Great Classes

The objective of doing the MBA is, also, to have a good academic and knowledge experience.
Because most of the time I write about parties, trips and other fun stuff here on my blog, you all must think that I came here just to have fun.

Let me then talk a little bit about classes.

In general they are all pretty interesting (not all, I have to confess) but I have had here some of the best courses I have ever taken. Let me talk about a few.

High Performance Leadership
This is one of the hardest courses to get here at CBS (you have to bid a lot of points). It is taught by professor Mike Feiner, who is the former Chief People Office of PepsiCo (he worked there for 20 years). Currently he is an executive coach for senior executives in companies like American Express and Home Depot.
This class is exceptional because Professor Feiner has, in fact, a great career full of experiences and knowledge supporting him, and also because he puts all his energy and commitment in every single class. I have never seen a Professor putting so much energy into a class and vibrating so much with the discussions. And this guy is not young, I think he is over 60 (but still runs one hour every day).
He has an interesting book on leadership that I really recommend reading:
Retailing Leadership
I didn't start this class with very high expectations, however it really impressed since day 1.
It was taught by Professor Mark Cohen, who is the former CEO of Sears Canada and former CMO of Sears.
The class was interesting because Professor Cohen always had an interesting point of view on every aspect of business that we wanted to talk about. Exactly, of what we wanted to talk about, not what he wanted to talk about. The first 20/30 minutes of each class were dedicated to discuss current news that we students chose, and he would always provide us insightful comments about them and the economy in general.
In addition, he brought guest speakers to every class. People like Michael Gould (CEO of Bloomingdale's) or Stephen Cooper (former interim CEO of Enron, and currently CEO of MGM Studios and in charge of bringing that company back from the slums).

Personal Leadership and Success
I took this course last week in an intensive format (everyday from 9am to 6pm) with Professor Hitendra Wadhwa. The course focused on thinking about ourselves, our values, feelings, happiness, meaning of life and we even did meditation and yoga. I know it may sound a little bit cheesy or lame, however it was a great course and I believe this topic is very important for everyone. I have always been interested in the subject (mostly through reading books ) but this class really helped me put things into practice and hear about the subject from other people who are really role-models. Let me see if I can be a different (better) person int the future...


Now that I am going through the list of courses I mentioned as my favorites, I realize that they all have the word leadership in the title. Maybe that can be a criteria for selecting further courses.