Leading executive education providers from around the globe converged on the Sauder School of Business for the UNICON Team Development Conference, the world’s largest event devoted to encouraging best practice in business school education for executives.
Hosted by Sauder, the three-day event ran from November 28 to 30, and gathered 186 representatives from 74 business schools to learn and share ideas under this year’s theme, Raising Your Game: The Business of Executive Education.
UNICON is a global consortium of business school-based executive education organizations. Its members are engaged in accelerating the development of leaders and managers through executive education initiatives, with the goal of enhancing performance in public and private organizations around the globe.
“Sauder Executive Education is focused on delivering the best possible experience to our clients,” said Bruce Wiesner, Sauder’s Associate Dean of Executive Education. “Throughout our conference design we worked to ensure that all attending schools were able to collaborate and walk away with new perspectives on training and a critical review of their own operations to deliver excellence in education.”
Focused on giving attendees the tools they need to make significant enhancements to their operations, Sauder professors spoke on such topics as optimizing operational capacity for service models, measuring returns on investments in customer service and marketing, engaging faculty to deliver excellence in teaching, and elevating client relations to a central role.
Sauder faculty were joined by business leaders, including Christine Day, CEO of lululemon athletica, who discussed her company’s “guest philosophy” and how executive education providers can put it to work. Mark Raham, Creative Director for the Vancouver Canucks described how to bring a brand to life through experiences that surprise and delight.
Presentations were also made by senior leaders in executive education from Babson Executive Education, Columbia Business School, CEIBS, IESE Business School, SMU Cox Executive Education, Foster School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, University of Tennessee, and UCLA Anderson Executive Education.
“As the host school, Sauder’s experience has been incredibly rewarding.” says Wiesner. “By taking a leading role in the global community of executive education providers to develop best practices we are ensuring that Sauder’s executive programs and services remain globally competitive.”
