Student Stories

Exceptional. It's about as good as online learning can get.

Pablo Stuardo

IT consultant using CORe to help further his career

Additionally, the program allowed me to acquire a more holistic view of the services we provide, and it is helping me develop new ideas to innovate and generate different sources of revenue.

Aranzazú Martínez Galeana

Aranzazú Martínez Galeana is a senior project coordinator at ERM, a provider of environmental, health, safety, risk, and social consulting services.

I got promoted to a senior project coordinator role just weeks after finishing the course, so I have had the chance to apply many of the topics covered.

Maggie Oh

An animator with dreams of starting her own company

I feel that I am no longer wary of entering into business conversations; my confidence has gone way up with regards to accounting, economics, and analytics.

Brooks Wallace

Public relations professional looking to learn about sustainable business practices

I now have a better understanding of sustainability and which companies are doing it right. I’m armed with talking points proving that sustainability is good for business, the environment, and its people.

Natacha Godoi

Meet Natacha, a CORe‬ participant who took the program to help advance her career in finance.

Erin Knight

Founder & Chief Product Officer at Flume

I feel confident and prepared by the ‘science’ of startupland while also appreciating—and being more prepared for—the art of it.

This was a class where you could contribute your opinion and hear from two participants who were on opposite sides of the debate, as well as the globe.

Sergio Carbone

Sergio Carbone is the President of SC Carbone, Inc.

This course delivered more value to me than I expected. It had high-quality information that applies to what I do.

April Chye

Project Manager for Bloomberg in Hong Kong

My favorite part would be Professor Anand's jokes in some of the videos. You'd have to watch pretty carefully (but you would since you have to take notes anyway), and they'd always make me laugh.

Elizabeth Narehood

Vice President of Technology at Region 2000 Business and Economic Development Alliance

I really appreciate how Professor Christensen introduced high-level complex theories and broke them down into digestible chunks. When applied to real-world examples, the concepts are brought to life.

Dave Nelson

Meet Dave, a Disruptive Strategy participant who took the course to improve his decision making.

Richard Pitts

Medical professional looking to learn about sustainable business practices

As always, the case studies are eye-opening. The content is superb, and the presentation of the case is superb as well.

Eric Black

Director, Production & Technical Operation at Scholastic Entertainment and Co-Owner of Lyla Tov Monsters

In my job at a publicly traded corporation, I have been able to change my viewpoint of daily goals and accomplishments. Instead of just completing tasks to achieve an end goal, I now look at that end goal and consider how it affects the company as a whole and if there are financial goals and benefits that will increase the value of the company.

Adriel Tjokrosaputro

Adriel, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, explains how CORe is different from other online courses he's taken and discusses how the fundamental business skills he's learned in CORe have helped him connect the dots between his interests in music, marketing, and live entertainment.

Professor Hammond is an outstanding and inspirational teacher. Her Business Analytics course helped to demystify statistics for me, rendering the subject matter approachable and appealing. The fabulous visualizations and graphics, combined with relevant and interesting case studies, brought the concepts to life in a stimulating and engaging way. Mastery of data analysis is critical for business success and I now feel confident that I have the foundations in place. I am looking forward to embracing this capability further in my career.

Danielle Dutervil Mubarak

A lawyer in NYC using her CORe knowledge to better serve her clients.

What really impressed me were my classmates - people from all over the world and from all backgrounds that were invested in helping each other.

Neeti Mathur

Assistant Professor of Management and Assistant Registrar (Placement) at National Law University in Jodhpur, India

The program is beautifully designed and has so much to offer. Professor Desai explains the concepts effortlessly and it’s easy to grasp and absorb them.

Trevor Tan

Commercial disputes lawyer working in London, U.K.

Already, knowing the fundamentals of business has deepened my understanding of the context and consequences of the commercial disputes I manage daily.

I was worried that the courses would move too quickly for me to master each concept, but the instructors, the materials, real-world case studies and the class interaction allowed me to truly understand the fundamentals of each…

HBS Online was an invaluable and essential education. The information provided, the quality of the presentation, and the high-level engagement among students surpassed my expectations.

Richard Pitts

Richard is a California-based Chief Medical Officer who is improving healthcare with CORe

I use my CORe training every day. Whether at work on in my private life, CORe was a paradigm-shifting event for me.

Mohamed Khalifa

Currently pursuing a Masters in Electrical Engineering at the University of Sheffield, UK

CORe is giving me that extra lens I was missing: how products, services and other contents are created, consumed and exchanged from a business perspective.

Sohaib Ahmed

Chief Operating Officer for an exam preparation company using CORe to gain fundamental business skills.

I just wanted to understand the fundamentals of several business domains well enough to navigate and delegate, while still having the flexibility to run my business and do other things. CORe was the perfect fit in this regard.

...it's beyond the value I could have ever expected for such a small investment, life changing

Daniela Fierro Touché

Daniela Fierro Touché is an Administration and Registration Analyst at the FEMSA Collection in Monterrey, Mexico, a Latin American art collection comprising of pieces from the 20th and 21st centuries.

I've been able to understand the macroeconomic policies that are being implemented by, and imposed to, my country, and the implications they have on our lives. This has equipped me with more tools to make overall better decisions. The course has been tremendously useful and eye-opening.

Willemijn van Woerkom

Amsterdam native Willemijn discusses the inviting and addictive nature of the CORe online course platform and how the business skills she's learned in the program are applicable to people of all backgrounds.

Peter LaBerge

Undergrad in creative writing who took CORe to help grow his poetry journal

I entered the CORe program with the assumption that business was binary in its reliance on creativity and science, on ideas and numbers. In reality, it’s simply not. There are numbers behind the most successful marketing campaigns, brand directions, and management decisions.

I found the overall CORe experience to be…eye-opening. Each of the courses took deep dives into companies of all shapes and sizes to exemplify how core business concepts are applied…CORe took the idea of learning business principles to the next level

Professor Sahlman’s careful observation of the best and brightest entrepreneurs over the last 30 years has given him a perspective and insightfulness that few others can rival. He keeps his students eager to dissect and analyze the situation and range of solutions.

Marc Zavarella

A US Army Veteran studying at Columbia University and hoping to pursue a career in medicine/healthcare

The principles I learned in CORe are fundamentally important to a successful business, and taking this program ensured that I mastered these concrete pieces of the puzzle.

Tadashi Abe

Special Forces Officer with a science background looking to pursue an MBA

In my opinion, the true value of CORe is the ability to interact and network with fellow CORe members.

…beyond mastering the basics of economics, analytics, and financial accounting, you learn Excel. For a philosophy major like me, to be able to put that on a resume…invaluable.

Daily, I use the accounting principles succinctly enumerated by Professor Narayanan. I especially use what I learned in the volunteer work that I do as a board member for two nonprofit organizations.

Mirza Mahmood ul Hasan

Chief Financial Officer at Alsulaiman Group

The course, through its excellent design, has given me an approach and the confidence to deal with disruption either as an opportunity or a business risk.

The excel I learned from Business Analytics has become useful as I started working as a data analyst for an economic research firm, BMI Research. The techniques I learned make it easier to comprehend the more complex functions. In addition, the integrated learning I took from the case studies allows me to apply “total analysis” in my everyday work and assessments, which is in fact the core business of my company.

As someone that does negotiations as part of my job, I found Professor Wheeler’s Negotiation Mastery course to be both thorough and valuable. This course provides fresh insight and best practices to help maintain ethical standards, while creating and claiming greater value in future negotiations: whether you will be buying or selling a home, getting a new job, working with international business partners, or anything in between.

Megan Valanidas

A designer who took CORe to understand the language of business.

It is really helpful as I apply for jobs to be able to demonstrate that I have the capability to consider economic constraints or opportunities.

Farsh Askari

Community Manager and Disruptive Strategy Participant

Learning about disruption theories has proven not only applicable within a business context, but broadly as a predictive prescription toward challenges in life as a whole.

The framework of Disruptive Strategy helps you to make strategic thinking something that you do every day, as opposed to an exercise to get a strategic plan put together.

Bharat Anand’s Economics for Managers course has proven to be the most influential for my career. Understanding the basic concepts of economics from the course really broadened my approach to various planning-related problems I tackle each day. My ability to identify details related to business efficiency and performance that I may have missed in the past was fine-tuned in the program, and my understanding of the business is now much stronger.

Andrew Buks

Instructor of Management & Business Policy and Strategy at the School of Business, Black Hills State University

I think it's the best online course on Sustainable Investing.

Tina Kamel

Design Thinking and Innovation Participant

Learning from an establishment like Harvard Business School and being in a cohort of people from all over the world from a variety of fields was truly monumental for me.

Kaushal Khodifad

Senior Systems Engineer at Infosys

The virtual, interactive platform was unique. I was continuously engaged with the course's material and learned a lot from my peers.

The platform was engaging, innovative, and allowed me to interact with the material in a way I never expected from an online course.

Kali Pfaff

Healthcare business operations professional and current MBA student

While I originally enrolled in CORe to determine if I wanted to pursue an MBA, I ended up using the knowledge I gained from CORe to interview for and land my current job.

Raj Desai

Tech entrepreneur developing mass-scale wifi solutions in India

It's like you're looking through the world with a completely different perspective altogether, yet it's so obvious. The dots were always there, and CORe made me realize the connections.

Tyler Sonsalla

PhD candidate studying molecular sciences and nanotechnology and interested in learning about utilizing sustainability within a business model

I enjoyed hearing from top executives of large firms and their sustainable initiatives. Additionally, speaking with individuals that lived in different countries was very enlightening. Lastly, I enjoyed the ability to complete at my own pace because I liked to step away and think about each question.

Enrique Garcia-Rivera

Enrique is pursuing a PhD in Chemical Biology and working to find cures for diseases like cancer. He plans to use CORe as a way to bridge the gap between his work in the lab and the funding and entrepreneurial support he will need to bring those discoveries to the public.