Rigorous exploration. Honest ambitions. Your next chapter, defined on your terms.
You've left a full-time career — or you're close. And somewhere in that transition, a question has surfaced that your career never asked you to answer:
Who are you, when your title no longer defines you?
It's not a small question. And it doesn't resolve on its own.
This is not a retirement program.
ELI was built for people who don't use that word — people who are post-career but far from finished, who have more to contribute but are no longer willing to contribute on someone else's terms. People who want their next chapter to be honest. Purposeful. Theirs.
What that looks like is different for everyone. You may want to lead, advise, create, or engage. You may want to stay relevant or give back, but at a scale and in a form that actually fits your life. ELI doesn't tell you what your ambitions should look like. It gives you the tools, the framework, and the space to figure that out yourself.
The program
Over five months and three immersive on-campus modules, ELI brings together a select cohort of accomplished post-career leaders at the Yale School of Management. Led by Yale SOM faculty, domain experts, and professional coaches, the program combines rigorous inquiry, individualized coaching, and peer engagement to help you move from open questions to committed action.
This is not a weekend retreat. It is not a lecture series. It is sustained intellectual work—designed for people who have already succeeded by conventional standards and are ready to bring that same attention to the questions only this phase of life can ask.
About the Program
What to Expect
- A revised self-narrative that articulates who you are and what you stand for beyond your career
- A next-chapter strategy outlining how you will direct your time, energy, and resources over the next one to three years
- Experiments already underway — moving your intentions into action before the program ends
- Frameworks for contribution, difficult conversations, and leading without the authority your title once provided
- A peer cohort committed to continued intellectual engagement and mutual accountability
Who Should Attend
You may arrive with a clear direction you want to pressure-test. You may arrive with only questions. You may want to change the world, or you may simply want to stay sharp, stay engaged, and build something that feels true to who you are now.
All of that belongs here.
What ELI asks is that you arrive ready to do serious work—and be willing to let that work surprise you.
You should apply to ELI if you are:
- In or approaching the post-career stage of life, having stepped away from full-time work
- Actively redefining your purpose and identity beyond your career, and ready to treat that work as a genuine priority
- Looking for structured space and guidance to reflect on your values and align them with what comes next
- Ready for a serious commitment and seeking clarity on what that commitment looks like and what it can produce
- An experienced leader who is committed to using your wisdom, curiosity, expertise, and skills toward a meaningful next chapter
- Hungry for a community of like-minded, intellectually curious peers who share similar challenges and aspirations
Curriculum Pillars
1. Clarity for Your Next Chapter: Identity doesn't dissolve at the end of a career — it demands reconstruction. Through evidence-based frameworks, narrative inquiry, and individualized coaching, you'll develop a rigorous account of who you are and what you're building next.
2. Understanding and Shaping Society: Informed contribution begins with informed understanding. Drawing on Yale SOM's research and faculty expertise, you'll engage seriously with the forces reshaping society and develop principled frameworks for deploying your resources with intention and impact.
3. Creative Expression and Immersive Experiences: Intellectual life extends beyond the classroom. Guided encounters with Yale's art, architecture, and cultural collections cultivate close observation, comfort with ambiguity, and the kind of integrative thinking that serious reinvention requires.
4. Building Connection for Your Next Chapter: Meaningful connection is a discipline, not an accident. Through structured peer engagement, facilitated reflection, and shared intellectual experience, you'll build a cohort defined by genuine trust, rigor, and mutual accountability.
Faculty Director
Paige MacLean
Lecturer in the Practice of Management
Read the full bio
Paige MacLean is a lecturer at the Yale School of Management (SOM) and a fellow at the Yale Program on Social Enterprise, Innovation, and Impact. She offers a class at SOM that examines high-impact approaches to philanthropy. Drawing on a wide network of philanthropists, foundation leaders, and philanthropic advisors, the class brings leaders in the field to the classroom to discuss and debate timely issues and case studies. Paige is also the faculty advisor to the Social Impact Consulting Club and the Golub Capital Board Fellows Program, which gives students the opportunity to serve as non-voting members of area nonprofit organizations.
Paige is also an independent advisor to individuals and families who are looking to develop a philanthropic approach that is both personally meaningful and socially impactful. She collaborates with her clients to develop a philanthropic vision and direction, which can take various forms, including traditional philanthropy, impact investing, and other innovative means of creating social change. Leveraging over 20 years of experience in organizational and board leadership, strategy consulting, and fundraising, Paige facilitates meaningful connections between her clients, fellow donors, and high-impact initiatives and leaders tackling today’s most pressing challenges.
She began her career at The Boston Consulting Group and later joined Wellspring Consulting, a mission-driven firm founded by former BCG partners to focus exclusively on nonprofit strategy. From 2010–2021, Paige served as the founder and executive director of AF Accelerate, a division of the Achievement First charter school network. In this role, she was responsible for launching and scaling Achievement First’s “open source” strategy to support traditional districts and charter schools in adapting and adopting the network’s instructional model and practices. Over 11 years, Paige grew AF Accelerate from a pilot project to an independent division that supported over 40,000 students across the country annually, and ultimately spun off as two independent nonprofits, LEAP Educational Consulting and Accelerate Education.
Paige serves as chair of the nominations committee for the Yale School of Management Alumni Advisory Board and sits on the Advisory Board of the Fund for Women and Girls at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. She is the past chair of All Our Kin, an organization that has scaled nationally to support high-quality, sustainable family child care businesses. Paige also served on the first open call evaluation panel for Yield Giving, MacKenzie Scott’s foundation, which awarded $640 million to 361 nonprofit organizations.
Paige received her MBA from the Yale School of Management and her BA from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, with a certificate in Afro-American Studies. After graduating from Princeton, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach in the former East Germany shortly after German reunification.
Faculty
Faculty and lecturers are subject to change.
Zoe Chance
Senior Lecturer in Marketing
Read the full bio
Dr. Zoë Chance is an award-winning Yale professor and bestselling author who travels the world to share the science of good influence. She helps people lead teams, negotiate deals, change policies, run for office, find love, and even (sometimes) influence their kids. Her international bestseller Influence Is Your Superpower has been published in 28 languages. Zoë’s work has influenced Google’s global food policy as well as climate policy negotiations at the United Nations and in the White House. She’s an alum of Harvard, Haverford, and USC; and before academia, she managed a $200 million segment of the Barbie brand at Mattel. Outside of Yale, Zoe teaches workshops and coaches executives at Fortune 500 companies and sustainability-focused nonprofits.
Stephanie Dunson
Lecturer in Management
Read the full bio
Stephanie Dunson is an award-winning scholar and a collaborative process specialist whose experience spans the academic and business worlds. Over her thirty-year career, she’s gained an international reputation as a writing process expert, leading workshops at major universities (Yale, George Washington University, University of London), speaking at leading colleges (Amherst, Wellesley, WPI), and coaching faculty from top programs (Johns Hopkins, Brown, University of Lausanne). Her development as a team thinking expert is grounded in her work as a consultant for the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking and continued within academia through her tenure as Director of Writing Programs at Williams College.
She was drawn to corporate work because of persistent interest from the business world, where the same challenges and objectives her approach addresses in academic settings are relevant—are in fact pressing—at all levels of management: the need to get groups of people to collaborate critically on resolving complex problems, the necessity of getting individuals to move past common attitudes and assumptions to uncover original ideas of substance, the urgency of making allowances for and making meaningful use of diverse and even divergent viewpoints, and the rewards of cultivating a culture of inquiry, support, and respect that encourages substantive change.
Her earlier work as an American Studies scholar garnered awards from the Ford and Mellon Foundations, and her scholarship on race representation has most recently appeared in Beyond Blackface: African-Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture. But for the past five years, she’s focused her energies primarily on working as a corporate facilitator and advising faculty at the Yale School of Management. She also hosts the podcast 100 Mistakes Academic Writers Make…and How to Fix Them and has been featured in a promotional film for reMarkable.
Laurie Santos
Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology, Yale University
Read the full bio
Dr. Laurie Santos is an expert on the science of happiness and host of The Happiness Lab podcast. Her Yale course, "Psychology and the Good Life," teaches students how the science of psychology can provide important hints about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. Her course recently became Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years, with almost one out of four students at Yale enrolled. Her course has been featured in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, GQ Magazine, Slate and O! Magazine. A winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching, she was recently voted as one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” young minds and was named in Time Magazine as a “Leading Campus Celebrity.” Her podcast, The Happiness Lab, has over 100 million downloads.
David Tate
Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine
Lecturer, Yale School of Management
Read the full bio
David C. Tate is a licensed clinical psychologist, professionally certified coach, and organizational consultant. He is Principal at Tate Consulting Group, a boutique consultancy that focuses on executive coaching and leadership advising, team design and development, family-owned and closely held enterprises, and promoting healthy organizational development. David has worked with leaders and senior managers in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, distribution, publishing, media/design, education, technology, and construction.
David is an Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at Yale University, where he received the 2013 Distinguished Faculty Award. He is a Lecturer at the Yale School of Management, where he teaches within both the graduate and executive education programs. He also coaches global leaders within the Yale Greenberg World Fellows Program. He is an author of Sink or Swim: How Lessons from the Titanic Can Save Your Family Business and the forthcoming book, Conscious Accountability: Deepen Connections, Elevate Results.
David received his BS at Cornell University and his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Virginia. He completed pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at Yale University before joining the faculty. He earned a Certificate in Family Business Advising from the Family Firm Institute, where he is a Fellow. He is a graduate of the Executive Coaching Academy and has completed additional coaching certification through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. He earned the designation of Professionally Certified Coach from the International Coach Federation.
Application Information
Program Details
ELI consists of three in-person classroom modules at the Yale School of Management spread over five months.
Program dates
Virtual Orientation: January 21, 2027
Module 1: February 1 - 5, 2027
Module 2: April 5 - 9, 2027
Module 3: June 7 - 11, 2027
Location: On campus
Program Fee: $38,000 - Fee includes lodging and most meals.
Contact: Joanne Legler, Senior Director of Learning Partnerships
How to Apply
Application opens June 2026.
Application Closes: December 7, 2026
Interested applicants must submit:
- A current résumé or CV. This can be uploaded as either a PDF or word document to the application form.
- Short answers to the following questions
- Thinking about the years ahead, what questions, possibilities, or areas of exploration are you considering? What kinds of roles or forms of engagement are you curious to explore, even if they're not yet fully defined?
- What draws you to participate in a structured program at this stage (rather than exploring these questions on your own)?
- What unique perspectives and experiences will you add to the cohort, and bring into conversations with others?
Before you apply, please review the information on this page related to program dates, fees, and on-campus attendance requirements to ensure you are able to fully participate in the program.
We suggest you apply as soon as possible to ensure that if admitted, you have sufficient time to prepare for your participation in the program. If admitted, you will be required to submit the program fee within 30 days of admission to secure your seat.
There are no previous formal education requirements for admission. Acceptance is subject to the approval of the Yale School of Management Executive Education Admissions committee. Proficiency in written and spoken English is essential for the completion of course assignments and active engagement.
If you have any questions about applying, please contact Joanne Legler, Senior Director of Learning Partnerships.
Program Fee Assistance
Yale SOM Executive Education offers a 15% reduction in program fee for:
- Those who work in the nonprofit sector. (Apply NONPROFIT code at time of registration.)
- Those who work in government. (Apply GOV code at time of registration.)
- Yale University alumni. (Apply YALEGRAD code at time of registration.)
- Groups of 3-6 participants. Groups can be from an organization or be self-formed.
- Those who have previously participated in a Yale Executive Education program with Yale SOM or 2U/GetSmarter.
Discounts cannot be combined.
Refund & Cancellation
Refunds are allowed for live online and in-person programs if requested in writing to the Yale Executive Education Registrar. The Yale Executive Education Cancellation Terms are as follows:
| Request for change in registration/cancellation | Refund provided |
|---|---|
| 30 days, or more, prior to Program start date | 100% Program Fee Refund Provided |
| 15-29 days prior to Program start date | 50% Program Fee Refund Provided |
| 14 days, or less, prior to Program start date | No Refund Provided |
Yale reserves the right to cancel or reschedule programs if enrollment is deemed insufficient or health and safety would otherwise be jeopardized. Yale School of Management is not responsible for any travel or incidental costs incurred by a registrant if a program becomes canceled. If a program is canceled by Yale, a full refund of fees paid will be processed within 30 days.
While it is our goal to deliver our programs as scheduled, we may postpone programs, deliver them online, or cancel them. If one of our programs has a scheduling change, we will notify those affected as soon as possible.
Webinars
In the News
It’s Boomtime for College Reinvention Programs, Next Avenue
Navigating Your Next Act: A Guide For CEOs, Chief Executive