Daniel Kaiser
Senior Vice President
CUNA Mutual Group
Dan Kaiser wasn't necessarily sold on executive education before taking a class in Business Marketing Strategy at the Kellogg School. "I chose Kellogg based on its reputation," he says. "I tried executive education at two different schools before trying Kellogg, but the first class I took at Kellogg was the best experience I've had. I liked it because of the rigor. In the corporate world today, the stakes are higher and you need that level of executive education to keep up and to go faster than the others."
After taking the Business Marketing Strategy class, Kaiser was interested in more executive education, but it would have been difficult for him to pursue other classes if he were limited to classes lasting four to five weeks. The flexibility of the Executive Scholars Program gave him the opportunity to take several interrelated classes over the course of a year. And each of the classes added to Kaiser's knowledge of the business world.
"I liked the fact that the classes were very relevant to the thinking I have to do in this company," Kaiser says. "The lectures were tremendous. The professors seem to do a nice job of exploring business challenges. They take the current hot topics and tie them back to the context, that is, the larger set of strategies. They're merging the thinking from a more strategic perspective with what's going on in business today. I work in the insurance industry, but even the particular issues that don't involve issues in our industry involved business dilemmas that have tremendous application across the board.
"The program helped me bring the latest thinking on subjects and tie that back to other companies and how they handled it," he says. "The students were engaged: they raised issues in classes, they shared experiences. They were open, talkative, and in business situations similar to mine. Through all the classes, I was getting actual feedback from other students - tips, good suggestions, or just good discussions. You're not likely to find a peer in your own company who is dealing with the same problems you are. But when you're with someone in another company who is dealing with the same issues that you are, it becomes an experience that connects you to your world, and that's very powerful."
Having finished the program, Kaiser finds himself at a new level in his company. "Just having four classes - independent of the content - sets a pretty high bar for the others in the company," he says. "The intensity of development models a level of commitment to knowledge, effort, and personal development for a lot of others in our company."
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