Senior-level managers will gather in Riga beginning May 12 for an intensive, two-week Strategic Management Program (SMP) organized by WDI in cooperation with the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga). Five of the participants are Teeter Scholarship recipients, named in honor of the late Robert Teeter who served on WDI’s Board of Directors.
The program, which combines both theory and practice, enables participants to acquire a broad, cross-functional approach to general management. Participants leave the program with an improved skill set and fresh ideas for approaching critical business issues. Upon completion of the program, participants receive Strategic Management Program certificates issued by the William Davidson Institute and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga.
Many of the cases and examples used in the classroom are based on the WDI's experiences with companies which operate in emerging and transitional markets around the world.
The quality of the SMP is unmatched in the region. The program features professors from the top-ranking Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and other leading business schools. The caliber of the participants is similarly impressive, with most holding senior level management positions in multi-national companies.
The program is also enriched by the diversity of the participants; in recent years, they have come from Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and have represented industries from financial services to oil and gas to manufacturing.
Participants will spend three days each studying marketing and finance, and two days each on strategy and change management.
John Branch, professor of marketing and international business at Michigan’s Ross School of Business, will teach the marketing portion. Neil G. Cohen, an associate professor of finance at George Washington University in Washington, D.C will teach the finance sections.
Yusaf H. Akbar, associate professor in management at Central European Business University Business School in Budapest, will teach strategy. Gerard Seijts, associate professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, will teach change management.
The Strategic Management Program is designed to:
- Provide participants with core business management skills and improve their executive skills
- Enable participants to acquire a broad, cross-functional approach to strategic management
- Help participants strengthen their leadership skills
- Provide participants with course materials, reading and reference tools that can be used later in their daily operations
- Give participants an ongoing professional peer network
The five Teeter scholarship recipients are:
- Jody Yurkowsky, executive director, Ronald McDonald House Charities.
- Latvian chapter of an international organization with the mission to find, create and support programs that directly affect the health and well being of children
- Ugis Rotbergs, director, Pasaules Dabas Fonds (formerly WWF Latvia).
- Non-profit nature conservation organization with the mission to make significant contribution towards sustainable development of Latvia
- Liga Smildzina-Bertulsone, executive director, American Chamber of Commerce. Non-profit member organization committed to strengthening trade relations between the U.S., Latvia and the EU.
- Zane Loža, managing director, Urban Baltic(NGO).
- Aim is to develop a strong local power in the areas where it is working by organizing, providing space and agenda for inhabitant meetings, and establishing the link between the city government and the local voice.
- Jelena Litvinenko, director, Angkor Wood.
- The company produces and sells hand made products (vases, spoons, knives, bracelets, accessories) out of exotic tropical wood species and also specializes in parquet flooring.