Tag: Brookings

The return to a sense of normalcy and traditional in-person events continued in late April as more than 90 PMBA students arrived in Washington, DC, for their two-day residency at the Brookings Institution.

Students arrived for the trip in time for dinner on April 27 and spent the next two days in conversation with noted political insiders, media experts and policy wonks—all in service of connecting the dots between business, government and policy.

“We spend so much of our time optimizing our market strategy, but there are so many other factors at play,” said Archie Karanwal, PMBA class 48, a product owner at Edward Jones. He said the Brookings residency was a great opportunity to gain an understanding of some of those other factors.

Indeed, the trip is a manifestation of Dean Mark P. Taylor’s oft-stated desire that every WashU Olin student have a Brookings experience during their time. The April residency included students from four different PMBA cohorts: classes 46, 48, 49 and 50. The two-day visit even included an evening tour of DC monuments among the activities on April 28 and 29.

Ian Dubin, associate dean and managing director for WashU at Brookings, exhorted the students to bring their own experiences and professional work with them as they listened to and engaged with the speakers, who covered topics including cyber-security, the government regulatory process and Congress.

“It’s not all like cable news here in Washington, where people are yelling at each other all the time, believe it or not,” Dubin said.

Speakers included Ron Christie, CEO of Christie Strategies and former deputy assistant to the vice president for domestic policy under Dick Cheney, who shed light on the more subtle interactions that occur among policy makers and elected officials—and who reinforced the importance for business leaders of understanding that process.

Those connections were not lost on Kelsey Wortmann, PMBA 49, a product planner at Emerson. “I hadn’t realized how actual work gets done in Washington. I never really thought before about how easy it is to make connections.”

Other speakers included:

• Michael Fitzpatrick, director of global strategy and innovation, Google; former associate administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget
• Jim Papa, senior vice president and managing director, Global Strategy Group; host of Staffer podcast; former special assistant to the president for legislative affairs; former House and Senate senior staffer 
• Susan Page, author and Washington bureau chief, USA Today 
• Steven Chabinsky, former deputy assistant director, cyber division, FBI 
• Hon. Albert Wynn (D-MD), senior director, Greenberg Traurig LLP; former member, energy and commerce committee, US House of Representatives 
• An assortment of foreign policy experts.

Pictured at top: Kelsey Wortmann, PMBA 49 (with book), asked a question of Ron Christie (on screen, left) during the 90 students’ visit to DC for a two-day residency at the Brookings Institution.

Olin celebrates the accomplishments of students from its Executive MBA (EMBA) programs and Brookings Executive Education in a ceremony at 2 p.m., Dec. 12, in Graham Chapel. After completing their capstone coursework in St. Louis this week, the students from Shanghai, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Washington D.C.-based programs will don full academic regalia and participate in a diploma and awards ceremony together with Dean Mahendra Gupta, Chancellor Mark Wrighton, Associate Dean Zhiwen YIN from the Fudan University School of Management, faculty, friends, and family present.

The candidates for graduation include:

EMBA-Shanghai, class 12

EMBA-St. Louis and Kansas City, class 42

Master of Science in Leadership, inaugural class

The MS in Leadership degree is granted by Washington University and delivered via Brookings Executive Education in Washington, D.C. through Olin’s partnership with the Brookings Institution.

The EMBA-Shanghai program is offered in partnership with Fudan University.

Effective policy making requires a multifaceted and nuanced understanding of the world around us. Markets are global and economies are increasingly interdependent. As the world has grown closer, residents of Brazil, Syria, and China are now our next door neighbors. Tanks and planes aren’t the only consideration for the new policy entrepreneur. A clear view of the world is necessary to understand the international ramifications of decisions made in the United States.

BEE’s Trevor Corning

Brookings Executive Education recognizes the need for policy-focused courses with content that provides the economic, political and social perspectives in addition to the national security lens. Senior Program Manager, Ian Dubin, and Trevor Corning, Program Coordinator,  have redesigned the curriculum for the Global and Regional Challenges courses with these nuances in mind.

Global Challenges, Threats, and Opportunities: U.S. Perspective articulates the issues broadly, giving the participants a framework in which to understand the regionally focused courses.

Each Regional Challenges, Threats, and Opportunities course has been designed to help participants understand the context and landscape of the U.S interests and geopolitics of each region. An increasingly globalized world requires a look at regional issues from a multifaceted perspective.

For example, the creation of policy impacting South and Central America is no longer simply a national security matter, i.e. border patrol. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) are influencing how we create national security policy as U.S. businesses aim to expand to local markets in countries that have positive relationships with the U.S. The surge in unaccompanied children from Central America has made the border a humanitarian issue.

The recent Chinese cyber-attacks on Middle East scholars at prominent think tanks and law firms in the United States are another example of the intersection of politics, society, economics, and security. As a large importer of oil, China is invested in the stability of the Middle East as well as the U.S.’s plans for strategic action as a matter of trade, international business and national security.

The economic, political and social climates of a region have become inextricably linked locally and globally.

Brookings Executive Education (BEE) explores these links in the following regions: East and South Asia, the Middle East, and South and Central America. BEE will add to the repertoire a fourth regionally focused course on Africa in 2015. Each course takes participants through the challenges, threats, and opportunities within the region providing information so they may more effectively craft policy, affect change, develop business, and work cohesively in and with that region.

Pictured above are: Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He is also a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations; and Ian Dubin, BEE Senior Program Manager.

Hot off the press! Brookings Executive Education’s 2014-2015 course catalog is now available. We are very excited and proud to have this new tool of communication.

Download a digital copy of the new 2014-2015 BEE Course Catalog

In BEE’s new course catalog, you will learn about our new fellowship program as well as our highly acclaimed degree and certificate programs designed to develop high potential employees for the Senior Executive Service or comparable leadership positions in agencies.

BEE curriculum continues to have a major impact on the way in which government managers lead their organizations. Our Leading Thinking™ framework for executive success is dramatically improving the processes by which public leaders find, frame, and formulate challenges.

Many hands touched this great piece of collateral and on behalf of Brookings Executive Education I would like to say thank you to all who had a part in creating it.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) provides stewardship over the construction, maintenance and preservation of the Nation’s highways, bridges and tunnels. FHWA also conducts research and provides technical assistance to state and local agencies in an effort to improve safety, mobility, and livability, and to encourage innovation (www.fhwa.dot.gov).

This spring, Jackson Nickerson and Cindy Charlton each traveled 800 miles from St. Louis, MO to Washington, D.C. to teach at the Federal Highway Administration.

Professor Nickerson taught the course Visioning and Leading Change and Cindy taught the course Leaders Growing Leaders. Each course was two days in length and were attended by Federal Highway Administration employees.

Brookings Executive Education (BEE) is calling this model of training BEE with YOU. Not only does BEE with YOU provide a new way to stretch training investments, it also promotes cultural change by having teams attend the same high-quality/high-impact learning experience.

Here is what participants had to say about Visioning and Leading Change:

“Very good course—would suggest FHWA continue to offer more of these course topics. Dynamic group of participants, which made course very compelling. It was great to see how we all face similar issues in the workplace.”

“Very knowledgeable subject matter expert who takes the concepts and theories of visioning and leading change and translates them to real-world applications. Course was engaging!”

The following are quotes from Leaders Growing Leaders participants:

“Very knowledgeable of subject matter and kept the participants actively engaged throughout the two-day session.”

“Main benefit was learning about a subject (coaching) that as a new supervisor, is not easy. This coaching skill is not something that you automatically know about.”

BEE’s innovative method for training seeks to provide exceptional, yet cost-effective education at a time of controversy regarding the best use of training dollars and budgets in the federal government. Recent articles on the topic from Government Executive include titles such as:

• Acting IRS Chief Bemoans Travel and Training Cuts
  By Charles S. Clark October 30, 2013
• Training Without the Training Budget
  By Jackson Nickerson November 15, 2013
• Obama Budget Plan Challenges Cuts to Training, Customer Service
  By Charles S. Clark March 4, 2014
• More Federal Employees View Lack of Training as Discrimination
  By Charles S. Clark March 14, 2014

BEE is proud to deliver cutting-edge instruction to federal agencies in their very own classrooms. The opportunity to contribute to the improvement of one’s own government is an honor.

Learn more about BEE with YOU: