Programme Content
What You Will Learn in the Berkeley Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Program
This highly interactive five-day module, held on the UC Berkeley campus in California, provides an opportunity for you to engage directly with faculty, industry experts, and peers. You will participate in interactive discussions, small group exercises, and network within the rich Berkeley ecosystem.
Core leadership skills covered during this in-person module are:
Leadership Strategy:
Examine approaches to leading growth strategies and explore concepts of intrapreneurship and strategic innovation.
Decision & Negotiation Skills:
Develop integrative negotiation techniques and apply structured decision-making frameworks to navigate high-stakes situations effectively.
Influence & Change Leadership:
Examine how to use influence to lead change and understand the role of power and politics within organizations.
Team Leadership:
Strengthen your ability to lead teams effectively while building awareness of your leadership style through guided self-assessment exercises.
Communication & Executive Presence:
Enhance strategic storytelling capabilities and refine your leadership voice to communicate with clarity and impact.
Organizational Culture:
Gain an introduction to leading through culture and understanding its role in shaping organizational performance.
Experiential Learning: Participate in hands-on activities, including a tower-building leadership exercise and leadership style diagnostics, to reinforce practical application.
Prepare for the highest levels of strategic leadership by strengthening the core competencies required of modern CEOs. This module focuses on building a robust strategic toolkit—from understanding innovation ecosystems and technical platforms to navigating global competitive markets and mergers and acquisitions. You will explore how CEOs evaluate growth opportunities, shape innovation strategy, and make complex decisions that balance risk, scale, and long-term value creation. Through in-depth sessions led by UC Berkeley faculty, you will uncover actionable frameworks to drive business transformation in an evolving marketplace.
Systems of Innovation: The Silicon Valley Ecosystem as a Model
Technical Platforms: A Framework for Understanding Innovation
Creating Value for Customers
The Four Playbooks of Innovation Strategy
Strategy in Global Competitive Markets
Corporate Strategy: M&A
Future-Proof: Leading and Succeeding in the Global Economy
Note: Topics and sessions are subject to change.
Strengthen your ability to lead with clarity, influence, and self-awareness. You will examine how power, influence, negotiation, and communication shape effective leadership. Through case studies, simulations, and guided reflection, you will explore your leadership style, understand how others perceive you, and develop strategies to lead high-performing teams while navigating complex interpersonal dynamics and driving meaningful change across your organization.
You will also strengthen your ability to build and lead high-performing organizations by understanding how culture, ethics, governance, and leadership behavior shape long-term success. Through applied learning with Berkeley faculty, you will explore research-backed frameworks for leading through complexity, managing cultural transformation, strengthening board relationships, fostering collective intelligence, and building resilient organizations where people can thrive, while deepening your capacity to lead with vision, integrity, and cultural intelligence.
Power & Politics
Leading Effective Teams
Negotiation Simulations
Decision-Making Under Pressure
The Art & Science of Persuasion
Identifying Your Voice
Leading with Focus and Cognitive Effectiveness
Your Leadership Style: What You Think It Is, What Others Think, and What It All Means
Managing the Board
Developing a High-Performance, Growth-Oriented Culture
Fostering Collective Intelligence to Innovate and Excel
Leadership Through Crisis
Organizational Canvas (Exercise)
Sustainability, Leadership & Ethics
Taking Action and Getting Traction
Note: Topics and sessions are subject to change.
This short course complements the CEO curriculum by providing a high-level understanding of AI concepts and their implications for modern leadership. Rather than preparing you to build AI solutions, it equips you to interpret emerging technologies, ask the right questions, and make informed strategic decisions about where AI can add value within your organization.
By the completion of this short course, you will be able to:
Gain a high-level overview of technologies, including capabilities and limitations, while understanding generative AI, its methods, and its business applications
Learn about supervised and unsupervised learning and the importance of data and obtaining and managing it for machine learning
Understand the transition from traditional machine learning to neural networks and deep learning and their common applications
Learn about the ways in which machines perceive and communicate computer vision, natural language processing, genAI, and recent developments such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs)
Grasp what traditional robotic automation can and cannot do and the new wave of AI-driven automation, such as robots with eyes and robots that can adapt
Recognize the implications of genAI on business strategy and how to develop and execute an AI strategy to create a competitive advantage
Discover how to embed artificial intelligence in your organization and the challenges of organizational transformation
Identify what new problems artificial intelligence can help solve, how it will continue to transform businesses, and how you can prepare for the future of AI
Engage in an immersive, on-campus experience in Silicon Valley. Over three days, you will participate in a progression of learning that blends faculty insight, peer exchange, and experiential application. Through dialogue, discussion, and reflection, the experience enables you to engage with peers and industry leaders while exploring perspectives relevant to today’s evolving leadership and organizational context.
The experience includes:
Core faculty sessions led by members of the Faculty Advisory Board
Masterclasses featuring distinguished Berkeley faculty
Keynote conversations with industry leaders
Peer circles designed for trust-based exchange
Reflection and integration moments
Graduation and community celebration
