It’s Berkeley & Columbia & You

Harnessing the power of California’s oldest public university and the only Ivy League business school in New York City, the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA program immerses you in the latest ideas in business theory, attitudes, and practice from both coasts. The Bay Area and New York City offer vivid contrasts for your course of study; the combined experience enhances your agility at operating and advancing in diverse corporate cultures.

In addition, your location on two of the nation’s most legendary campuses means you’ll have regular access to influential and inventive leaders and thinkers—in business, politics, the arts, science, and more—who teach on the faculty or visit the campus and the classroom regularly to engage with students. These firsthand insights and behind-the-scenes perspectives add a vital dimension to your education.

Fundamentals + New Ways of Thinking

The program trains a new generation of business practitioners distinguished by their ability to lead innovatively—the driver of value in today’s marketplace. Both schools inspire and cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset, which—whether you’re working for a Fortune 500 company or launching a start-up—enables you not only to navigate change but also to shape and lead it.

Both Columbia Business School and Haas excel in teaching the fundamentals of business, including general management, finance, marketing, accounting, and leadership—skills that can be applied to any industry over the course of a lifelong career. The rigorous and dynamic curriculum is designed to give students mastery in the academic disciplines and applied functional areas critical for success in business today and tomorrow.

The program goes beyond teaching a set of skills—it teaches new ways of thinking. Faculty members from both schools break new ground in scholarship and in business practice, and bring that knowledge into the classroom. Students bring creative ideas and new methodologies back to their own companies to enhance value, and, over the long term, to generate, evaluate, and capture opportunities.

“You’ve got to be a pioneer to even enroll in this kind of two-degree program, a relatively new concept so it draws people who challenge convention, take risks and do things differently,” says Peter Goodson, an award-winning teacher in the program and a renowned expert in the fields of mergers and acquisitions, and private equity. “I’ve found over my fifty years of mentoring and being involved in successful operations and big financial decisions that those are the characteristics of people who are the most successful.”

The Best of Both Schools

“This program is an incredible value because of the combination of both schools,” says Facebook CIO Tim Campos, MBA 2011. “Columbia is especially good at finance and markets. Berkeley is particularly good at innovation and entrepreneurship. I’m learning from the true experts how to build effective companies.”

Bay Area: A Hothouse of Innovation

The Haas School of Business and the University of California, Berkeley are integral parts of the San Francisco Bay Area innovation ecosystem, which supports new ideas in business at an unparalleled level. With its venture capital firms, established technology companies, and thriving internet, biotech, digital media, and clean tech industries, the Bay Area has given rise to many of the most dynamic names in business—Apple, Google, Charles Schwab, Genentech, Pixar, YouTube, to name a few. Learn more about the Berkeley advantage.

New York: The Big-Business Capital

Columbia Business School is distinguished not only by its New York address—but also by its New York access. More than 500 noted business leaders from a wide variety of sectors—finance and fashion, media and technology, arts and entertainment, real estate and manufacturing—collaborate with the school each year as lecturers, teachers, and advisers. The energy and perspective that these industry experts bring to the campus create a context in which classroom studies and research projects take on a powerful new meaning. Read more about the Columbia advantage.

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