Kara Blackburn

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Kara Blackburn

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Kara Blackburn is a Senior Lecturer in Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an affiliate of MIT Sloan's Leadership Center. 

At MIT, Blackburn co-created and teaches Leading the Way: Perspectives on Advancing Equity and Inclusion. This course address both individual skills and organizational strategies for advancing equity and inclusion within workplaces and increasing the representation of historically marginalized groups in key positions. Blackburn also created and teaches Tough Conversations: Science, Strategies & Skills that equips students with a framework for initiating and navigating hard conversations at work. Blackburn teaches Communication for Leaders and runs the accompanying Communications Lab for full-time MBA students. Additionally, she teaches in MIT Sloan’s Executive Education programs. 

Also at MIT Sloan, Blackburn has mentored teams in the Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab), and China and India Lab courses, and has been the faculty lead for study tours in South America and Africa. She has traveled on behalf of the MIT faculty to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Botswana, Namibia, Vietnam, Thailand, and China.

Blackburn was awarded the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at MIT Sloan in 2019. She was also a recipient of the 2020 Teaching with Digital Technology Award and won MIT Sloan’s Teacher of the Year in 2023.

Honors

Blackburn named MIT Sloan Teacher of the Year

Blackburn wins Jamieson Prize

Blackburn wins teaching award

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Communication: It’s everyone’s job. But Millennials do it differently

A new study from MIT Sloan highlights new communication styles of students including 5 skills millennial MBAs want to improve on and some remarkable ones that they don’t want to get better at.

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Executive Education

Executive Education Course

Interpersonal Communication

This online course uses research and practice-based methods to improve your communication skills in a variety of contexts. Specifically, it’s built around the RELATE framework, developed at the MIT Sloan School of Management to support a scalable communication strategy. This dynamic approach will guide you in connecting and communicating with different audiences to achieve effective business practices.

  • Oct 18-Dec 5, 2023
  • Mar 6-Apr 23, 2024
  • May 22-Jul 9, 2024
  • Oct 9-Nov 26, 2024
  • Aug 7-Sep 24, 2024
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Executive Education Course

Global Executive Academy

This global executive program is a transformative learning experience designed to fit the time and language constraints of experienced executives from a wide variety of industries and countries. A new frontier in executive education, it extends MIT content to the non-English speaking world through a multilingual experience. Program topics include: general management, leadership, strategy, innovation, negotiation, analytics management, finance, and productivity.

  • Jul 9-18, 2024
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