Emotional intelligence (EQ) is starting to play an exponentially more important role in leadership for every kind of manager, across every imaginable sector. But for students enrolled in the NYU Stern Executive MBA program, it’s nothing new.
An emphasis on empathy
IQ+EQ – harnessing both emotional intelligence and knowledge – is a core value of NYU Stern and has informed the structure and content of their EMBA program. For 2021 alumna Erin Filor, that meant the flexibility and tailored support she needed to excel as a working parent: “The program required us to be on-campus once a month which fit my schedule perfectly, but it still attracted the high-caliber, high-intellect, high-achieving group of students you’d expect from a full-time NYU Stern program.”
The program’s emphasis on EQ is a vital component for students that want to challenge and learn from one another: “It meant that we could become the kinds of leaders that can navigate a fast-evolving landscape in a very agile way,” Erin explains. “We’ve evolved more in the last two years than we have in the previous ten. That’s going to be the pace of innovation, and it’s going to be people who are agile, thoughtful and strategic managers and leaders who can bring those individuals along for the ride that are really going to excel.”
Erin is doing just that in her career now, being promoted immediately after graduation to Head of Communications and Marketing for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. She is now leading them through a transformative period in their growth and owes no small part of her success to the network she acquired while studying in Stern’s EMBA program in D.C. “Getting to know people, being exposed to careers I hadn’t considered, and being challenged to think differently about how business is going to evolve was a unique experience,” she adds.
The next generation of leaders
Jed Morris, also a DC21 graduate, echoes these sentiments. “My experience was phenomenal. I was looking for a top-ranked MBA to push my career forward and found so much more,” he says. “I now have friends and a network of peers who will stay with me forever, and the knowledge and training to guide my professional career wherever I want it to go.”
Having applied to the EMBA program following a decade’s experience in both military and civilian roles in the United States Air Force, Jed also benefited from the flexibility of the program. It enabled him to level up without taking two years out of his career.
Halfway through the EMBA program, he was hired by Microsoft as a software engineer working on the site reliability of their Azure cloud infrastructure, and his successful pivot to Big Tech — a totally new sector requiring completely different technical skills — was made all the more possible by the EQ he developed in NYU Stern’s EMBA program.
“I think that NYU Stern is at the forefront of integrating EQ into their curriculum and, over time, it may have the biggest impact on alumni success,” Jed explains. “As a 10-year Air Force veteran, I was well trained to understand that the emotional and psychological well-being of my Airmen was just as, if not more, important than their quantitative ability to get the job done. EQ is vital to maintaining team cohesion and productivity, in any sector or industry.”
NYU Stern’s acknowledgement of the importance of EQ, and emphasis on it within their leadership courses, is already paying incredible dividends for their alumni, who will be better equipped to lead the next generation.
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