the field of Corporate Finance, to deliver an amazing course to us in Rutgers EMBA. Her elective is on Mergers and Acquisitions and on Valuation, and interestingly, there were so many EMBA alumni who came back to attend her elective again, to glean whatever they may have missed the first time around. How much should you value a company that is creating intellectual property, and not making “stuff”? How much to sell such a company for? Or when to just merge and not acquire? Or when not to? Trust me, you will be an expert at all this after Prof. Kedia’s course.

About Professor Ignacio Vijil-Cabrera:

Professor Vijil-Cabrera’s contribution to the Rutgers Executive MBA Program is much more than academics. As a past graduate of the REMBA Program he can directly relate to the class as students, as well as fellow working professionals. He teaches in such a way that every lesson is extremely engaging and is directly applicable to whatever industry or field you are in. These lessons are vital when you are a mid-level/senior executive or an entrepreneur, like me.

It is no surprise that his course and Prof. Langdana's macro course---the two economics courses---are ranked in the Top 3 globally for 4 years in a row by Financial Times.  Prof. "Nacho" for example gave us a NYT article in which some company had just introduced a new Vitamin-enriched water.  His question for the exam was:  "Describe exactly what their pricing strategy is.  All the numbers you need are all in this NYT article.  Analyse their pricing strategy based on what we have done in class."  To be honest, this is exactly what I had been looking for in an EMBA program!

At a recent national nursing conference called ACDIS (Association for Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists), 3,000 nurses, doctors and other allied health professionals, I met an advanced practice nurse from the University of Chicago. When we had the chance to network, I said I was so glad to meet someone from a prestigious academic medical center, after all, I received my EMBA from Rutgers in New Jersey…before I could finish my sentence, she exclaimed, Rutgers! You are from Rutgers? That’s really great! I will be so glad to learn from YOU this week — YOU are the top of the TOP! She went on about our Rutgers EMBA programming and how the University of Chicago has been looking to innovate the way Rutgers has done.

Melanie Halpern is a clinical documentation improvement specialist with a focus on patient safety and high reliability organizations at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, RWJ Barnabas Health.

-Melanie Halpern, EMBA Class of ‘99

About Professor Rosa Oppenheim:

I had to reach out to you because I can’t thank you enough for everything you taught me last year (2019)! As you know, I run chronic care management programs for high-risk Medicare-aged individuals. We launched a brand-new program in January of this year (2020, the Covid Year) and I just got the results of the first study done by my healthcare economics team. This is a team of epidemiologist and statisticians. I’ve been partnering with them over the last several months to complete the initial study.

It’s a challenging time to be looking at the impact a clinical program like mine delivers. Inpatient admissions are down across the board due to COVID. The question we needed to answer was, is my program working at keeping folks out of the hospital or are they simply not going because of COVID (which could, in turn, increase mortality rates)?

Prof. Langdana reminds us of your famous dictum, Rosa:  "Correlation does not imply Causation"  And this has been fundamentally important in "identifying" the causality using your statistical analysis. In addition, Farrokh had told us in our interviews with him, that the Statistics that you taught us, Rosa---ranked #3 in the world in all EMBA Programs by Financial Times---is the very foundation, the bedrock, for Digitization and Big Data Strategy (which subsumes Data Analytics). And he was so right!

I’ve been in the weeds with these brilliant statisticians and epidemiologists aligning on study design and, because of you and your classes, Rosa, I actually understood what they were talking about for the first time in my career! We were able to not only control for COVID, but also match the population to a control group of over 1000 characteristics!

Thank you very much from a humble student of yours!

-Michael Stanzione, REMBA 2021