MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership

MIT Sloan Fellows Program History

The premier program for executives
In 1930, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., SB 1895, president of General Motors, called Erwin H. Schell at MIT and told him he had a problem. The engineers who worked for him, he lamented, understood little about management.

Schell saw the problem as an opportunity and told Sloan he had an idea: a program for young engineers with executive potential. This program of “sponsored fellows” would concentrate on business subjects. It would build on the knowledge the engineers already possessed and broaden their perspectives so that they could succeed in senior management positions.

Thus began the MIT Sponsored Fellowships program, which was renamed the MIT Sloan Fellows Program in 1938 to honor the steadfast support of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. That same year the program made headlines in The New York Times. The five talented managers chosen to be the first MIT Sloan Fellows were celebrated for their exceptional promise. And for the next three quarters of a century, this revolutionary program achieved renown for educating generations of visionary leaders.

Rigorously academic and invigoratingly experiential, the MIT Sloan Fellows Program built its legend on results. The list of distinguished alumni from the last 75 years would gratify Alfred P. Sloan. Over the years, the program evolved and welcomed promising managers from myriad disciplines and dozens of nations.

At the close of the 20th century, the needs, goals, and challenges of corporate and nonprofit leaders, entrepreneurs, and technologists around the world began to intersect. MIT faculty and program architects realized that the most powerful way to serve the executive of the 21st century would be to integrate the MIT Sloan Fellows Program with its sibling, the MIT Management of Technology Program.

In 2004, the Institute fused these two landmark programs. The result: an intense, leading-edge learning experience that no leadership development program in the world today can match. Although some characteristics of the program have changed over the decades, the objective remains constant: to broaden the perspectives of mid-career executives in preparation for top management roles.