MIT Sloan has given me exposure to some of the most innovative and dynamic business leaders in the world, who regularly come to MIT Sloan to talk about their experiences, to engage in discussions and to inspire us to transform lives and organizations in our career. Some of the most memorable speakers were:
Jack Welch: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/2005-jackwelch.php
"Building skills is key to building confidence, which is essential to leadership"
Jack Welch came to MIT Sloan as part of the Dean's Innovative Leader Series, which invites more than 400 speakers to come speak at MIT Sloan every year. Some of the other speakers who were on campus as part of the series were, Ellen Kullman, CEO of Dupont; Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox; Captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, pilot of US Airways; Dan Akerson, CEO of General Motors; Orit Gadiesh, Chairman of Bain & Company; Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters; John Henry, Principal Owner of the Boston Red Sox; Paul Sagan, President & CEO of Akamai; and Ronal A. Williams, Chairman and CEO of Aetna.
John Trani, CEO of GE Medical Systems
"Picking and nurturing the right people is key to leadership"
"Execution is most of the job. GE's mantra is results count... the rest is just conversation"
John Trani came to MIT Sloan as part of a class I am taking called Managing in Adversity. He was particularly memorable because he delivered a very clear and coherent message and had a very interesting story to tell about his adverse situation and how he responded to it. All the cases in the class are written by the speakers themselves and they talk about an adverse situation that they faced in their career. Each class, the students create a presentation and one student gets selected to present in front of the class and the CEO about how he/she would have dealt with the situation. Then the real CEO talks about what he/she actually did.The students also get to have lunch with one of the CEOs (I had mine with Marina Hatsopoulo - see previous blog). Some other CEOs who came to our class were: Henri Termeer, CEO of Genzyme; Raj Gupta, CEO of Rohm & Haas; Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Hospital; and Randy Papadellis, CEO of Ocean Spray Cranberries.
CEO Perspective is another course at MIT Sloan that brings in CEOs to talk about their job, their firm and their strategy, and to give career and life advice to Sloanies. This year we had Joseph Jimenez, CEO of Novartis; Dan Hesse, CEO of Spring Nextel; Bob McDonald, President and CEO of Proctor & Gamble; and Leo Apotheker, CEO of HP.
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