Wharton Nursing Leaders Program

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Wharton Executive Education
Dates Location Tuition
- Wharton Nursing Leaders Program
Philadelphia
$4,250

Tuition includes lodging, breakfasts, snacks, and lunches. Hotel rooms are blocked for all participants at the Inn at Penn. For more information, please contact a Program Consultant at +1.215.898.1776 or by e-mail at execed@wharton.upenn.edu. Prices are subject to change. Plan your stay.


The primary focus of this program is to assist nursing leaders in the effective management and implementation of strategic and tactical plans. As nursing leaders move upward in the organization, the decisions, the issues, and the projects become increasingly complex and multifunctional. The program content is specifically designed to address this complexity and includes identifying the key stakeholders and influencing their behavior, learning to manage resources, and knowing when to terminate a task force or project. Small group work is used to enhance the opportunities for learning and applying the lessons from the classroom. Faculty members participating in the Wharton Nursing Leaders Program have been chosen not only for their expertise in a particular content area but also their vast experience working with senior clinician executives.


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Wharton Nursing Leaders Program Session Topics

  • Planning for Execution
  • Hospital Finance
  • Stakeholder Mapping
  • Effective Decision-Making
  • Team Building and Motivation
  • Managing People: Influence and Persuasion

This program is for higher-level nurse managers who are preparing for the role of CNO. Specifically, an individual attending this program must meet two of the three following criteria:

  • Reports directly to the chief nursing officer of the organization.
  • Has multi-unit fiscal and management responsibilities.
  • Manages direct reports who have supervisory responsibility.

The objectives of the program include:

  • To provide essential financial skills, enabling participants to communicate budgetary information to peers and staff.
  • To provide an awareness of the strategic issues facing the health care organization and the stakeholders within and outside the organization.
  • To provide critical analytical skills necessary to manage task forces or project teams.
  • To enhance the ability to manage resources, both human and financial, and to optimize clinical and administrative performance.
  • To explore the causes of poor decision making.

Adam Grant ADAM M. GRANT, PhD
Faculty Director
Associate Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Prof. Grant has consulted and taught executive education for a wide range of clients, including Medco, Borders Group, Time-Warner Cable, Grant-Thornton, Duke Energy, Asahi Glass, the American Financial Services Association, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the U.S. Air Force, Army, and Navy.

Before joining the Wharton faculty, he taught at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he won UNC’s two most prestigious teaching awards: the university-wide Tanner Award for Excellence and the business school’s Weatherspoon Award for Excellence.

Prof. Grant earned his PhD and MS degrees in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, and his BA from Harvard University with Phi Beta Kappa and highest honors.

Steven Finkler, Phd, CPA STEVEN A. FINKLER, PhD, CPA
Professor Emeritus of Public and Health Administration, Accounting, and Financial Management
Wagner School of Public Service, New York University

Steven Finkler is an award-winning teacher and author. Among his awards are the 2002 Pioneering Spirit Award from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) and the 2003 Sigma Theta Tau International Research Award in the Health Policy and Systems category. Dr. Finkler served as a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Institute for Nursing Research at NIH from 1997 to 2001.

Among his publications are 18 books and more than 200 journal articles. His books include Budgeting Concepts for Nurse Managers, 3rd edition; Financial Management for Nurse Managers and Executives, 2nd edition (with Chris Kovner); and Accounting Fundamentals for Health Care Management (with David Ward). He has published articles in Nursing Economics, the Journal of Nursing Administration, the Western Journal of Nursing Research, Nursing Administration Quarterly, the New England Journal of Medicine, and other leading journals.

He is currently working on the 3rd edition of Financial Management for Nurse Managers and Executives (with Chris Kovner and Cheryl Jones), and the 4th edition of Budgeting Concepts for Nurse Managers (with Mary McHugh).

He received a BS and MS from the Wharton School, where he majored in accounting and finance. His master's degree in economics and PhD in business administration were awarded by Stanford University. Dr. Finkler, who is also a CPA, worked for several years as an auditor with Ernst and Young and was on the Wharton faculty before joining New York University.
Mario Moussa, PhD MARIO MOUSSA, PhD
President, Moussa Consulting
Senior Fellow, Wharton Executive Education
University of Pennsylvania

Co-author of The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas, Mario Moussa directs and teaches programs for hospital leaders and physicians, corporate security managers, and energy and banking executives. He teaches negotiation, influence, strategy, change, and corporate culture and is co-director of Wharton's Strategic Persuasion Workshop: The Art and Science of Selling Ideas. Previously, he was a principal at CFAR, Inc., a management consulting firm that began as a Wharton research center. A specialist in large-scale organizational change initiatives, he has consulted to many of the world's leading corporations, universities, and foundations, including United Health Group, PNC Bank, the Georgetown University Medical Center, and State Farm Insurance. He has published widely in the field of organizational dynamics, power, and influence.
undefined KATHY PEARSON, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor,
Operations and Information Management Department
The Wharton School

Kathy Pearson, PhD, serves as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at the Wharton School. She has taught operations management courses in the MBA program and Executive Master’s of Technology Management program as well as probability and statistics, simulation modeling, and other courses for the department and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, Dr. Pearson is a senior consultant and director, Executive Education, for Decision Strategies International (DSI), a management consulting firm focused on scenario-based strategic planning and decision making. She specializes in subject areas such as critical thinking, scenario planning, strategic decision making, project management, and stakeholder analysis. Dr. Pearson has also worked with executives from a wide variety of industries and has taught at CEDEP at INSEAD in Fountainebleau, France.