NYU Stern’s Washington, D.C. EMBA Enrolls Its 5th Cohort

NYU Stern’s Washington D.C. Campus. File photo

THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

Washington D.C. is Stern’s third EMBA in its portfolio, joining its flagship EMBA in New York City and its TRIUM Global EMBA that is jointly issued with London School of Economics and HEC Paris School of Management. You can see a brief overview of each in the chart below.

Elizabeth Foster, a D.C. EMBA candidate in the Class of 2023, works as a senior consultant for Deloitte in the D.C. metropolitan area. Part of her job is taking into account the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, and she appreciates the chance to take lessons learned in, say, her EMBA negotiations course, and apply them directly to the decisions she makes in the workplace.

“I call it a trifecta: A top tier MBA program, D.C. located, and a flexible weekend schedule,” she says of choosing the NYU EMBA out of all the other options available.

Elizabeth Foster

“The monthly weekend schedule allows me to pursue an MBA while continuing my work and maintaining my personal life, all while being able to finish in two years. I thought that the NYU program was great because it not only focused on the business fundamentals, but also the person as a whole. So the EQ and IQ part of it.”

Both the D.C. and NYC programs follow the same structure: The first year is focused on Stern’s core curriculum, steeped in leadership and strategy, which recently added an emphasis on sustainability. The second year moves into NYU’s electives where students can further specialize based on their career interests and goals. The D.C. option has seven different specializations students can choose from, ranging from business analytics, to strategy, to leadership, to finance.

Both programs also have a Global Study Tour in their first year, and have access to the same career development services. Stern’s Career Center for Working Professionals is dedicated to working with executive and part-time MBAs for lifelong career support.

D.C.’s EMBA DIFFERENTIATORS

Averaging about 40 students, the D.C. cohort is smaller than the two NYC cohorts which have about 60 students each in its fall and winter intakes. That allows the student to develop really strong connections with each other and faculty, Singhal says.

D.C. students also spend two weekends of their program attending classes on the main NYU campus, and its orientation residency overlaps with NYC's orientation. These touchpoints give the cohorts from both locations a chance to forge connections across locations.

There are several differentiators that set NYU’s D.C. program apart from others in the region, Singhal says. First, of course, is the global reputation of NYU Stern and all the career advantages that provides.

Neha Singhal

“I think the second thing is the diversity of the cohort. We have great representation of international students, and we have great industry representation as well,” Singhal says. “So one thing that we were surprised about in the D.C. region is we thought that we would see a lot of people coming from the government and military. That is about a quarter of the class, about 24%.

“But we have strong representation coming from consulting, healthcare, finance, consumer products and services. It’s really a broad mix in terms of industry representation, which is really important for the cohort experience and for the Executive MBA experience in general.”

Asked about the program’s most impactful aspects thus far, Foster identified two: First, her class’ global study in Madrid, Spain, learning from business leaders on the ground in a completely different market.

Second is the cohort itself: “We just have such a wonderful group of individuals, diverse backgrounds and perspectives. So just being able to learn from them has been amazing and I have actually had the pleasure of being class representative for both years of the program. It’s been great being just an advocate and collaborator for just such a great group of individuals,” Foster tells P&Q.

AN NYU EMBA, RIGHT IN HIS BACKYARD

When Coles made the decision to apply for an executive MBA, the main selling point was NYU’s stellar reputation – the same curriculum, the same faculty – right in his backyard. He wanted to pivot from government into business, and his degree helped him do that. A year after graduating with the first cohort in 2020, he joined PayPal as the senior manager of global public policy.

The summer of 2020 was one of the most difficult of his life, he says. The pandemic struck during the second year of his EMBA, and it disrupted the work-school-family flow he’d established the year before. He and his wife were expecting their fourth child, and he was finishing a slew of MBA coursework before graduation. Work was particularly intense as he dealt with pandemic-related policies and issues. Soft skills like resiliency and mental toughness so often discussed in class – with faculty as well as his accomplished classmates – became immediately relevant.

Fabrice Coles in the opening week of NYU Stern's new EMBA offering in Washington, D.C., in August, 2018. Courtesy photo

“You have personal challenges, you have professional challenges, and you just have to find a way forward through the uncertainty. We talked a lot about being resourceful and asking the right questions,” Fabrice tells Poets&Quants.

One of his most memorable moments from his EMBA experience, in fact, was a discussion he had with one of his professors. They’d been discussing a case, and after class, Coles asked the professor how the company should have responded to the case circumstances. He wanted a straight answer.

The professor chuckled. What do you think, Mr. Ceo, she answered.

As a professor, she could present a case, teach one to ask the right questions, and provide tools for coming up with the solutions. But, in the end, it’s up to the people in the class to apply those lessons to problems they will face in their professional careers.

“I remember I felt so small in that moment, but upon further reflection, I understood that challenge from her. It encapsulated, perfectly, dealing with the messiness of the world and what each of us is going to bring to the table,” he says. “What I learned is the ability to make decisions through uncertainty, and ask the right questions to get there.”

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