PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University and Spain’s IE Business School celebrated the graduation of the inaugural class of the IE Brown Executive MBA program with a ceremony on Friday, June 8, 2012, in Segovia, Spain.
Several senior members of the Brown administration traveled to Spain to participate. David Suarez, a Brown alumnus and vice president of Booz & Company, delivered the ceremony’s keynote address. Santiago Iñiguez, dean of IE Business School, delivered opening remarks.
“It is with great pride that I congratulate this first group of graduates from the IE Brown Executive MBA program,” Iñiguez said. “The business world of the 21st century is a complex, ever-changing environment and these 23 graduating students are uniquely prepared address those economic, social, and political forces shaping our world.”
“I applaud the first graduating class of the IE Brown Executive MBA program,” said Brown Provost Mark Schlissel. “Twenty-three participants in this first cohort rose to the challenge of integrating business and liberal arts learning, which provided them with a broad, global view. They leave as business leaders with new skills, prepared to tackle the challenges of today’s global economy within their own professional pursuits.”
The inaugural class represents a wide range of industries and more than a dozen nationalities. The average participant is 36 years old with 14 years of work experience. Fifty-five percent hold senior management positions; 45 percent are middle managers. Forty percent are women, representing one of the highest percentages among all executive MBA programs. The participants work in a variety of industries including banking, construction, cosmetics, education, finance, insurance, legal services, pharmaceuticals, real estate, recruitment, technology, and tourism. They are currently living Spain, Peru, Holland, Slovenia, Germany, Singapore, the U.K. and the United States. The class includes four alumni of Brown University.
Over the course of the 15-month program, the class took part in five face-to-face learning sessions that alternated between Brown and IE’s Madrid campus, with the remainder of the learning conducted online.
Launched in the spring of 2011, the IE Brown Executive MBA program integrates the innovative approach to management education at IE Business School with Brown University’s excellence in the humanities, social, biological, and physical sciences. The program is designed for senior managers with more than 10 years of experience who want to develop their entrepreneurial mindset and gain a deeper and richer understanding of the global business environment. Participants graduate with a degree from IE Business School.
The IE Brown Executive MBA program is part of a University initiative to develop programs in executive and professional education. It is one element of a wider partnership between Brown and IE to explore areas of mutual interest in research, joint program initiatives, and exchanges. That partnership includes faculty exchanges, internships, and a pre-college summer program at IE’s Segovia campus.
IE Business School
IE Business School shapes leaders who promote innovation and change in organizations, equipping managers with an entrepreneurial mindset that generates employment, wealth, and social wellbeing. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business schools, IE Business School has an urban campus in Madrid and a faculty of more than 400 professors who teach students from 88 countries in its master’s, Ph.D., and executive education programs. IE students use innovative learning formats, including the IE Communities platform where they exchange knowledge and experiences with 40,000 IE graduates that currently hold management positions in some 100 countries.
Brown University
Brown University, a member of the Ivy League, is renowned for the quality of its teaching, research, and student-centered curriculum in which students are asked to be architects of their own educations within the framework of their concentrations. Founded in 1764, Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. With 6,013 undergraduates, 1,832 graduate students, 416 medical students, and 686 full-time faculty, Brown provides both the close mentoring relationships characteristic of a liberal arts college and the intellectual excitement of a research-intensive university. More than 85,000 Brown alumni, in fields from business to the arts to public service and beyond, are making a difference in the world every day.