Yale School of Management and The Chief Executive Leadership Institute Team Up to Create a New Alliance in "Peer-Driven" Executive Education

New Haven, CT, July 12, 2001 --- Where do the world's most prominent chief executives go when they want to learn from each other? CEOs from Michael Dell to Sumner Redstone to Quincy Jones would likely say, The Chief Executive Leadership Institute (CELI), a combination think-tank and corporate management education center. Starting this summer, CELI joins forces with the Yale School of Management to offer the first University-based peer driven leadership education program for America's top executives.

Both Yale SOM and CELI share a common goal of preparing corporate chieftains, government leaders, and nonprofit gurus for global leadership. Both programs bring distinguished scholars and real-world leaders together to explore broad academic frameworks and current business concepts, and both are pioneers of collaboration, teamwork, and consensus building. Last month, the Wall Street Journal ranked the Yale School of Management #3 in the world, citing its graduates' exceptional ability to work well in teams as well as their analytical and problem solving skills.

With the new partnership, CELI will bring Yale faculty and students into a closer learning partnership with prominent leaders across sectors. At CELI forums, chief executives, faculty, and students will be encouraged to join in rapid-fire debates -- a mainstay of the CELI approach to executive education. In addition, the business school will benefit from deepened corporate ties and corporate interest in sponsored research projects.

"We expect breakthrough research to reach influential policy makers, and in turn, we expect theoretical ideas will be subject to field testing," noted Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder, president & CEO of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute, whose roster of participants reads like a Who's Who of Top CEOs and Scholars. "Other programs run events to market services to CEOs or offer basic training to newly minted leaders; our forum is different because we are the only ones bringing advanced learning to experienced leaders."

"Both the Yale School of Management and the CELI have as their missions educating leaders for business and society. The interaction of the world's top business executives with our students and faculty will be a wonderful formula for education that furthers this goal," said Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean of the Yale School of Management.

On the immediate horizon is a New Haven-based conference scheduled for October 10 and 11, 2001 on "The Lessons of Great Legacies." Like all CELI conferences, the fall invitation-only workshop will be limited to 100 attendees. Among those attending are U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao; Rajat Gupta, Managing Director-Worldwide of McKinsey & Company; Cathleen Black, President of Hearst Magazines; James Kelly, CEO of UPS; John Eyler, CEO of Toys R Us; Jean Firstenberg, head of the American Film Institute; Jeffrey Koplan head of the Centers for Disease Control; and Marsha Johnson Evans, head of the Girl Scouts of America. Top scholars from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Dartmouth, INSEAD, and other leading universities will also participate.

New Funding

Since the merger, over a million dollars of new seed money has been raised, including $750,000 ($150,000 for five years) from Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus; $250,000 from The UPS Foundation; $100,000 from former UPS Senior Vice President of International Operations, Donald W. Layden; and $50,000 from former Kidder Peabody CEO Albert H. Gordon. Other new financial sponsors include: Toys R Us; Netbank; Odyssey Partners; Raymond James CEO Thomas James; Deloitte & Touche; The Chubb Corporation; State Farm Insurance; retailer Alfred Goldstein; John Weiland Homes; and Theragenics. In the past, Marcus has donated $1.5 million to CELI while UPS has donated $3 million. The UPS Foundation's generous donation of $250,000 will allow heads of non-profit organizations to attend as sponsored guests dubbed "UPS Fellows."

Biographical Sketches

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Associate Dean of Executive Programs at the Yale School of Management and the Founder, President & CEO of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute in Atlanta. He teaches Leading Strategic Change in the Yale MBA program. Previously, he was a professor at Emory University where he founded the CEO College, which he directed for eight years. Sonnenfeld spent ten prior years as a professor at the Harvard Business School. Sonnenfeld is widely published in such journals as: Administrative Sciences Quarterly; The Academy of Management Journal, and The Harvard Business Review. He serves on the editorial boards of: The Academy of Management Journal; The Journal of Occupational Behavior; and the Journal of Human Resources. He is the author of The Hero's Farewell (Oxford 1989).

Jeffrey E. Garten is Dean of the Yale School of Management and William S. Beinecke Professor in the Practice of International Trade and Finance. He writes a monthly column for Business Week on major challenges facing global business leaders. His new book, The Mind of the CEO, is based on interviews with 40 global CEOs. It focuses on the role that corporate leaders will need to play in the world economy, the constraints on them, and the implications for global growth and stability. Prior to coming to Yale, he was the undersecretary of commerce for international trade in the first Clinton administration.

For an interview with Sonnenfeld or Garten, contact Media Relations at the Yale School of Management, 203-432-6010