The First Mandel Social Leadership MBAs Graduate
The First Mandel Social Leadership MBAs Graduate
January 6, 2014
Business & Management, Negev Development & Community Programs
The first class of BGU’s Mandel Social Leadership MBA Program recently celebrated its graduation in Beer-Sheva.
Part of the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, this program was created as a result of years of planning, reflection, redirection, and innovation among leading minds to create just the right interdisciplinary degree program in management for social change.
The first graduating class of BGU’s Mandel Social Leadership MBA Program
The Mandel Social Leadership Program includes what the Guilford Glazer Faculty’s dean, Prof. Oded Lowengart, refers to as an “unusual amalgamation” of disciplines comprised of social leadership, philanthropy, business management, and public policy.
As such, this unique MBA program is proving in its first years to be a frontrunner. “Our program, firmly and expressly placed among the top departments of business and management, is developing into an exemplary one that leading international lecturers and academic institutions are taking an interest in,” says Prof. Lowengart.
Along with Prof. Lowengart, the graduation was attended by such dignitaries as Beer-Sheva Mayor Ruvik Danilovich; Mandel Foundation Director Moshe Vigdor; BGU President Prof. Rivka Carmi; BGU’s Rector Prof. Zvi HaCohen; and the University’s Vice President for External Affairs Prof. Amos Drory, who was dean of the business faculty when this innovative program was being developed.
Also in attendance was Prof. Chaim Adler, a groundbreaking researcher in the area of social change through education who serves a consultant for Mandel Foundation programs.
The inspiring graduation ceremony featured a group presentation, “Act of Leadership,” given by the graduates themselves, and was emceed by a representative of this pioneering graduating class, Efrat Oppenheimer.
“The Mandel Social Leadership MBA at BGU never allowed us just to be good people. It never allowed us to ‘just’ be MBA students; it never stopped demanding of us that we be more, much more. Despite the fact that the high expectations frighten us, they also spur us to succeed. It is your expression of your faith in us,” says Oppenheimer.
Students from the second class of the social leadership program are currently in North Carolina at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy’s Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society for their five-day final seminar, “Between Leadership and Social Leadership.”
This seminar is part of the curriculum, each year exposing the students to leading lecturers of the field in a different country, in addition to the regular curriculum of visiting lectures who come to BGU from around the world.
The second cohort will graduate in May 2014 with an equal level of commitment to change the world as the first cohort.
Stories Like This
