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Executive MBA Curriculum

Develop the Executive Perspective You Need for What Comes Next

The 18-month Executive MBA program, redesigned for Fall 2026, strengthens your ability to lead across the enterprise. You learn to interpret complexity quickly, make decisions with confidence, and connect financial, operational, and people insights to strategy.

You move through five integrated themes that tie directly to the work you manage every day. A six-course leadership development sequence and individualized coaching help you shift habits, communicate with more precision, and lead with stronger presence. Your cohort challenges your assumptions and broadens your perspective.

You leave ready to influence the direction of your team, your organization, and your career.

What Sets Your Learning Experience Apart

Integrated & Applied Learning

You learn through themes that connect strategy, finance, operations, technology, and leadership. Each theme builds on the last, and every course gives you tools you can use right away in your role.

Leadership Development

You complete a six-course leadership development sequence supported by individualized coaching. You strengthen your habits, improve your communication, and lead with more clarity in real situations.

Global Perspective and Insights

A culminating global residency broadens how you see markets, organizations, and leadership. You compare approaches across cultures and return with insights that shape your strategic thinking.

Program Timeline

Schedule: One in-person weekend each month, Fridays and Saturdays from 8 am to 5 pm, with flexible online coursework in between.

The in-person sessions give you consistent engagement with your coursework and space to collaborate with peers from a range of backgrounds and industries. You learn from their perspectives as much as your own, building confidence and capability in a setting that reflects the realities of senior leadership.

Executive MBA program schedule

Executive Modules

With 42 total credits across five themes, the curriculum helps you think across the enterprise and lead in more complex environments. Each theme strengthens a different dimension of executive judgment, from foresight and decision-making to global operations and strategic transformation.

Module 1: Lead with Ethical Judgment and Foresight

This module builds the foundation for the Executive MBA by strengthening ethical judgment, self-awareness, and long-term thinking. You examine how forces such as AI and other emerging technologies are reshaping organizations and leadership expectations, and how executives evaluate opportunity and risk while accounting for people, values, and responsibility.

3 credits

In Foresight and Digital Transformation: Strategic Applications of Emerging Technologies you’ll build fluency in AI, blockchain, immersive, and converging technologies while developing foresight skills to spot disruption early and shape strategic responses. Working on a specific business challenge from your firm or industry, you’ll use environmental scanning and content curation to identify relevant, valid, and actionable insights for horizon planning. Then, you’ll leverage GenAI to envision possible futures, anticipate unintended consequences, and integrate ethical frameworks before backcasting to actionable and responsible strategies for today. By the end, you won’t just understand emerging technologies, you’ll foresee their trajectory, align them with strategy to solve high-stakes problems, and create shared value for business and society.

3 credits

Students will develop a deeper awareness of important ethical business issues, learn analytical frameworks and practical tools, and gain experience in identifying and dealing with the ethical dimensions of organizational issues and actions from a stakeholder perspective. Questions to be considered: How can managers and leaders understand and make effective decisions about ethical problems, conflicts and dilemmas that surface in organizations? How can managers and leaders build trust and integrity within their organizations? Should an organization help the world in which it lives? What is an organization’s interest in social justice, virtues, principles and values?

2 credits

Executive Leadership Development (ELD) consists of 6 courses that weave together experiential learning, group learning, coaching, and deep self-reflection to help you identify and develop your individualized leadership strategy. The courses explore the personal, social, and professional challenges of leading people in complex organizations. A premise is that leaders must take responsibility for their own development and that leaders who do so will be more effective. In this course, you will explore your leadership motivations, values, strengths, and challenges. ELD will provide ideas, tools, individual reflections, and peer support teams to help you develop, implement, and refine your leadership style, competencies, and purpose.

Module 2: Master the Drivers of Executive Decision Making

This module builds the business fluency executives rely on to make informed decisions. You learn to interpret financial statements, analyze markets, understand what drives performance, and strengthen your judgment when pressure and uncertainty are high. You apply data and AI-supported insights to test assumptions, model scenarios, and make strategic choices you can stand behind.

1.5 credits

This course introduces Executive MBA students to the principles of financial accounting and external reporting and prepares them for the 3 credit course “Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting for Executives. Students will learn how to read, understand and interpret financial statements. As the students will learn the basics of balance sheets, Income statements and statements of cash flow. Designed for non-financial managers, the course prepares students for deeper integration of accounting in strategy, operations, and marketing courses in the executive MBA program by introducing the accounting and financial terminology of accounting and finance. Ethical aspects of accounting are included.

3 credits

This course familiarizes non-financial professionals with financial statements, accounting terminology, and analytical techniques. Students understand how organizations use information gained from financial accounting systems in decision-making, planning and control, and performance evaluation. Topics covered include reading and understanding financial statements, application of accounting data to solving managerial problems, and strategic implications and limitations of both data and accounting systems.

3 credits

This course offers a managerial approach to the study of strategic market decision making. It will examine the basic principles of marketing and their use in developing an optimum marketing mix. It will cover such topics as market planning; segmentation an d target marketing; channels of distribution; consumer behavior; competitive analysis; pricing, demand analysis and forecasting; promotion, sales management; and product decisions. The course is designed to build a conceptual foundation for understanding and analyzing marketing situations. You will learn a managerial approach to applying marketing principles to practical marketing situations.

3 credits

Decisions we make define who we are and what we stand for. Complex decisions in an ever-changing environment demand an integration of creative, critical, ethical, rational, strategic, systems and consilient thinking by the decision maker. This course explores the impact psychology, philosophy, science, mathematics, statistics, theology and technology will and have had on our ability to do the integrative thinking that leads to designing the metrics that insure the correct facts and data have been measured, the information created has moral and intellectual integrity, that positively influences the receiver of the information, and the decision makers and the organization’s knowledge base continues to expand.

1 credit

Module 3: Manage the Core Levers of Enterprise Performance

This theme helps you understand how organizations actually work and what it takes to support both performance and people. You learn how financial choices, culture, and team dynamics influence outcomes. You gain practical tools to lead teams, influence culture, and connect financial value with human needs. You leave this theme with a stronger ability to manage day-to-day realities inside a business while building long-term value.

3 credits

Focusing on the financial management of doing business in a global environment, this course covers risk, return, evaluation, cost of capital, capital budgeting, long-term financing, capital structure theory, financial analysis and planning, and working capital management.

3 credits

This course examines fundamental theories about how people behave in organizations, and why. Drawing from a well-developed system of knowledge in the social sciences, students will consider organizational behavior from three perspectives: Understanding yourself and others at work, creating effective team relationships, and managing organizational human systems. Topics include leadership, motivation, conflict, influence, and culture.

The management of organizational behavior has been the subject of much study resulting in a well-developed, sophisticated system of thinking and analysis for assessing organizational issues and choosing a course of action. In this course, you will learn about these systems of thinking and analysis as well as the complexities of applying them in a world where people differ in their values, beliefs, and needs. As part of this process, you will be challenged to question your assumptions about people and organizations and to develop a broader and more sophisticated perspective on the leadership and management of organizational
behavior.

1 credit

Module 4: Operate Confidently in Global and High-Risk Environments

This theme expands your perspective beyond your own team or business unit. You learn how global supply chains, operations, and legal requirements shape decisions at the executive level. You study how risks emerge and how to prepare for them early. You finish this theme with practical skills to lead in complex environments, design resilient systems, and make decisions that support stability and growth.

3 credits

This course provides an introduction to the management operations, with special emphasis on Process Improvement using Lean Six-Sigma and strategy execution. It focuses on the role of the operations function in the success of achieving business excellence across the enterprise. The course will explore a variety of issues related to the design of operational systems and their connection with other functional and business strategies. The course will provide a multifunctional perspective on problems and opportunities in such decision areas as: Process improvement through Lean Six Sigma, project management, quality management, and how high performing operations can improve financial performance. Students will also explore and discuss emerging technologies as a component of the course. A major focus of the course will be for students to apply concepts and tools from the course in their own organizations.

3 credits

This course examines the intersection of supply chain management, technology, and global systems in today’s rapidly evolving business environment. Executives will learn how to leverage digital tools, emerging technologies, and integrated systems to build agile, resilient, and globally competitive supply chains. Special emphasis is placed on leadership in technology deployment, cross-functional collaboration, strategic alignment, and managing change across organizations. Students will analyze global case studies, assess disruptive technologies, and develop frameworks for aligning supply chain strategies with broader business goals.

3 credits

This course provides Executive MBA students with an understanding of the legal environment of business and its implications for strategic decision-making. Designed for senior leaders, the course explores how legal frameworks shape managerial choices, corporate governance, negotiation, and business competitiveness. Core topics may include contracts, torts, product liability, intellectual property, employment law, corporate structure and governance, consumer protection, data privacy, negotiation, and regulatory compliance. International issues will be considered throughout the course.

1 credit

Module 5: Drive Innovation and Long-Term Direction

This final theme helps you bring everything together in one applied, future-oriented term. The Global Residency gives you a wider perspective on how organizations operate around the world. You then focus on innovation, change leadership, and strategic management, learning how to shape the future direction of an organization. You end the program with the skills to reshape an organization, guide transformation, and make decisions with a clear sense of impact and direction.

This international experience explores how cultural, economic, political, and societal forces influence business decisions. You spend 7 to 10 days abroad examining global markets, leadership practices, and organizational strategy in real-world contexts.

1.5 credits

This course for business professionals, executives, directors, managers, and consultants focuses on how to create and support innovation within established organizations in the business vertical. The course examines how managers affect the nature and rate of innovation through organizational culture, structure, communication, reward, and control systems. Emphasis is on how individuals initiate, launch, and manage innovation within existing organizations.

1.5 credits

This course prepares executive leaders to design and execute organization-wide change as a core capability for strategy execution and innovation. Students learn frameworks and methods for assessing readiness, aligning stakeholders, shaping culture, and managing transformation portfolios. Through cases, simulations, and live applications, they practice building a compelling case for change, sequencing initiatives, managing risk, and measuring impact to create durable competitive advantage.

1.5 credits

This course equips students with the essential analytical frameworks and strategic thinking skills needed to formulate and execute winning strategies in today’s dynamic business environment. Designed for experienced managers, the course builds the capability to craft enterprise-level strategies that create sustainable competitive advantage. Students will develop proficiency in strategic analysis, competitive positioning, resource evaluation, and implementation planning, while applying principles across diverse organizational contexts. Students will be able to evaluate resources, markets, and opportunities, anticipate and respond to technological disruption, and weigh the financial implications of strategic decisions.

1 credit

Get in Touch

Connect with our team to talk through your goals, your experience, and whether the St. Thomas Executive MBA is the right next step for you.

Jose Sanchez, assistant director, recruiting & admissions, sanc3346@stthomas.edu
Kate DiAna, senior program director, kddiana@stthomas.edu
Soren Hoeger-Lerdal, associate director of student services, sorenhl@stthomas.edu