Foster School faculty are consistently recognized for top quality research, considered thought leaders in many subject areas, and excellent educators as evidenced by university, school, and global level recognition.
The Business Management Certificate Program combines lectures, discussions, interactive simulations, team exercises, and a case competition capstone—working with a team to present a solution to a real-world business problem. Participants will gain knowledge, tools, and a valuable network to help them achieve their career goals.
Watch an interview with the Business Management Certificate Program Faculty Director Leta Beard
Business Strategy
- Be able to assess a situation from a long-term perspective and make decisions based on alternatives and justifications.
- Evaluate the core competencies and competitive advantages that drive the success of a firm.
- Consider what opportunities and challenges will impact the future of your business.
Marketing
- Recognize customer needs and learn how to best market your product or service.
- Understand your customers and how best to reach them.
- Discover product, branding, promotion, and segmentation strategies.
- Evaluate the impact of environmental factors that affect marketing strategies.
Effective Leadership
- Explore and develop critical leadership attributes, qualities, skills, and competencies needed to create and sustain dynamic organizational success.
- Gain a deeper understanding and insight into the roles, requirements, and expectations of leaders.
- Understand the role of leaders as agents of change capable of using effective leadership processes to help reshape your organization to meet the challenges of a global economy.
- Develop the managerial skills to facilitate transforming your organization and creating a culture of shared responsibility.
- Improve your understanding of effective decision making as a means of creating an achievement-oriented culture.
Finance and Accounting
- Learn about financial statements and accounting principles that guide financial reporting.
- Use financial data for planning, decision-making and financial reporting.
- Enhance your understanding of finance principles and practices, including cash flow analysis, capital budgeting, risk, and return.
- Learn about stocks, bonds and return on investment metrics.
Communications and Soft Skills
- Explore how communications and soft skills impact your leadership and team interactions.
- Understand the nuances of cultural differences as they relate to teamwork, negotiation, and leadership.
- Improve your presentation skills.
Business Case Analysis
- The program concludes with a business case competition. You will work in a team to use the skills you gained throughout the program and apply them toward a real-life business problem, presenting your team’s solution to the class.
All faculty are affiliated with the Foster School of Business, teaching in various graduate, undergraduate and executive education programs. Many faculty have both academic and professional experience – through careers and/or through consulting with many major corporations.
Leta Beard is the Faculty Director for the Business Management Certificate Program. She is also an award-winning Associate Teaching Professor in the Marketing and International Business department at the Michael G. Foster School of Business. In addition to her 24 years teaching experience, she has 12 years of industry experience working for AT&T Network Systems (Lucent Technologies). Leta regularly receives teaching awards in courses such as Marketing Principles, Strategic Marketing Management, Retailing, Global Business Perspectives, and Tribal Gaming. In addition to teaching undergraduates, she has taught in the Professional and Continuing Education, Executive MBA, and Business Consulting and Development programs.
Wendy Baesler received an undergraduate and masters’ degree in accounting from Brigham Young University and a PhD in Business Administration with an accounting emphasis from the University of Washington. She has taught for the University of Washington for more than 20 years. Her education is primarily in accounting, psychology, finance, and economics. She has completed many consulting projects helping businesses with complex accounting issues and lawsuit response. She has also helped the Washington State Department of Health with program evaluation.
Patrick Bettin is an internationally respected faculty, consultant, researcher, and educator in the field of leadership and management development. His efforts focus on creating and sustaining organizational effectiveness by enhancing the performance of leaders and managers.
He is a Senior Lecturer in the Foster School of Business and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. He is a twenty-three time recipient of the Business School’s “Excellence in Teaching Award.” While on the faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Dr. Bettin was also recognized for his exceptional teaching abilities. As a senior faculty member, he was responsible for developing, coordinating, teaching, and supervising the leadership and management elective programs.
Jean Choy is an Associate Dean of Executive Education at the University of Washington Foster School of Business responsible for developing long-term strategic partnerships to promote new business development and collaborative initiatives with corporations, academic institutions, and government offices. She teaches about soft skills in the Global Executive MBA Program as well as in numerous executive education programs primarily for working professionals. Some aspects of soft skills can be applied universally, but at the same time, understanding the different cultures and challenges becomes an integral part of teaching topics such as presentation skills, cross-cultural communications, and managing team dynamics. Jean has been successful in bridging these gaps and consistently receives top teaching ratings.
Lee Hochberg is a television documentary producer and longtime Special Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. Based in Seattle, he has produced nearly 300 national mini-documentary reports. He led PBS coverage of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, providing the first network coverage of the disaster and the inadequate spill response by the oil industry. His other investigations led to improvements in emergency medical response, tighter safety standards in the trucking and mountain guide industries, improved access to food stamp benefits, and better accommodation of homeless students in public schools. His work has been awarded journalism’s George Foster Peabody Award, an Emmy, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Documentary News Award, and other commendations.
Rick McPherson is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the UW Foster School of Business. Rick spent 25 years in business in the telecommunications industry, rising to the position of Vice President at both AT&T Broadband and T-Mobile USA. Rick “retired early” and took up a passion for teaching and coaching others and has been at the Foster School for the past 15 years. Rick continues to consult with businesses and is on the Board of Directors of Alpine Evergreen Co. Inc. Rick teaches strategy, business planning, organizational behavior, decision making, leadership and ethics, combining the academic courses with his business experiences. He teaches in both the Undergraduate and MBA programs at Foster. Rick has authored, co-authored or advised on the development of 21 live business cases in conjunction with Seattle based large companies, and been the instructor/advisor on over 250 business plans and over 70 business consulting projects.
Business Management Certificate
Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:00-8:00pm
Note: Subject to Changes
Module 1: February 7 – March 30, 2023
Week & PM Times | Tuesday In-Person | Thursday Virtual |
Week 0 | February 2 | |
6:00-8:00 | Optional Virtual Orientation | |
Week 1 | February 7 | February 9 |
6:00-8:00 | Welcome Dinner and Teamwork 5-8pm | Comms Skills Choy |
Week 2 | February 14 | February 16 |
6:00-8:00 | Marketing 1 Beard | Marketing 2 Beard |
Week 3 | February 21 | February 23 |
6:00-8:00 | Marketing 3 Beard | Marketing 4 Beard |
Week 4 | February 28 | March 2 |
6:00-8:00 | Accounting 1 Baesler | Marketing 5 Beard |
Week 5 | March 7 | March 9 |
6:00-8:00 | Marketing 6 Beard | Accounting 2 Baesler |
Week 6 | March 14 | March 16 |
6:00-8:00 | Strategy 1 McPherson | Accounting 3 Baesler |
Week 7 | March 21 | March 23 |
6:00-8:00 | Accounting 4 Baesler | Accounting 5 Baesler |
Week 8 | March 28 | March 30 |
6:00-8:00 | Strategy 2 McPherson | Strategy 3 McPherson |
Module 2: April 4 – June 3, 2023
Week & PM Times | Tuesday In-Person | Thursday Virtual |
Week 9 | April 4 | April 6 |
6:00-8:00 | Strategy 4 McPherson | Work on Strategy Team Assignment |
Week 10 | April 11 | April 13 |
6:00-8:00 | Introduction of Case Competition | Strategy 5 McPherson |
Week 11 | April 18 | April 20 |
6:00-8:00 | Finance 1 TBD | Finance 2 TBD |
Week 12 | April 25 | April 27 |
6:00-8:00 | Finance 3 TBD | Presentation Skills 1 Hochberg |
Week 13 | May 2 | May 4 |
6:00-8:00 | Finance 4 TBD | Presentation Skills 2 Hochberg |
Week 14 | May 9 | May 11 |
6:00-8:00 | Leadership Bettin (6-8pm) | Leadership Bettin (6-8pm) |
Week 15 | May 16 | May 18 |
6:00-8:00 | Leadership Bettin (6-9pm) | Work on Team Case Competition |
Week 16 | May 23 | May 25 |
6:00-8:00 | Work on Team Case Competition | Case Coaching McPherson (6-9pm) |
Week 17 | May 30 | June 3 (Saturday) |
6:00-8:00 | Optional Feedback on Team Presentations | Case Competition and Graduation 9am-1pm |
At the end of the course, you will be able to:
- Formulate or evaluate business strategy to gain competitive advantage
- Discover product, branding, segmentation and promotion marketing strategies
- Elevate your ability to influence
- Develop essential soft skills
- Work more effectively in teams
- Create operational advantages
- Differentiate between winning and losing business ideas
- Comprehend financial statements and use financial data to make informed decisions
- Propose financing strategies
- Prepare a budget projection to conduct cost-benefit analysis
- Evaluate investment opportunities
- Become a more effective manager and leader within your organization
Get Hands-on Experiential Learning
This program will end with a capstone project whereby participants will take what they have learned and apply it in a case competition, presenting a solution to a real-world business problem. Participants will be assigned a team and will work closely with faculty throughout the course.
Business Management Certificate news
from Jean Choy, Associate Dean of Executive Education & International Initiatives How do you improve upon a great program? This was the question that came to my mind when UW Foster Executive Education was asked to take over the management…
June 14, 2021