The popular Director’s Program returns to the 2024 EMBAC Conference! For academic members at the director’s level and above, the Director’s Program offers participants valuable networking time and insights from presenters on relevant topics.

Benefit from the diversity of this year’s Director’s Program sessions. Explore the geopolitical challenges that Latin America faces and their implications for business and business leaders. Become a master at helping motivate staff and improve overall program performance. Leverage the fine art of storytelling to involve your many stakeholders and strengthen your brand.

The Difficult Mediation in the 21st Century

This session considers the business environment in Latin America and frames a geopolitical vision based on past and current trends.

Mostly because of insufficient taxation, a growing gap exists between citizen demands for services and the ability of state governing bodies to respond effectively and equitably to those demands. To close this gap, governments began accruing debt, especially during the pandemic. Now as the region experiences modest economic growth, fiscal pressures are intensifying even more, resulting in a scenario where to balance fiscal numbers, governments may have to cut back on public investments and social transfers.

What does this all mean to the region? The session will delve into these developments in Latin America and look at taxation as one of the region’s significant issues, as well devaluation of political parties and the rise of messianic figures who present themselves as “more effective and fairer” mediators.

Professor at INCAE Business School since 1994, Arturo Cruz served as a visiting professor at the Escuela Superior de Economía y Negocios (ESEN) in El Salvador and as a guest lecturer in executive master's programs and other executive programs at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. His essays on Latin America and United States foreign policy have been published in many prestigious journals and publications, and he has been interviewed by major international television networks. Former Ambassador of Nicaragua to the United States and Canada, he also was a member of the Western Hemisphere Advisory Group to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science from American University, his master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University, and doctorate in history from the University of Oxford.

Engaging and Influencing Stakeholders Using Storytelling.

The increasing number and diversity of media options in today’s rapidly changing world make effective stakeholder engagement increasingly complicated and challenging. This session will examine the current communication landscape and the resulting “crisis of attention.” It will draw on the principles of persuasion and information processing from psychology to reinforce storytelling as a powerful tool to capture and maintain attention. It will include real-world examples of storytelling in corporate communication, providing participants with practical strategies to enhance their stakeholder engagement.

A psychologist by profession, Ramiro Casó, has forged a multifaceted career in communication, education, and academia. Casó excelled as a strategic planner in top advertising agencies such JWT and Publicis, leveraging psychological insights to craft compelling communication strategies. His industry experience includes leadership roles in marketing at Garnier BBDO and Publicis Venezuela. In education, Ramiro taught at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello before joining INCAE Business School as a senior researcher, where he delivers courses on business analytics and has published studies on workplace well-being and negotiation strategies. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in marketing management at Rotterdam School of Management, and focuses his research on information processing, persuasion, and creativity in marketing.

Putting Purpose into Action

Managing executive degree programs has become increasingly complex due to heightened competition, economic fluctuations, increasingly limited resources, geopolitical tensions, and successive crises. Keeping staff focused and motivated can be challenging. Clarifying an organization’s purpose and leading to put that purpose into action can help align and inspire our work.

This session will explore how to collaborate to clarify your program's purpose, set up and revise structures to bring ideas for new initiatives, provide autonomy within guardrails to support execution, reward those with good ideas and great results, measure impact, and communicate and celebrate successes. The interactive session will focus on best practices and provide practical takeaways to support your ability to lead transformational program experiences for our students.

Wendy Guild currently serves as vice dean of MBA Programs at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Her administrative work reflects her long-standing commitment to student development through her collaborative strategic leadership of recruitment, admissions, curriculum, and student affairs. Her teaching focuses on leadership, strategy, international business, and sports and entertainment management. Her research focuses on leading culture and creating engaging experiential learning content. Previously, Guild worked at the University of Washington Foster School of Business as assistant dean of MBA Programs and UCLA Anderson as assistant dean of strategic initiatives, as well as briefly teaching Leadership in Executive Education at Yale School of Management. She received her PhD in organization studies at MIT, Sloan School of Management.

The Director’s Program will include plenty of structured and unstructured time for networking and sharing with your fellow directors, those you know and those you will meet for the first time. In addition to breakfast, lunch, and breaks, two presenter sessions include breakout time for directors to discuss session content in small groups. After lunch, a network building session will offer participants another small group opportunity to discuss hot topics and share their approaches with colleagues.

MORNING
8:00 AM / Buses Load
8:30 AM / Breakfast at INCAE
9:15 AM / The Difficult Mediation in the 21st Century, Arturo Cruz, Professor, INCAE Business School
10:15 AM / Coffee/networking break
10:45 AM / Engaging and Influencing Stakeholders Using Storytelling, Ramiro Casó, Senior Researcher, INCAE, with breakout session

AFTERNOON
12:15 PM / Lunch at INCAE
1:15 PM / Network building
2:45 PM / Break
3:00 PM / Putting Purpose Into Action, Wendy Guild, PhD, Vice Dean of MBA Programs, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, with breakout session
4:30 PM / Buses load