Future-Focused Learning

Last December, Haas faculty members Homa Bahrami and Saikat Chaudhuri had a message for executives taking the inaugural Innovation Boot Camp they were teaching for UC Berkeley Executive Education (BEE): To innovate, don’t stay in your familiar environment or comfort zone. 

It was advice they themselves were following. While BEE conducts custom programs for companies worldwide, its open-enrollment courses for individuals and teams had always been delivered from Berkeley—until the Innovation Boot Camp. The four-day workshop was offered in Tokyo in partnership with Japan’s Sophia University and welcomed Japanese leaders from a wide range of industries seeking to inspire meaningful change at their companies.

With sessions on the entrepreneurial mindset, navigating technological disruption, and managing innovation in established firms, Bahrami and Chaudhuri gave participants insights, coaching, and practical tools to promote bold ideas from within their organizations. Participants walked away with concrete action steps, Bahrami says. “They were really happy that they could go back after four days and put some ideas into practice. The desire to learn, enthusiasm, and energy were palpable.”

Seiichiro Yamamoto, MBA 92, a member of the Haas School Board who’s helping shape BEE’s Japan strategy, says the boot camp was welcome—and trusted—counsel as the country reemerges as an entrepreneurship powerhouse. “We’re creating a bridge between Berkeley’s culture of innovation and Japan’s deep traditions of excellence and precision,” he says, “equipping corporate leaders with the tools, mindsets, and global perspectives to lead in an era defined by technological disruption.”

The course, which BEE will bring to Berkeley and back to Japan in the coming year (with plans to also bring it to Europe and Southeast Asia), is one of many transformative experiences BEE offers to prepare leaders for evolving industries. Executives from 40 countries as well as the Bay Area and nationwide look to BEE to equip them to problem-solve, anticipate change, and expand their organizations’ impact—growing the reach and prominence of Haas and UC Berkeley in the process.

Growth mindset

BEE has been sharing the thought leadership of Haas faculty for more than three decades, but over the past nine years, under the leadership of CEO Mike Rielly, it has undergone substantial growth—even amid the pandemic. “We have more than doubled our revenues,” Rielly says. “More importantly, we’ve quintupled our margin back to Haas with a similar trajectory for faculty payout at the business school and across campus.”

In early 2020, nearly all BEE’s courses were held on campus, which meant that when COVID hit, everything stopped. But BEE’s status as a 501(c)(3) enabled it to react quickly. Within a few months, they were back with two new state-of-the-art virtual classrooms. “We virtualized our entire portfolio,” Rielly says. The pivot paid off. In 2019, BEE served over 4,200 executives. In 2025, they’ll serve more than 14,000.

Dean Jenny Chatman, PhD 88, says BEE is essential to Haas’ reputational and financial strength. “Our BEE team offers a diverse portfolio of dynamic courses to organizations and executives worldwide, from the latest in AI to a full offering of programs for the C-suite,” she says. “We’re working to have even more impact through our 2030 growth plan.”

Today, most courses for individuals and teams are held on the Berkeley campus, virtually, or a combination of both. A few programs, such as Financial Data Analysis for Leaders (FDAL), employ a hybrid format, welcoming both in-person and remote students simultaneously thanks to those new virtual classrooms. 

These hybrid programs encourage interactivity among all participants, says Professor Panos N. Patatoukas, who co-leads FDAL with Professor Sunil Dutta. “You have in-person participants engaging in group discussions and a video wall that brings remote participants into the room, enabling deep interaction across both spaces,” he says. “The integration is seamless. It’s an immersive, shared experience rather than a glorified Zoom meeting.”

Cutting-edge courses

The heart of BEE, of course, is its superstar faculty from Haas and across UC Berkeley. They allow BEE to achieve its mission of making world-class, future-focused learning in leadership, entrepreneurship, strategy, and finance accessible to leaders everywhere. 

The open-enrollment courses currently in highest demand involve artificial intelligence, and BEE offerings run the gamut: from a grounding in AI strategies and applications to a professional certificate in machine learning and AI to a program for senior executives looking to transform their companies. In 2025 alone, nearly 2,000 participants have taken BEE’s in-person and online AI programs, compared with about 200 when these offerings launched just three years ago.

BEE is also developing industry-specific applications of AI, like its new AI for Healthcare program led by Professor Jonathan Kolstad. He and his faculty collaborators draw on their research in economics, data science, and healthcare policy to help leaders harness AI responsibly. “Healthcare is unique as an industry and, therefore, demands a sector-specific understanding of strategy and of what AI can and will do,” Kolstad says.

Other BEE courses aim to help executives evolve their leadership capabilities amid AI’s growing influence. The recently launched Berkeley Transformative CHRO Leadership Program co-led by Laszlo Bock, for example, helps chief human resources officers adapt to a host of novel issues, including public airing of internal dynamics, data and privacy concerns, and technological advances. It’s co-led by Dean Chatman, Professor Sameer Srivastava, and Bock, the former head of HR at Google. 

The future that CHROs are entering will involve a lot more data and analytics, Srivastava says—things CHROs typically didn’t have much experience with. Thus, the program includes modules on financial valuation, statistics, regression analysis, and randomized controlled trials. It also covers more specialized HR topics, such as executive compensation and engaging effectively with boards of directors. “It’s a distinctive program in the world of executive education,” Srivastava says.

Custom solutions

For companies, universities, and government entities with unique challenges, BEE offers custom programs. “We’re distinct in the marketplace for this customization,” says Ellen Trader, BEE’s vice president of growth. 

Universities, for instance, partner with BEE to enhance their executive MBA offerings. “A lot of top schools worldwide promote innovation and entrepreneurship during their admissions cycles,” Trader says. “They come to Berkeley to help deliver on that promise.” 

BEE’s work with government entities spans local and global impact: from helping the city and county of San Francisco navigate AI to designing the Happiness and Positivity Program (in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center) for the prime minister’s office in the United Arab Emirates. For nearly two decades, BEE has partnered with California’s State Association of County Retirement Systems (SACRS), led by Sulema Peterson, to offer its investment professionals intensive training in pension fund management and the shifting financial landscape. “This partnership is a critical component of SACRS’ education platform,” Peterson says. “BEE ensures our stewards of retirement security receive the most relevant curriculum possible.”

Companies can customize a selection of existing courses or opt for what Bahrami calls “super custom,” collaborating with BEE to design a bespoke program. The latter, Bahrami says, starts with in-depth stakeholder conversations. With a recent client, Bahrami held seven separate C-suite interviews to unearth their core challenges and key priorities. “These stakeholder interviews allow us to configure something entirely unique to address their needs,” she says. 

Equinor, the global energy company headquartered in Norway, has a long relationship with BEE. Senior Manager Jarle Martinsen says the partnership thrives because of BEE’s ability to adapt to the company’s evolving challenges. Over nearly two decades, BEE has helped Equinor address issues around globalization, innovation, and leadership. “We’ve been able to find faculty and science that fit with our needs at any given time,” Martinsen says. 

Another multinational company, Sony, began working with BEE to address the issue of siloing. With approximately 110,000 employees spread across six lines of business, collaboration across sectors can be challenging and, without it, can stifle innovation. Kazushi Ambe, president of Sony University and former corporate executive officer in charge of human resources of Sony Group Corporation, led the partnership with BEE to create a multimodule program to tackle this challenge. “We need to make sure we continuously create our own unique value by encouraging people to work across borders, across the organization,” Ambe says.

Accruing knowledge

Many of BEE’s learners are repeat customers, and for them BEE has designed the Certificate of Business Excellence (COBE), which provides a strong business foundation across four academic pillars: Leadership & Communication, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Strategy & Management, and Finance & Business Acumen. Participants also become part of a global network of BEE alumni.

Londoner Steve Hubert first took an open-enrollment course on leadership nearly 10 years ago when he was a sales director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and earned his COBE in 2020, while working as a regional vice president at Salesforce. Today, he’s a senior vice president and head of the company’s UK & Ireland Commercial division. “I firmly attribute the success and the progress I’ve made in my career to that defining point in April 2016 when I took my first course,” he says.

Perhaps no one is more aware of the unique value UC Berkeley Haas can bring to organizations than those who’ve experienced it firsthand—Haas alumni. Custom clients include Sega Sammy, led by Haruki Satomi, MBA 12; Adobe, led by Shantanu Narayen, MBA 93; and Abbott Laboratories, led by Robert Ford, MBA 15. “The power behind the thought leadership from Berkeley combined with the talent and grit of our employees going through these specially curated programs have resulted in new thinking, higher aspirations, and greater achievement,” Ford said during a campus visit.

Indeed, BEE has inspired and energized tens of thousands of leaders with new knowledge and skills that enable them to embrace opportunity amid change and to be their best professional selves—spreading the influence of Haas around the world, one course at a time.