Student Stories

Anita Umoh

Making the shift from the corporate world to entrepreneurship.

I loved the case study on Intuit and the Quickbook App. It was something I could relate to, and it helped me to understand and know that fear can be good because it fuels your passion to keep you moving forward.

This course had an amazing instructor, amazing examples, and an amazing user interface that made it easy for me to grasp the material and learn simultaneously with others around the world.

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.

Jemma Martin

Operations Manager at Daisy & Hen

Strategy Execution provides learners with tools and frameworks based on real-life business situations. This directly affects the value of the course, as the takeaways are applicable—not just theories you can learn in other courses.

Allie O'Hanley

Founder and Director of Rxhibition, a new nonprofit organization that curates, designs, and installs art exhibitions in chemotherapy treatment areas

I expected CORe to be much more of an overview. I never was expecting the depth that it truly delivered. I received a strong foundation to be confident enough to build my own startup.

The People, Opportunity, Context, and Deal framework is now in the back of my mind. Also, I have learned how to quickly assess and network with other companies and panelists at the hundreds of meetup events I've attended.

Sara Simon Pioger

Business Owner and Teacher

I am using some of the negotiation preparation techniques from the course in different aspects of my job. Overall I feel more confident in situations that might have once felt intimidating.

Michael Colletti

Working for a cutting-edge SaaS startup in Boston, MA

My goals also include applying the knowledge learned in this program to my professional life, really soaking it in, and learning from the experiences and perspectives of my peers in the course.

The academic rigor was thrilling. What made it extra special was the people I met through the experience. That community stays with me every day.

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

Natacha

Natacha explains how CORe is helping her advance her career in finance.

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.

Emilie Billaud

Emilie Billaud, Research Associate at Harvard Business School

The program gave me a framework and a great toolbox for the cases that I am currently developing.

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.

Kevia Croft

Current undergrad ready to begin her next chapter in the fin-tech industry with a competitive edge from CORe

I will be starting my career this summer in the fin-tech industry and I felt that this course would give me a competitive edge, and help me to better understand some of the decisions and practices that I may need on the job to better gauge my clients’ needs

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.

Sheneka Balogun

Meet Sheneka, a CORe participant who took the program in order to advance her career and to begin an Ed.D. in Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Kyle Rosenmeyer

Boise State University Graduate, Engineer, and Photographer

For me, that connection from textbook to reality made the courses memorable, enjoyable, and interesting. Case studies were absolutely my favorite part of the program.

Professor Wheeler's course gave me a new and profound perspective on negotiation. Whether I am trying to convince my daughter to go to bed on time, discussing a contract with a manufacturer, or organizing large scale military exercises with thousands of troops and dozens of aircraft - deftly employing the right negotiation technique can be the difference in success or failure.

Lisa Arpey

Executive Board Member, Chair of Committee for Education and Leadership at Ford's Theatre

The program expertly leads you through progressively more complex theories and analysis with a pace that keeps you challenged and engaged.

A few weeks into the course, accounting terminology came alive as I realized why accounting is the language of business. I can now talk confidently with clients and understand the business aspect of their problems.

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

My job is project-based, and I'm currently leading the operational functions of a system-wide IT implementation, a project that affects the daily work of a few thousand employees. Knowing how to read financial statements or look at data sets and understand them has helped me make major decisions on future state reporting.

Marcin Jasinski

An excellent course: world-class content, perfect delivery, excellent and diverse cohort, and finally wonderful collaboration with both the organizers and the class.

Shovna Panigrahi

Vice President of Asset Management at RMZ Corp

Getting the perspective of a problem from various departments brought more solutions to the forefront that could be explored.

Liz Taylor

An advertising account director in NYC applying CORe to better serve her clients

I honestly use something from CORe nearly every day. In general, I have a much better appreciation for my client's business.

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.

…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.

Sichao Ni

Commercial Attaché, U.S. Embassy Singapore

HBS Online doesn't teach you knowledge or prescribe to any cookie-cutter solutions to problems. Rather, it teaches you how to think about business problems and arrive at a solution yourself.

I can't say enough about the energy and motivation I gained from taking this course. I felt a renewed commitment to my life-long pursuits and left each class with introspective thoughts and ideas for my future.

I felt the course covered a good overall scope and understanding of healthcare economics and would be beneficial for anyone seeking or needing a greater understanding of the stakeholders and forces at work in the healthcare sector. This applies for those new to healthcare as well as those who have worked in the industry for long periods of time.

Yashvardhan Gusani

Design Thinking and Innovation Participant

I’ve taken many courses from HBS Online because they’re either directly applicable to my career (like this course) or can help me get to where I want to be. This particular course has been the best among them all.

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.

Amita Metkari

Mechanical Engineer looking to pursue an MBA

The program offers a perfect blend of three fundamental courses.

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.

Anindita Ravikumar

Working for a consulting firm to help design business models that serve low-income populations

Another aspect of CORe that greatly added to my learning was the diverse cohort I was able to interact with - the stories and instances from their lives added more color to each topic we learned.

Stefan Fijala

Director at Wacky Advisors

Sharing experiences and thoughts with other learners is the greatest value. Having so many smart people in one place with different cultures, habits, jobs, and education is a huge benefit. Take the opportunity to communicate.

Elizabeth Malkin

Working at a tech startup in Cambridge, MA

I spent much of my college career fervently annotating novels and loved every minute of it but knew that my focus post college was going to be business.

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

I was able to use Business Analytics when a project on truck optimization for my site came up while I was enrolled in the course. I was able to apply the statistical concepts that I learned during the course to create an optimizer tool for truck usage and scheduling at the mine. This tool resulted in significant cost savings, which was highly valued by the site management team.

[With Business Analytics], I discovered a new-found love of data analytics. I was fascinated to learn about ways we can use data to systematically seek an answer to a specific business question or predict the outcome of a scenario given past behavior. This new interest has motivated me to pursue a career in data science (a field that combines statistics, analytics, and business knowledge), which I have begun to work toward since I finished [the course].

Thank you for explaining concepts that I thought were impossible for me to ever grasp in such simple terms. The examples that Professor Desai chose to illustrate these concepts and the industry experts who give their thoughts and opinions has me eagerly looking forward to the time I spend on the course every day.

Amy Wallens Green

Senior Manager at WGBH Educational Foundation

I'd never taken any official coursework in negotiation. I was drawn to learning to master a skill that would help me in both my personal and professional life.

Barka Bassi

Business Strategy Participant

The idea that value can be scaled and influenced in a myriad of ways puts this course ahead, both in strategy formulation and implementation, as well as management development and learning.

Anastassia Nefedova

Working on a cloud-based product expansion in Central and Eastern Europe for Microsoft and based in Munich, Germany

My MBA was great, however, in five weeks we did not cover nearly as much content as with CORe, so this was a quintessential supplement.

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.

As an entrepreneur, mentor and educator, I can safely say that Harvard Business School Online has shown me the future of education. It is worth every penny and is definitely something I'd recommend to anyone looking to enrich their business education.

Dr. Patricia Hewston

Dr. Patricia Hewston is a post-doctoral fellow at the GERAS Centre for Aging Research in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University. Her research aims to optimize care pathways and develop tailored interventions for older adults with complex care needs.

Leadership Principles has helped shape my unique leadership style. One of the most influential lessons for my leadership development was the HBS four-step process for delivering effective feedback and coaching—a process that I now apply on a daily basis.

Lindsay Stanley

Non-profit fundraiser applying CORe to her career and using it as inspiration to pursue an MBA

Reflecting on my experience, I would say my favorite part was realizing that even though I studied the arts and have picked a career where I work for cultural institutions, I am just as capable as every other person of understanding and applying the subjects taught in CORe.

Bethany Larsen

An aspiring MBA student planning for a career in social entrepreneurship

Those skills are all very useful, but I think my biggest takeaway from CORe is a new perspective on complex business challenges. This lens has given me a more balanced perspective on sensitive topics like LIFO reserves, minimum wage, and drug pricing that will make me a more informed citizen and wiser leader.