Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Program

Prepare for the highest levels of strategic leadership by strengthening the core competencies required of modern CEOs. This module focuses on building a robust strategic toolkit—from understanding innovation ecosystems and technical platforms to navigating global competitive markets and mergers and acquisitions. You will explore how CEOs evaluate growth opportunities, shape innovation strategy, and make complex decisions that balance risk, scale, and long-term value creation. Through in-depth sessions led by UC Berkeley faculty, you will uncover actionable frameworks to drive business transformation in an evolving marketplace.

• Systems of Innovation: The Silicon Valley Ecosystem as a Model

• Technical Platforms: A Framework for Understanding Innovation

• Creating Value for Customers

• The Four Playbooks of Innovation Strategy

• Strategy in Global Competitive Markets

• Corporate Strategy: M&A

• Future-Proof: Leading and Succeeding in the Global Economy

Note: Topics and sessions are subject to change.

Strengthen your ability to lead with clarity, influence, and self-awareness. You will examine how power, influence, negotiation, and communication shape effective leadership. Through case studies, simulations, and guided reflection, you will explore your leadership style, understand how others perceive you, and develop strategies to lead high-performing teams while navigating complex interpersonal dynamics and driving meaningful change across your organization.

You will also strengthen your ability to build and lead high-performing organizations by understanding how culture, ethics, governance, and leadership behavior shape long-term success. Through applied learning with Berkeley faculty, you will explore research-backed frameworks for leading through complexity, managing cultural transformation, strengthening board relationships, fostering collective intelligence, and building resilient organizations where people can thrive, while deepening your capacity to lead with vision, integrity, and cultural intelligence.

• Power & Politics

• Leading Effective Teams

• Negotiation Simulations

• Decision-Making Under Pressure

• The Art & Science of Persuasion

• Identifying Your Voice

• Leading with Focus and Cognitive Effectiveness

• Your Leadership Style: What You Think It Is, What Others Think, and What It All Means

• Managing the Board

• Developing a High-Performance, Growth-Oriented Culture

• Fostering Collective Intelligence to Innovate and Excel

• Leadership Through Crisis

• Organizational Canvas (Exercise)

• Sustainability, Leadership & Ethics

• Taking Action and Getting Traction

Note: Topics and sessions are subject to change.

This short course complements the CEO curriculum by providing a high-level understanding of AI concepts and their implications for modern leadership. Rather than preparing you to build AI solutions, it equips you to interpret emerging technologies, ask the right questions, and make informed strategic decisions about where AI can add value within your organization.

By the completion of this short course, you will be able to:

• Gain a high-level overview of technologies, including capabilities and limitations, while understanding generative AI, its methods, and its business applications

• Learn about supervised and unsupervised learning and the importance of data and obtaining and managing it for machine learning

• Understand the transition from traditional machine learning to neural networks and deep learning and their common applications

• Learn about the ways in which machines perceive and communicate computer vision, natural language processing, genAI, and recent developments such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs)

• Grasp what traditional robotic automation can and cannot do and the new wave of AI-driven automation, such as robots with eyes and robots that can adapt

• Recognize the implications of genAI on business strategy and how to develop and execute an AI strategy to create a competitive advantage

• Discover how to embed artificial intelligence in your organization and the challenges of organizational transformation

• Identify what new problems artificial intelligence can help solve, how it will continue to transform businesses, and how you can prepare for the future of AI

Engage in an immersive, on-campus experience in Silicon Valley. Over three days, you will participate in a progression of learning that blends faculty insight, peer exchange, and experiential application. Through dialogue, discussion, and reflection, the experience enables you to engage with peers and industry leaders while exploring perspectives relevant to today’s evolving leadership and organizational context.

The experience includes:

• Core faculty sessions led by members of the Faculty Advisory Board

• Masterclasses featuring distinguished Berkeley faculty

• Keynote conversations with industry leaders

• Peer circles designed for trust-based exchange

• Reflection and integration moments

• Graduation and community celebration

Learning to be a CEO requires the structured development of both strategic and interpersonal leadership skills. The Berkeley Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Program offers a proven pathway through an immersive learning experience that bridges theory with practical application. Participants engage with world-renowned UC Berkeley Haas faculty, accomplished peers, and industry practitioners through lectures, group exercises, and a capstone personal case project. This comprehensive approach, combined with insights from global leaders and hands-on learning methodologies, provides the transformational education needed to fulfill your potential as a senior leader and drive organizational excellence.

The Berkeley Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Program is a multimodular immersive learning journey that aims to provide participants with the tools and frameworks to lead innovation and drive transformation. You will learn about different leadership styles and craft one of your own to emerge as a dynamic visionary leader.

The CEO Program is designed for CEOs as well as executives who will take on a C-suite leadership position in the next phase of their career. Your duties and responsibilities include leading regional or global teams and you are ready to accelerate your career to the highest level of leadership.

The program has a total of three core modules and a short course. It includes five days of in-person immersion with faculty and practitioners on the Berkeley campus in California and concludes with a three-day networking event where you get to meet peers from multiple cohorts on campus.

UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education, dba Berkeley Executive Education, is a California nonprofit organization formed for the purpose of operating executive education programs in support of UC Berkeley and the Haas School of Business.

Upon completing the program, you will receive a Certificate of Excellence in Senior Executive Leadership and earn select Berkeley Haas alumni benefits.

Applications to the CEO Program are to be made online. Application fees vary by rounds. Applying earlier helps your chances of being accepted into the program.

Emeritus collects all program payments, provides learner enrollment and program support, and manages learning platform services.

For the program refund and deferral policy, please click the link here.

Program fees for Emeritus programs with UC Berkeley Executive Education may not be paid for with (a) funds from the GI Bill, the Post-9/11 Educational Assistance Act of 2008, or similar types of military education funding benefits or (b) Title IV financial aid funds.