The Wharton Certificate of Professional Development Topic Tracks

With so many organizations facing change, strong leadership skills are always in high demand. This track will give you the abilities you need to influence, inspire, and lead your organization through any challenge.

Select from any of the following live online or on-campus programs^*:

• Becoming a Leader of Leaders: Pathways for Success — Ensure your competence as a leader and examine the timeliness of your strategic vision. Senior executives learn from the decision-making processes of great leaders and discuss challenges with a network of global peers.
• Corporate Governance: Essentials for a New Business Era — Acquire critical management tools and gain new insight into the duties and nuances of board service. Learn how to forge partnerships with company officers to strengthen financial return, conduct better enterprise risk management, and achieve governance diversity during these complex times.
• Executive Influence: Increasing Your Impact with Persuasion and Power — Research shows that even the most brilliant executives must also possess the skills to influence people. The last mile in getting anything done is convincing others to go along. Executive Influence: Increasing Your Impact with Persuasion and Power will greatly expand your range of power and influence skills, helping you deploy them with confidence and integrity. Discover a broad toolbox of methods and techniques that will transform your skills for a lifetime.
• Becoming a Leader of Leaders: Pathways for Success — Ensure your competence as a leader and examine the timeliness of your strategic vision. Senior executives learn from the decision-making processes of great leaders and discuss challenges with a network of global peers.
• Health Care Leadership and Management: Leading Through Change — In order to successfully lead within the ever-changing healthcare environment, you need a deeper understanding of the shifting technologies, trends, economics, and dynamics within the ecosystem. Health Care Leadership and Management: Leading Through Change leverages the world-renowned Wharton MBA faculty to provide unparalleled perspective on the healthcare industry while strengthening your key leadership skills and overall business acumen. You’ll return to your organization ready to make an immediate impact across all areas with the enhanced decision-making abilities and in-depth skills you need to cultivate innovation and propel your organization forward.
• High-Potential Leaders: Accelerating Your Impact — Develop the strategic perspective required of global leaders, learn to manage uncertainty and execute your vision, and establish a firm personal foundation that can withstand the pressures of leadership.
• Leading Organizational Change — Examine the complex interpersonal and strategic issues involved in successfully spearheading change. Gain frameworks and perspectives on leading change and apply them to your unique business challenges.
• Leading Today’s Talent: Management Strategies for an Evolving Workforce — For today’s leaders, navigating how to build and manage a team has proven more important and challenging than ever before, and attracting, motivating, and retaining talent is no longer a function reserved solely for HR. Staying ahead of the curve now requires both an evolved skillset and deep understanding of best practices, emerging trends, and technologies. This program equips participants with the proven skills required for successful people management — but through the much-needed lens of the ever-shifting future of work.
• People Management for Emerging Leaders — This program offers a practical approach to the basics and more challenging aspects of assuming a supervisory position. Explore hiring and retention, succeeding through others’ success, managing difficult team contributors, legal and ethical issues, project management, handling interpersonal conflicts, motivating your people day to day, and more. People Management for Emerging Leaders is the ideal introduction or refresher for all those entrusted with leading a team to success.
• The Neuroscience of Business: Innovations in Leadership and Strategic Decisions — Learn how to apply neuroscience principles and technology in your organization to shape and improve marketing, design, management, leadership, team building, finance, and innovation.
• Women on Boards: Building Exceptional Leaders — Explore how to navigate the politics and culture of the boardroom, and discover how to make your voice heard in this program that will give you a strong foundation for serving in your first director role.

As a leader in finance education, Wharton offers a strong selection of in-depth programs led by distinguished faculty. If you want to strengthen your knowledge of finance and financial management in today’s economy, this is the track to take.

Select from any of the following live online or on-campus programs^*:

• Advanced Corporate Finance — Determine when to take on debt, offer equity, or do a combination of both when making capital structure decisions. Examine how valuation models change when making financial decisions.
• Assessing Commercial Real Estate Investments and Markets — Discover how to add commercial real estate to your client’s or institution’s diversified investment portfolio. Become more discerning evaluators of real estate investment partners and opportunities in the U.S. and globally.
• Corporate Valuation — Learn how to evaluate the financial implications of strategic business decisions through financial modeling. Become more effective at communicating the consequences of financial decisions to your organization’s key stakeholders.
• Distressed Asset Investing and Corporate Restructuring — Learn how to assess the long-term value of and investment opportunities in companies that are financially distressed. Become knowledgeable about the integral roles that business managers, professional investors, and banking advisors can play in restructuring corporate debt.
• Family Wealth Management: Advanced Financial Strategies — This program offers advanced strategies to manage financial assets while addressing diverse family needs, empowering advisors to capitalize on a growing market.
• Finance and Accounting for the Non-Financial Manager — Learn how to use financial data to make business decisions and to evaluate your firm’s performance. Examine core concepts of finance and accounting in a straightforward, easy-to-grasp manner.
• Fixed Income and Credit Market Investing — Fixed income investing and risk management have become more important as near-zero interest rates fade into memory. Though the market presents challenges, these new fixed income products offer an attractive opportunity for investment. Wharton Finance Faculty and industry experts combine academic research with proven strategies to empower participants to engage in fixed income investing and risk management.
• Investment Strategies and Portfolio Management — Develop investment portfolios that generate the highest return for your level of investment risk. This program provides a solid foundation for building optimal portfolios and effective tools for making better investments.
• Mergers and Acquisitions — Our interdisciplinary faculty and industry speakers help you select, assess, and evaluate potential opportunities. Examine acquisition strategy, valuation techniques, tax issues, due diligence, and post-acquisition integration.
• Pricing Strategies: Measuring, Capturing, and Retaining Value — Gain new approaches for achieving maximum value and increasing your firm’s bottom line. Learn about the specific challenges facing various industries, including pricing new products, short lifecycle products, dynamic pricing, and bundling products and services.
• Private Equity: Investing and Creating Value — Gain exposure to the strategies that private equity firms use to structure and finance a deal and create value for their investors. Understand the key drivers in private equity and gain confidence in evaluating investment opportunities.
• The Wharton Family Office Program: Financial Prosperity and Family Harmony — Learn insights on family office management for ultra-high-net-worth family members and individuals.
• Venture Capital — Learn how to evaluate venture capital investment opportunities and do due diligence that will uncover pitfalls and mitigate risk.
• Wharton Finance for Executives — Demystify the process of creating shareholder value; gain techniques to evaluate the financial impact and value of strategic decisions; and explore issues such as capital structures, diversification, and risk

Wharton’s faculty is comprised of some of the world’s best thought leaders, who will teach you how to identify and devise strategies that will successfully lead your company through change.

Select from any of the following live online or on-campus programs^*:

• Analytics for Strategic Growth: AI, Smart Data, and Customer Insights — Gain an in-depth understanding of new forms of customer data, advance your ability to forecast customer behavior based on identified data patterns, and acquire the skills to formulate concrete recommendations that leverage your findings to drive successful outcomes.
• Business Model Innovation in the Age of AI — Learn how to unlock significant opportunities for adding value and growth by innovating with your existing products, customers, and markets. Implement a process for business model innovation that can be used repeatedly throughout your organization.
• Corporate Valuation — Learn how to evaluate the financial implications of strategic business decisions through financial modeling. Become more effective at communicating the consequences of financial decisions to your organization’s key stakeholders.
• Effective Execution of Organizational Strategy — Identify and understand your own negotiation style and that of others to negotiate more effectively. Learn transformative techniques and acquire practical tools and frameworks that will improve your ability to negotiate both inside and outside your organization.
• Generative AI and Business Transformation — Discover the technology, platforms, and large language models of Generative AI and identify opportunities for strategic and practical business applications. This ground-breaking program is led by world-renowned experts from AI at Wharton, the academic research center founded in 2019 by The Wharton School, one of the first business schools to develop thought leadership on integrating AI into organizational transformation.
• Global Strategic Leadership — Discover how you can formulate a global strategy for your organization and learn how to execute it with speed and agility.
• The Neuroscience of Business: Innovations in Leadership and Strategic Decisions — Learn how to apply neuroscience principles and technology in your organization to shape and improve marketing, design, management, leadership, team building, finance, and innovation.
• NEW! Leading an AI-Powered Future, Featuring Reid Hoffman — Join Wharton’s Leading an AI-Powered Future program, a live online executive series in partnership with LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman. This six-session program helps leaders unlock the potential of AI, focusing on empowering workforces, ethical integration, and driving innovation. Learn directly from Hoffman and Wharton’s AI experts to cultivate the skills needed to lead AI transformation and create a future of enhanced decision-making and opportunity.
• Leading Digital Transformation — Shift your mindset from traditional thinking on product- or service-based value creation and competition to a platform and ecosystem perspective, and understand the new set of strategic choices and tradeoffs they represent.
• Managing Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystems — Gain the tools you need to overcome many of the inherent obstacles that occur when expanding into new markets or developing new products.
• Mastering Innovation: Strategy, Process, and Tools — Become the catalyst for company-wide change when you learn how to construct the architecture that drives innovation in an organization.
• NEW! Net-Zero Transformation — Drive your company’s net-zero journey with this live online program. Led by Wharton and UPenn experts, this hands-on, research-backed course provides the tools, strategies, and frameworks to execute your sustainability goals. Engage in live online sessions, self-paced learning, and case studies to master carbon measurement, regulatory frameworks, and new revenue streams. Empower your business to lead the way to a sustainable future.
• Scaling Business for Profitable Growth — Resolve the key challenges companies face when trying to grow rapidly as they transition from tactical, short-term thinking to a long-term focused vision. Learn how to move beyond the startup phase to create a large enterprise of tremendous value.
• Strategy and Management for Competitive Advantage — Learn to accurately assess the competition, design a compelling strategy, leverage your firm’s capabilities to full advantage, and obtain necessary resources through alliances, acquisitions, and internal corporate ventures.
• Strategies for Accountable AI — Learn to navigate the legal, ethical, and business challenges of AI, mitigating risks and maximizing benefits. This comprehensive program offers practical frameworks for managing AI’s complexities, including accuracy, risk, transparency, and privacy.

If your professional goals are varied, consider designing your own CPD and customizing your executive education experience to achieve these goals. You can choose a combination of any four programs in our open-enrollment portfolio, from the specialized tracks as well as from our Marketing programs portfolio.