Kofi Annan can remember the day. It was 1971 and he was in the middle of his first term in the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program. He was walking along the Charles River, ruminating about his place in the class, wondering how he fit into the audacious group of global leaders who were his classmates.

When the answer came to him, Annan says, it came to him most emphatically: “Follow your own inner compass...know who you are, what you stand for, where you want to go, and why you want to get there.” He recalls that at once, his anxieties began to fade.

Annan believes that because of that walk by the river, he took away from MIT “the intellectual confidence to help me locate my bearings in new situations, to view any challenge as an opportunity for renewal and growth, and to be comfortable in seeking the help of colleagues, but not fearing to do things my way.”

MIT and the United Nations, Annan says, have more in common than might be at first obvious. The experimental method, for example. “An international organization,” he says, “is an experiment...an experiment in human cooperation on a planetary scale.” He notes that “international organizations must be closely tuned to their environments, quickly correct their mistakes, build cumulatively on their achievements, and continually generate new modalities as previous ways of doing things become outdated.”

Although that introspective walk along the Charles River was long ago, Annan’s experience at MIT still informs his decisions. “As a Sloan Fellow, I learned management skills that I could draw on in refashioning the United Nations for the new century.”

For the last two decades, serial entrepreneur Snejina Zacharia has worked with consumer internet and enterprise software companies. As founder of Insurify, the insurance shopping marketplace powered by AI, she leads the company’s strategic vision and product and business development initiatives. Before founding Insurify, she was a director at Gartner, where she established and grew several lines of business, each with millions of dollars of annual revenue, across the US, Europe, Middle East, and Asia.

Turning point

“The MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program is specifically tailored to executives who are at a point in their careers when they need change, when they must expand on their skills and fill knowledge gaps that have emerged in a rapidly evolving world. The program is an undiluted learning experience free of the principal distractions that have kept us from growing as leaders. It’s a rigorous year but one of remarkable intellectual freedom and discovery. By the time I graduated, I had come to truly understand myself as a person, including my strengths and where I wanted to improve.”

Taking stock

“I entered this program to take stock of everything I needed for the next half of my career and found I was able to take significant control of the learning process. I even created my own class—The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Series—where I invited the founders of  tech companies like Kayak, TripAdvisor, RueLaLa, Sonicbids, and Care.com to share lessons learned and offer advice to me and other MIT students. I also was thrilled to be able to pitch in the $100K entrepreneurship competition. Insurify was a semifinalist!”

MIT immersion

“I truly believe that the best way to experience MIT is as a full-time student immersed in the community. There are so many riches—and so many great minds—to tap, and being a full-time student is the only way to do that. You work elbow-to-elbow with peers from more than three dozen nations and, in the process, develop a more profound understanding of cultural differences. Then there’s the continual stream of lectures from renowned leaders, networking at coffee shops and social events, and the vast number of activities happening across MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, Boston, and beyond. I gained so many additional layers of wisdom from my encounters outside the classroom.”

Ziyad M. Al-Shiha began his career at Saudi Aramco as an electrical engineer, working his way up through the ranks of the multinational enterprise in various capacities, from manager of oil and gas field operations to public relations manager to vice president for planning. A global energy leader, he has been headquartered in different regions across Saudi Arabia as well as in the US and the Philippines, where he took on the role of vice president for corporate planning of Petron Company, the second largest corporation in the Philippines. Al-Shiha has served on the boards of Saudi Electricity Company, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, and Petron Company.

Real vs. legend
"In the upper spheres of management, you often hear people talking about the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program, but until you are immersed in it, you can't know what it's really like. This program is an experience like no other. Yes, you learn the full spectrum of fundamentals-finance, accounting, marketing, leadership, innovation, systems thinking, leadership-but what sets this program apart are the intangibles. Learning how to relate to people from other cultures and disciplines. Testing bold ideas in a safe environment to determine what will work, what won't, and why. Pragmatic approaches to real life challenges. You eat, drink, and breathe the answers to all the questions you've been wondering about in your career up to this point."

A mini United Nations
"I found the most educational aspect of the program to be listening to and learning from my peers in the program-leaders in their own right from five continents and dozens of industries. They did not shy away from discussing their handicaps nor did they hesitate to share their success stories. I soon came to realize that this program brings the great talent of the world to you. After spending one year imbedded in a mini United Nations, your perspective definitely grows."

The benefit of interconnectivity
"This program is about interconnectivity. Interconnectivity to everything that MIT, Boston, and Cambridge have to offer-support services, laboratories, advanced research institutions. Influential leaders from all over the world come to MIT and to the universities nearby for candid talks. I found I could meet with a whole 'who's who' of innovators in my field. And New England itself is very rich in history, culture, museums, scenery, and people. My family fell in love with the area during my year as a fellow, and we come back whenever we came to visit our friends and our favorite places in New England."

When she was appointed the 74th Postmaster General of the United States in 2015, Megan Brennan became the first woman to lead the world's largest postal organization. Brennan began her career as a letter carrier and worked her way up the management ladder, learning the operation from the ground up. She served as a regional VP of Operations and COO/Executive VP before taking the helm as CEO. Brennan is now at work implementing her vision for the Postal Service as a technology- and customer-centric organization that engages the full potential of its 600,000-employee workforce.

Affirmation from an exceptional cohort
"I have to admit I was a little daunted by the prospect of joining the program—the academic rigor, as you would expect from MIT, is legendary. I loved my job, and had not been in a classroom for a long time. Once we started, though, I was immediately grateful to be a fellow. Stepping outside the Postal Service universe and getting a sense of how I measured up in the wider world was pivotal to my maturity as a leader."

A curriculum at the forefront of innovation
"I don't think the average person realizes how complex and tech-centric the postal service is. To get the job done, we need to stay at the forefront of the best practices being advanced in public and private enterprises all over the world. But I didn't have to travel exhaustively to understand what was happening out there. As a Sloan Fellow, I was surrounded by leaders from those regions who were shaping technology and standards. On top of it all, the MIT Sloan Fellows curriculum exposed me to advanced systems thinking, business analytics, and strategic planning. It also expanded my soft skills and reinforced the values of diversity and collaboration as organizational imperatives."

Lasting organizational impact
"We have to compete for business on a daily basis just like a private company. We have to understand what's happening in the marketplace and reinvent ourselves accordingly. We send our most promising executives to the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program because they learn how to leverage big data, challenge existing paradigms, and drive the innovations that will keep us relevant in the 21st century."

Serial entrepreneur Abhi Yadav spun his company ZyloTech out of MIT to give organizations an opportunity to increase the depth of their data insights and increase the precision of their marketing efforts. He and a team of data scientists, engineers, and digital marketers from MIT and the broader Cambridge ecosystem developed this fast-growing and award-winning customer data platform. 

Hot tech

“I entered the program when I was preparing to launch a new company. I chose the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program because it seemed like the place to be for a tech entrepreneur who needed one foot on the entrepreneurial frontier and the other on the tech frontier. And the flexibility of the program let me pull from whichever part of MIT I needed to complete the knowledge for my next venture.”

Fast forward

“It’s important not to be held behind by your own progress. That sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true. The world we live in today is noisy and volatile. There’s really no way, no time, no natural opportunity to step out of the fray and look around, take stock, and get a birds-eye view of the bigger picture. We tend to be reluctant to take the time to turn off and power up—especially when things are going well—but spending that year at MIT is not retreat. It’s acceleration.”

Global village

“The MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program is basically a global summit that brings together leaders of organizations from all over the world. We spend a year together getting to know and understand the motivations driving people, cultures, and countries. In the world we live in now, you need to understand all the different marketplaces around the world, and there’s no smarter way than spending a year working side-by-side on challenging topics. The fellows I spent that year with are now central to my network—a network that spans the world.”

For more than 25 years, Ruth Sommers has been a leading light in the retail universe with experience in global production, sourcing, product development, and operations. She has held influential roles at several of America’s leading retail brands, including American Eagle Outfitters and Ann Taylor. Sommers also founded and served as CEO of NOI Solutions, a company that assisted specialty retailers with production across Asia. Before joining Blue Nile, she was COO of the jewelry powerhouse David Yurman, where she lead sourcing, production, IT, as well as distribution and customer care centers.

Significant pause

“When I applied to the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA Program, I had been working in Hong Kong for five years. My time at MIT was an unparalleled opportunity to take stock, focus, and gear up for the next sprint—wherever in the world that might take me. Business leaders have so few opportunities to step out of the ongoing rush, gain perspective, and build the skills they’ll need for the big challenges ahead. That’s what this program is about. Maybe most important going forward, it provided a powerful lesson on the importance of talent development.”

Global immersion

“The benefit of working closely for a full year with peers from many different parts of the world who are all experts in their fields is incalculable. I gained a deeper perspective on how leaders around the globe viewed the United States and a deeper perspective on the cultures and inner-workings of other countries—countries that I knew might turn out to be pivotal in my future. It was also a good opportunity for men who might work in male-dominated industries to get comfortable collaborating with women on equal footing.”

Leap year

“Your year at MIT goes fast, but it catapults you further along in your career arc than if you stayed put and kept climbing. It’s a game changer, letting you jump the growth curve—and preparing you for everything you’ll need to make that leap.”

Ray Leach is a national leader at the intersections of public, private, and philanthropic partnerships that accelerate job creation and increase economic outcomes in neighborhoods, cities, regions, and countries. He is the founding CEO of JumpStart, a Cleveland, Ohio-based nonprofit venture-development organization that has gained wide prominence for its innovative economic development models that maximize the job and wealth-creating economic impact of local startup and high-growth small companies.

Essential connections

“Being a part of the MIT family has made a huge difference to my career—and my life.

I created connections and friendships during that time in Cambridge that I have come to depend on often over the last 15 years. I use the MIT network weekly and my Sloan Fellows network at least three or four times a year.”

Intersecting frontiers

“When I entered the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA Program, I had just left a leadership role with a large corporation that had purchased one of the startups I founded. I was looking to make a transition from being an entrepreneur growing a single firm to an investment role with a venture capital firm working with a portfolio of fast growing companies. I knew that the place to engineer that transition was MIT. I spent the year focused on organizational leadership, systems thinking, and absorbing late-breaking advances at the junction of technology and entrepreneurship. There was no substitute for being in that place at that time.”

Immeasurable payback

“The payback for spending a year as an integral part of the MIT community is immeasurable. It has been one of the most meaningful things I have done in my career—and a very meaningful experience for my family. My wife was very involved in the partners’ program, and our two daughters, who were in primary school at the time, consider that year one of the highlights of their childhoods.”

The most senior female officer in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), Colonel Gan Siow Huang, has helped to formulate defense policies as deputy director of the Defense Policy Office and has commanded the 203 Squadron and the Air Surveillance and Control Group. After rising through the ranks, she now leads the SAF's Joint Manpower Department.

"For a woman in a position of leadership, the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program offers a potent combination of must-haves that a mid-career leader would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. For me, one of those benefits was working closely with the other women in the program, talented leaders from 20 different countries. Learning about their successes—and failures—moving up the ladder in different global environments and different industries was educational and inspiring. When other women don't recognize limitations, you learn not to recognize them either.”

"There are other programs for global leaders, but the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program is a distinctive combination of technological innovation and leadership. That formula is one that all global leaders need to be exposed to. I am in the military, but I wanted a program that gave me a fresh perspective from outside that realm. I wanted to be surrounded by people from different industries and mindsets. I wanted to feel the entrepreneurial buzz and bring that spirit of experimentation back to my own work environment. Every organization needs that energy to stay relevant."

"This program is an unusually effective integration of soft skills and hard knowledge. I learned the economics of information technology. I learned system dynamics and how complex organizations work. I learned how to negotiate contracts and navigate difficult situations. I learned how to use data to analyze trends and predict outcomes. I graduated several years ago, but I still look back at my class notes. I use that knowledge every single day in ways that I never could have predicted."

Founder of the export house Flucon, Sanjay Inamdar is a first-generation entrepreneur. His industry and business experience include designing and manufacturing products and bringing them to global markets. He heads India’s Student Start-Up initiative, comprising 10,000 colleges and more than eight million students.

Odyssey of impact
"My learning as an MIT Sloan Fellow has shaped my abilities and empowered me to turn my life into an odyssey of impact. Everything I've been able to accomplish, I owe to that experience. There's not an ounce of exaggeration in that. I can draw a line from my achievements and my opportunities directly to the lessons I learned at MIT."

Adept communicator
"The power of my Sloan Fellows education extends into every area of my career and life. I am confident interacting with leaders from all cultures. I understand the power of collaboration and how to put new ideas to work, and I am a more adept communicator in every area of my life."

Confidence to create
"Before my time in the program, I would not have considered taking on some of the challenges I'm tackling now. It's all about confidence. I now have the self-assurance to create government policy that I believe in. I can't overestimate the satisfaction of driving a policy that can improve the lives of thousands of people I might never meet. It's a remarkable feeling."

Pascal Marmier manages engagement in Asia and the Americas with a focus on digital transformation, data innovation and emerging markets to deliver insights and solutions affecting Swiss Re and the insurance industry.

John W. Thompson is Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, where he has served on the board since 2012. Previously, during his decade as CEO of Symantec, Thompson helped transform the company into a leader in security, storage, and systems management solutions.

"That year was incredibly rewarding to me, and yet it's difficult to put into words the profound benefits of this program. You live the value every day. Invest those twelve months at MIT in your development as a leader, and you will find it pays tremendous dividends over the life of your career."

"The first thing you learn in the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program is that the world is a lot smaller than you think it is. That year was my first real international exposure. In some ways, it was like spending a year on a global fact-finding mission. We did quite a bit of traveling as a group, but we didn't have to leave Cambridge to experience a truly global business education. The program brought the international business community to us. With fellows from all over the world, you get an intimate perspective on the ins and outs of doing business in key regions around the globe."

"The professors at MIT are the best of the best in their industries. I found their insights illuminating and their knowledge bottomless. You know that what you're learning is the very latest thinking in the technology and management arenas."

Tana L. Utley joined Caterpillar in 1986 straight out of college and steadily climbed to her present executive position. Among her many distinctions, Utley led the team that developed ACERT™ Technology—a breakthrough engine system that has redefined Cat® engine products.

It’s for people with ideas
“The MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program is designed for those who already have a vision—they just need the tools and the support systems to make it happen.”

At MIT, I felt a sense of coming home
“A powerful feeling of ‘these are my people.’ From the moment you set foot on campus, you are learning all the time—learning in the hallway, at cocktail parties, standing in line for coffee. It’s an exhilarating kind of osmosis, and I miss it ... a lot.”

Mid-career is when you need this program
“Mid-career is when you know how to use it. Mid-career is when you know what to do with the boundless opportunity it offers.”