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Curriculum and Faculty

The Executive Development Program focuses on concepts and tools that you can use to become a more strategic thinker, effective manager, and skillful decision-maker. You can schedule a class visit during the academic year at this link.

View the 2024-2025 program schedule

Leadership
Understand transformational leadership. Develop your own leadership philosophy to inform your presence in the workplace.

Organizational and Change Management
Major topics include teamwork, perception and decision-making, motivation, strategic organizational design, corporate culture, and organizational change.

Competitive Strategy
Understand how the basic concepts of market segmentation and positioning are essential to the strategic planning process. Consider what distinguishes successful product or service launches from those that fail relative to go-to-market strategy.

Negotiation Skills
Become a more effective negotiator through proven techniques for building and maintaining relationships, applying appropriate power and influence, structuring agreements, and developing buy-in.

Accounting and Finance
Learn to interpret and use accounting data for planning, decision-making, and financial reporting.

Solving Complex Problems
Develop a problem-solving model with three critical ingredients for eliciting ideas, ensuring idea flow, aggregating ideas​, and structuring group discussions.

Managing Diverse Teams
As a manager, it’s important to actively build cohesion and collaboration across your team’s differences. This course offers research-backed information to help your team thrive and harness the potential of diverse teams.

Entrepreneurial Thinking and Innovation
Gain insight into how entrepreneurs conceive, adapt, and execute strategies to drive growth. Examine how leaders effectively use structure and processes to enhance innovation and creativity within their organizations.

Business Communication Skills
Master fundamental tools to connect, be clear, and compel any audience. Receive ​customized coaching ​in a highly interactive and personalized setting to enable immediate behavior change.

Brand Management Strategy
Learn how to create and maintain a market-oriented organization to lessen price pressure on products and grow a stable base of loyal customers. Identify key factors in successful brands that apply to your enterprise.

*Information is subject to change. 

In the Executive Development Program (EDP), you will experience a variety of teaching styles with opportunities for both individual and group involvement. Lectures are interactive and allow you to relate the material to your own professional experience. Case studies, role-playing, small group work and other highly participative teaching techniques encourage your active involvement:

  • Faculty members present thought-provoking lectures pertinent to your current challenges and encourage participant involvement in the evening’s discussion.
  • Case study analysis and discussion of business problems focus on application in real-world businesses.
  • Company presentations give you an opportunity to develop your communication skills while you describe your function and organization to the group. You will learn about diverse industries and business units from other experienced professionals in the class.
  • Dinner discussions on Monday class evenings allow you to share work experiences and explore the best practices in your industry with your classmates in a relaxed setting.
  • Individual study prior to class strengthens your strategic thinking skills and prepares you for the classroom discussion.
  • Residential sessions take place at the beginning and end of the program. They are intensive two-to-four-day learning experiences focused on strategy and leadership skills at resorts within driving distance from the Seattle area. Residential sessions allow you to move beyond just networking with your classmates toward forming lasting connections.

Patrick J. Bettin
Senior Lecturer, Management and Organization
Adjunct Associate Professor, Psychology

Elizabeth Blankespoor
Associate Professor of Accounting
Marguerite Reimers Endowed Faculty Fellow

Crystal Farh
Professor of Management
Michael G. Foster Endowed Fellow

Mark Forehand
Professor of Marketing
Chair of the Department of Marketing and International Business
Pigott Family Professor in Business Administration

Thomas Gruver
Principal Consultant and Executive Coach
Lange International

Benjamin Hallen
Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Neal and Jan Dempsey Endowed Professor

Michael Johnson
Professor of Management
The Boeing Company Endowed Professor in Business Management

Stacia Jones
Dean’s Impact Scholar and VP and Global Head of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Action (IDEA) at lululemon

Suresh Kotha
Professor of Management
Olesen/Battelle Excellence Chair in Entrepreneurship
Research Director of the Arthur W. Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship

Emily Cox Pahnke
Associate Professor of Management
Lawrence P. Hughes Endowed Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Daniel Turner
Teaching Professor​​ of Marketing
Peter and Noydena Brix Endowed Fellow
Associate Dean for Masters Programs

Elizabeth Umphress
Professor of Management
Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor
Faculty Director of Consulting and Business Development Center

Lance Young
Teaching Professor of Finance and Business Economics

*Information is subject to change.

More Info

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Download an EDP brochure to learn more

EDP brochure

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