Leadership Excellence – Strategies for Executive Presence, Influence, and Decision-making
Study Tour to Yale in Collaboration with Yale School of Management
The Study Tour to Yale is open to current Aalto Executive MBA, Aalto MBA, and Global Leader program participants, as well as alumni.
This certificate program is being held in a study tour format with the prestigious Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut.
This Leadership Excellence program will help you to lead people, change initiatives, and growth more efficiently in your organization. The program consists of four full days of learning with world-class faculty with a combination of interesting pre-work materials and a leadership assessment, interactive classroom discussions, workshops, case studies, and extracurricular activities and events to facilitate networking among participants and faculty – as well as post-program engagement opportunities with Yale.
At the end of the program, each participant will be awarded a certificate of completion signed by the Dean of the Yale School of Management and the Associate Dean of Executive Education.
The Study Tour also counts as an elective module (4.5 ECTS) for current Executive MBA, MBA, and Global Leader participants.
Global Thought Leadership through Experiential Learning
Develop your strategic thinking in order to lead successful transformational change at your organization with speakers from across Yale University’s graduate schools and centers for research. Pre-readings and cases, leadership assessments, highly interactive discussions, workshops, and simulations ensure content is learned, practiced, and retained.
The Yale Experience
Since its founding in 1701, Yale has been dedicated to expanding and sharing knowledge, inspiring innovation, and preserving cultural and scientific information for future generations. Experience the best of Yale with a campus tour, events and meals around campus in historic venues, and networking with peers.
Yale Executive Education Certificate and Alumni Network
Receive a Yale certificate, access to the Yale Executive Education alumni network and social media groups, a monthly applied research newsletter, publications, and invitations to on-campus and online alumni events to promote continuous lifewide learning.
Contents and Schedule
The Study Tour to Yale will take place on May 4-8, 2025, with a welcome reception on Sunday, May 4, and seminar days from Monday, May 5 to Thursday, May 8.
Aalto EE reserves the right to make changes to the program.
Study Tour Venue
The program will take place at Edward P. Evans Hall on the Yale campus, which houses state-of-the-art classrooms, faculty offices, and meeting spaces organized around an enclosed courtyard. From here, Yale School of Management students connect and collaborate with their peers across the university and the world.
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Take a look at Evans Hall in a virtual tour »
Program participants will stay at The Study at Yale hotel located in the heart of Yale University’s Campus – just steps away from the University’s museums, theaters, libraries, and cultural centers. A hotel stay for four nights on May 4–8, 2025, is included in the program fee.
Flights and Transportation
Kindly note that the flight arrangements are to be made independently. An optimal flight would arrive in New York midday to early afternoon of Sunday, May 4, allowing participants to take part in the optional welcome reception at Yale on Sunday at 18:00. The program on Thursday, May 8, will end by 16:45. We advise you to book your flights only after the minimum number of 35 participants is reached, and as always to book flights that you can reschedule/cancel if needed.
More information on transportation between the airport and New Haven can be found on Yale's Plan a Visit webpage.
Faculty
James N. Baron
James N. Baron is Willian S. Beinecke Professor of Management at Yale School of Management.
Professor Baron’s research interests include human resources; organizational design and behavior; social stratification and inequality; work, labor markets, and careers; economic sociology; and entrepreneurial companies.
He is the author, with Stanford economist David M. Kreps, of a textbook, Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). Baron is also a regular contributor to leading sociology and organization journals, such as the American Sociological Review and Administrative Science Quarterly. His research has also been published in influential journals in economics and social psychology.
James N. Baron has a PhD from University of California.
Peter Boyd
Peter Boyd is a Lecturer at Yale School of the Environment (YSE), Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management, Resident Fellow at the Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY), and a Mentor-In-Residence at Tsai Center of Innovative Thinking (CITY).
Outside Yale, he is the Founder & CEO of Time4Good, and for over twenty years, he has worked on, led, and advised high-growth organizations on purpose-driven leadership, strategy, marketing, climate change solutions, and entrepreneurial opportunity.
Peter has graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
Daylian Cain
Daylian Cain is Senior Lecturer in Negotiations, Leadership, and Ethics at the Yale School of Management.
Daylian Cain is full-time faculty at the Yale School of Management since 2007. Dr. Cain's research focuses on "judgment and decision-making" and "behavioral business ethics." In other words, he studies the reasons why smart people do dumb things. Cain is a leading expert on conflicts of interest, especially the "perverse effects of disclosing conflicts of interest," and how to turn altruism on and off.
Prior to joining Yale, Cain was the Russell Sage Fellow of Behavioral Economics at Harvard.
Cain has three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in Business from Carnegie Mellon.
Zoë Chance
Zoë Chance is Senior Lecturer in Management at the Yale School of Management.
She teaches the most popular course at Yale School of Management, which is the basis for her international bestseller, Influence is Your Superpower.
Her research has been published in top academic journals and covered in media outlets like The Economist, the Financial Times, and the BBC. Zoë speaks internationally for Fortune 500 firms and leading NGOs, and her TEDx talk, How to Make a Behavior Addictive, has over half a million views. Her framework for behavior change is the foundation for Google’s global food policy.
Prior to Yale, Zoë managed a $200 million segment of the Barbie brand at Mattel, acted on stage and film, and earned her doctorate from Harvard Business School. Her framework for behavior change is the foundation for Google’s global food policy.
Emma Seppälä
Emma Seppälä is Faculty Director of the Yale School of Management’s Women’s Leadership Program, Science Director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, and Lecturer at the Yale School of Management.
A psychologist and research scientist by training, her expertise is the science of happiness, emotional intelligence, and social connection. She is the bestselling author of The Happiness Track (2017) and Sovereign (2024).
Seppälä’s research has been published in top academic journals and featured in major news outlets. She speaks and consults internationally for Fortune 500 companies like Google and Meta and contributes to Harvard Business Review, The Washington Post, Psychology Today, and TIME, among others.
Emma Seppälä has graduated from Yale (BA), Columbia (MA), and Stanford (PhD).
Grace Zandarski
Grace Zandarski is Associate Professor Adjunct of Acting, Associate Chair, and Head of Voice and Text at Yale School of Drama.
She is a faculty member of the Acting Department at Yale School of Drama where she teaches Voice, specializing in Advanced Vocal Technique and Text. She has coached numerous New York, Yale Rep and YSD productions in addition to numerous individual coaching credits for actors appearing on and off Broadway, in film, and on television.
Grace has taught master classes for the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab. She was named Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework in 1998 in the first certification program.
Her work outside of actor training includes individual business and professional coaching as well as workshops on Voice, Presence, and Improv for Executives.