EMBA Electives & Certificates
Certificates
Our Healthcare Leadership and Product Management certificates allow students to deepen their knowledge and expertise in fields increasingly important to the business landscape. To earn the Healthcare Leadership certificate, students must complete the Healthcare Deep Dive immersion course, taught by renowned Kellogg faculty and industry leaders. Our Product Management certificate is administered under the guidance of globally recognized scholars who lead students in a foundational course supplemented with electives of their choice.
Qualifying elective courses are subject to change. Please contact Executive MBA advising at emba-advising@kellogg.northwestern.edu for questions about the certificates and degree requirements.
Healthcare Leadership Certificate
To earn the Healthcare Leadership certificate, students must successfully complete 18.5 core credits and 3 qualifying elective credits specific to the certificate above and beyond degree required elective credits.
Taught by renowned Kellogg faculty and healthcare industry leaders, these courses attract students from a wide range of roles and backgrounds, including those working in clinical practice, insurance, pharmaceuticals, medical device innovation and more.
Recipients of the Healthcare Leadership certificate graduate with a foundational background in the strategic issues faced by U.S.-based healthcare firms with additional focuses the biopharmaceutical industry and innovative models & approaches to healthcare services.
Product Management Certificate
To earn the Product Management certificate, students must successfully complete 18.5 core credits and 3 qualifying elective credits specific to the certificate above and beyond degree required elective credits.
Students who have earned a Product Management gain knowledge under the guidance of globally recognized scholars. After completing a foundational course in product management, Leading Product Organizations, students build their certificate from a choice of other electives such as Digital Strategy: Individual and Organizational Transformation for a Digital Age, Strategic Brand Management, Launching & Leading Start-ups, TechVenture India and more.
Recipients of the Product Management certificate graduate with a foundational background on the frameworks and technical concepts of product management, as well as with the strategic, analytical, and communication skills needed to drive product vision and product success.
The core courses and electives that I took as part of this program became the inspiration for my future and set the path for my professional career.
Electives
Tailor your studies to your personal interests and professional goals with more than 50 elective courses. Taken during your second year of study, these intensive courses cover a rich array of topics, markets and industries.
You can take electives domestically at the Chicago and Miami campuses, with partner campuses, and at pop-up locations around the world. Some elective courses may also be offered remotely or with asynchronous components, providing great flexibility in customizing your experience.
Choose to take a minimum of four and a maximum of eight elective units. Please note that elective course offerings and their modalities are subject to change and below is just a sample of our current electives.
*Beginning in December 2024, the Executive MBA Evanston programming will shift to Kellogg's Chicago campus while construction of a new building is underway to replace the James L. Allen Center. Please contact EMBA admissions for more information.
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Entrepreneurial Finance & Venture Capital
This course is aimed primarily at people who may be involved in an entrepreneurial venture at some point in their careers, whether in a startup, a spinoff from a large organization, or a turnaround. This course is also useful for venture capital careers and students interested in the Venture Capital as an Asset class (Limited Partners). Four main topics are covered using case studies: Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Startups, Source of Financing for Startups, The Structure of VC Deals, and Exit Decisions to IPOs or buyouts.
Global Corporate Restructuring
This course covers ventures, family businesses, closely held firms, and corporate restructuring transactions both in the U.S. and in an international context. Students analyze different corporate restructuring strategies including mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, spin-offs and leveraged buyouts. The course integrates corporate governance and agency dimensions, financial and strategic management aspects, and legal and accounting considerations into a unified framework for investigating issues in unlocking hidden values for all stakeholders involved.
International Finance
This course explores international financial instruments, markets and institutions. Topics include the nature of foreign exchange risk, the determination of exchange rates and interest rates, the management of foreign exchange risk with forwards and options, exchange rate forecasting, evaluation of international investments, currency speculation, the impact of monetary policy on exchange rates, and current developments in the international financial system.
Miami, FL
Lisbon, Portugal (pop-up campus)Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, and Private Equity
This course focuses on the influences of private equity and hedge funds on corporate decision-making. It also examines the measures that corporations take to counter threats and exploit opportunities represented by these investors. Students also analyze competition and cooperation between investment banks, private equity, and hedge funds.
Mergers, Acquisitions and Other Reorganization Methods
The aim of the course is for students to understand the motivations, decision processes, transaction, execution and valuation consequences of financial, business and organizational restructuring by corporate units. The course facilitates developing the ability among students to plan, evaluate and execute corporate restructuring strategies using financial modeling and quantitative techniques. An additional objective of this course is to enable students to appreciate the fundamental issues involved in the structure and functioning of market for corporate control within the framework of finance theory. Students of this course must have a strong understanding of financial concepts and skills.
World Economy
This course studies the most important business regions in the world, including the U.S., Europe, Japan, China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The goal of this course is to provide students with a working knowledge of the economic drivers, challenges and opportunities that are present in these regions. Students also learn about the performance of equity and bond markets in different countries and the economic forces underlying oil and other commodity markets.
Business Tax Strategy
This course is designed to sharpen the understanding of how taxes affect business decisions, and how recent trends in tax regulation create challenges and opportunities firms face in the globalized world. The focus is on tax planning, tax strategy, and the effect of taxes on location decisions, investment decisions, and corporate structure.
Germany
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Launching and Leading Startups
This is a case-driven survey course that examines what it’s like to be in the shoes of an entrepreneurial CEO. Students explore some of the biggest and most challenging topics facing entrepreneurial CEOs, such as how to reduce the risks that are inherent in starting a new business, determine the best go-to-market strategies to gain customer adoption and execute with precision. The course targets not only entrepreneurs who want to start or buy their own businesses but also entrepreneurially minded students who, in short order, will be seeking to work within early-stage startups. The course also proves beneficial for “intrapreneurs” who will be innovating inside larger firms.
Phase 0: Designing, Building and Communicating — Compelling New Ventures
This course has been designed to demystify the “fuzzy front end” of starting a new venture and to give you the tools and confidence to build and launch something of your own. You will learn how to identify problems worth solving, test your assumptions about possible solutions, adjust your initial hypothesis based on experimentation and market feedback, and ultimately accelerate the time between inspiration, execution, operations and growth. We will focus on the importance of achieving “Product Market Fit” — developing the right offer for the right customer — and convincing others to support you on your journey.
Selling Yourself and Your Ideas
We spend much more time selling ourselves and our ideas than we think we do. And we have an increasing number of communications methods at our disposal. Being a powerful communicator means developing the agility to adjust your message, content, approach and style based on the method of communication you are using. It also means having a keen understanding of your audience, their expectations, and what success looks like. The overarching goal of this course will be to have an immediate positive impact on your outcomes by equipping you with a set of critical communications insights, skills, disciplines and tools to help you become a great communicator in any setting.
Entrepreneurial Selling
Selling is a life skill. Revenue is a daily pursuit. Are you willing to embrace the role as "Owner of Your Business" no matter what that means in your current context? Whether you manage a multi-national company or are venturing out on your own, you can’t afford to waste time guessing at foundational habits. This course will equip you with new practices for every client and team-member interaction — driving to objectively positive results.
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Creating and Managing Strategic Alliances
This course examines the theory and practice of strategic alliances such as joint ventures, licensing agreements, buyer-supplier partnerships and consortia. This course covers how to design alliances, and how to avoid the many potential problems and complications in managing these relationships.
Family Enterprises: Success and Continuity
This course is intended for students who come from business-owning families, whether they work for the family business or not. Topics range from values-driven culture to succession and family dynamics, continuity planning, leadership and strategic performance, and family constitutions and business governance. The course is also appropriate for those with family foundations, family offices, or family investment companies.
Incentives, Organization and Strategy
This course explores how managers can design incentives that align with company objectives. The goal of the course is to offer a microeconomic approach to both the internal organization of firms and its relationship with the firms’ overall strategies.
Leading and Managing Diverse Organizations
Today's global marketplace is more diverse than ever before — in multiple dimensions. Leaders need specific tools and techniques to effectively understand, lead and leverage others in these increasingly complex, more diverse organizations and markets. This course blends theoretical and practical, evidence-based insights to provide you with proven strategies and frameworks to successfully harness the power of diversity in organizations and markets.
Leading High Impact Teams
This course examines the design, management, and leadership of teams in organizational settings. The focus of the course is on the interpersonal processes and structural characteristics that influence the effectiveness of teams, the dynamics of intra-team relationships, and sharing of knowledge and information in teams.
Strategies for Growth
This course connects frameworks from economics and strategy to the experiences of firms attempting growth initiatives to illustrate why some businesses can scale successfully while others struggle.
Human and Machine Intelligence
This course covers cutting-edge research on machine learning and artificial intelligence and its applications for business leaders. This course shows how to use a critical set of machine learning decision tools, such as natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and pattern recognition to discover new competitive strategies, turn raw numbers into convincing stories, and make less biased judgments — all of which will enable you to apply human+machine thought partnerships to grow businesses.
Leading Organizational Transformation
This course takes the perspective of chief executives who operate at “height and scale.” It explores what management and leadership look and feel like when you oversee 1,000 to 100,000 people and $500M to billions in revenue and aims to equip prospective founders, investors and managers with cutting-edge knowledge and skills to make successful financing and investment decisions in entrepreneurial settings.
Visualization for Persuasion
This course covers the neuroscience behind the path from understanding to memory, the power of engaging an audience’s visual and motor systems, and the importance of leveraging existing brain networks through stories and metaphors. Students will learn to convince clients, customers, and colleagues of the merits of their views, using the latest breakthroughs in cognitive science, computer science, and graphic design.
Chicago, IL
Shanghai, ChinaLeveraging Collaboration for Innovation
In this course, we provide participants with a rich set of concepts, frameworks and tools to improve their ability to build, manage, and profit from different modes of inter-organizational collaboration. It will focus on three particular manifestations of collaboration and opportunities for application using real-life cases from various industries.
Germany
Managing People for a Competitive Advantage
People clearly are an organization’s most critical resource. Their knowledge and skills along with their commitment, creativity, and effort are the basis for competitive advantage. This course focuses on the people side of business from a general management perspective, integrating concepts from organizational behavior, human resource management, strategy, and organizational design.
Germany
Leader Development Models and Practices
Growing others' talents helps managers to accomplish their mission and improve their organizations. The course integrates theories and frameworks associated with constructs related to organizations, leadership, and adult development in order to provide you with a more complete understanding to more cogently analyze and address team members' developmental needs and situations and ultimately nurture future leaders.
Social Dynamics and Networks
Leaders face new levels of connectivity, complexity, and unpredictability. This course prepares leaders to use the powerful tools of computational thinking and network analysis to better anticipate, understand, and respond to these challenges through in-depth training vis-a-vis diverse use cases, including patenting, innovation adoption, influentials, social contagion, crowdsourcing, hot streaks, and prediction markets.
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Biases and Forecasts Under Deep Uncertainty
This course provides frameworks to identify persistent psychological biases that underlie frequent forecast failures. Students will learn how to anticipate these biases and discover tools to improve their decision-making process.
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Strategic Brand Management
This course aims to help you understand the role of branding and brand management, sharpen your skills in identifying and solving brand-related problems, and facilitate your ability to develop actionable brand management strategies. This course builds on the knowledge gained from the marketing management and marketing strategy courses to focus on developing successful strategies for building strong brands.
Miami, FL
Lisbon, Portugal (pop-up campus)Strategic Marketing Decisions
Making strategic marketing decisions isn’t easy; you have incomplete information, not enough resources, smart and driven competitors, and changing conditions. You also have to work with a team of people to get agreement and alignment. For this reason, understanding the core marketing concepts is not sufficient; you have to know how to apply the concepts in different and often challenging situations. This course is designed to help you make smart strategic choices, communicate your recommendation and get support.
Advertising Strategy
Advertising Strategy examines approaches to developing, evaluating, and managing advertising strategy. The course follows the structure of an advertising campaign, beginning with targeting and positioning, followed by media analysis and creative strategy implementation. The course concludes with a discussion of strategies for managing client-agency relations.
Omnichannel Experience Strategy
How does a modern business manage its brands across the vast array of new channel models, from brick-and-mortar showroom stores to e-commerce sites to experiential pop-ups and apps? This course takes a senior leadership perspective, offering frameworks and analytical tools for effectively moving an organization outside the comfort zone of legacy beliefs and into the new omnichannel world.
Designing Brand Experiences
In this course, you will learn how to meaningfully distinguish your brand in today’s hyper-competitive environment such that you gain mind-share and market share. You will engage with a range of actionable tools and methodologies that are designed to enhance brand distinctiveness and capture customer attention.
Toronto
Future Proofing Brands
In this course, you will learn how to build disruptive brands, that is, brands that redefine existing markets through the introduction of novel value propositions, customer segments, and technologies. You will engage with a range of actionable tools and methodologies that will enable you to develop disruptive brands in a systematic and comprehensive manner.
Toronto
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Strategy Beyond Markets
This course teaches concepts, skills, and analytical tools for dealing with non-market issues, based on economic principles, political analysis, and to a lesser extent social psychology and law. They identify patterns of behavior and outcomes, ways of thinking about those patterns and outcomes, methods of analysis that facilitate understanding and prediction, and the shaping of strategies to improve business performance.
FinTech Strategy: Innovations in Financial Services
Financial Technology (FinTech) firms are changing the type, frequency and ways we use financial services. FinTech innovations have a great capacity to transform the financial system because many of these innovations are at a deeper level than traditional financial innovation. In this course, we will use economic frameworks that both new entrants and conventional financial institutions can use to differentiate the potential gold from the glitter. In addition, we will assess the viability of partnerships and other win-win strategies conventional financial institutions and new non-financial institutions can employ.
Cyber Crisis Management & Readiness
With the growing threat of cyber-attacks, managers in various industries rank Cyber Security as the prime risk to their business. Cyber resilience building has to include all stakeholders — operations, legal, PR, business, finance, and IT — to assure coordinated crisis management. This course will focus on case studies of real-life cyber crises and simulations of crisis management, to establish an effective management methodology.
Digital Strategy: Individual and Organizational Transformation for a Digital Age
As a digital leader, you must lead the organizational transformation required to take advantage of digital opportunities and neutralize digital threats. We will introduce a set of frameworks to guide your transformation journey and challenge you to apply your digital leadership skills to drive successful implementation in your organization.
Toronto