Clients and Testimonials

Here is a sampling of our recent Custom Program clients:

American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry American Society of Transplant Surgeons Anheuser-Busch InBev Aon BP Catalent Ernst & Young Eisai Pharmaceuticals Federal Bureau of Investigation General Electric Grupo Modelo Brewing Company International Paper

Kraft LM Ericsson Merck AG McDonald’s Corporation O’Melveny & Myers, LLP Philips Electronics Sony Ericsson Turner Construction Unilever United States Intelligence Community USG

• Ernst & Young sends its senior partners to the Kellogg School to help them understand business from the client’s point of view. E&Y can better serve its clients when partners understand the issues their customers face.
  

  “We’ve been working with the Kellogg School since the early ’80s. The custom programs help our leaders, our senior partners, to understand the different perspectives of a business. That’s strategy, governance, risk, marketing and finance — all the topics that drive the fundamentals of business. This helps us to do a better job, whether we’re auditing a company or providing another service, such as tax and transaction support. The Kellogg program is consistently the highest-ranked learning and development activity of our partners. The partners like it for the quality of the material, the quality of the instructors, and the relevance of the case studies to our business. It’s always a great learning experience on topics that are relevant to our people.”
  Vice Chair of Client Service, Ernst & Young
  

• Microsoft wanted Kellogg to help increase the marketing skills of Microsoft’s global marketing professionals.

  “We wanted to bring a professional development program to our global marketing group to increase their marketing competency. Working with Kellogg, we came up with courses that we offered to the global marketing community, designed to address areas of marketing competency, trying to improve their marketing skill-sets. We focused the training on improvement in areas where we had competency weaknesses.
  
  “We have eight marketing competency skills, which we assess every year. After two years, we surveyed those marketing people who had been exposed to the Kellogg training and those who had not. Those who had been exposed to the training had higher levels of competency in six areas. The others were pretty flat. We conducted more research, asking managers whether their reports were applying the training concepts from the Kellogg program on the job. Sixty-two percent were applying their learning on the job.
  
  “Every year, we sit down with Kellogg faculty and do annual planning on professional development. Kellogg has been instrumental in creating levels of change by offering new frameworks and new processes — things that apply on the job. With the Kellogg programs, we are seeding competency at the grass-roots level.”
  Senior Marketing Manager, Microsoft Marketing Professional Development Team
  

• Under the guidance of the chairman of the board, Motorola sent its hand-picked emerging leaders to Kellogg for the Chairman’s Leadership Institute. Participants gained competencies in managerial areas the company felt were important to its success.

  “I worked with Kellogg for three years, at which time I was responsible for oversight of the Chairman’s Leadership Institute. My experience was that the Kellogg team was extraordinarily easy to work with and was focused on meeting our needs and exceeding our expectations. The content of the courses was specifically tailored to meet the development needs of the leadership team, the emerging leaders at Motorola.
  
  “Why did we choose Kellogg? We had a basic belief that we needed a lot of training, a sense that we had weak business acumen in some areas. We had one of the lowest rates of conversion of patents into marketable products. And we were missing the basic marketing skills of understanding the market need for the product before the product is made.
  
  “Our executives found these programs to be of extraordinary value and usefulness. It raised their understanding and the skill level of advanced tools of strategic marketing. It deepened the appreciation for the nuances of financial valuation and the issues that impact stock price and financial valuation, and deepened the understanding of executive decision-making and the barriers to effective decision making.
  
  “Our people loved the program, and having many of the company’s leaders together in residence for two weeks with stimulating material gave us the sense that we’re all in this together.”
  Former Chief Learning Officer and President, Motorola University