Student Stories

Dustin Brown

Working in family's real estate business

I loved being able to learn the material through real examples and have found that this sort of learning makes the content stick much better in my memory.

Reading a balance sheet was completely alien to me. Since taking Financial Accounting, I’ve been keeping track of my company’s annual reports, and the accounting that I learned helps me in understanding where the business may head in the future. I’ve also been tracking a few other companies for investment purposes, and I’ve realized that I can make more informed decisions with my improved knowledge of company financials.

David Luna

U.S. Diplomat and National Security Official

Today, I am applying this new knowledge to continue to make a difference in the world, develop innovative strategies and technologies, and more vibrant partnerships toward collective action to solve some of today’s complex global challenges.

Lauren Hall

Part-time MBA student working in energy efficiency

A year after finishing CORe, all three courses have been invaluable in my first two quarters in business school. I'm able to get more out of it because I have the fundamentals.

My favorite part of Entrepreneurship Essentials was the financing and equity module. It taught me the basics of how to look at spreadsheets and make sense of them—one of the most vital things for any company or start-up to understand.

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.

CORe Student Testimonial

Hear what students are saying about the Credential of Readiness (CORe).

Paige Peterson

Sales Manager, Western US at Coravin, Inc.

I have already applied so much of what I have learned. My strategy and message for my team and how we communicate with our customers has begun to shift.

…it was a great experience being able to interact with so many intelligent students all over the world…it's a perfect combination of teaching from the professors and help from all of your classmates.

Monica Higgins

Public relations Account Director who took Management Essentials to augment her management knowledge with a practical, case-based approach.

Being able to break down real-life scenarios, and look at the management processes within each—what worked and what didn't—provided a unique method of learning, and incomparable to other course offerings available.

So much of the business world is about working with others to accomplish a common goal; knowing that your peers were rating your participation and reading your contributions was truly compelling.

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.

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.

Mihir Desai was able to bring a relatively dry and inscrutable page of numbers to life in a highly engaging and interactive way. He has a great teaching style: clear, sharp, entertaining, and challenging. Mihir was able to truly engage our leaders of all levels of financial experience on the key levers of performance and how this applies to their own businesses.

Daniel Dietzel

CEO of Aphrodite

In Global Business, we learned about currencies, exchange rates, and tariffs, and it helped a lot. It’s one of the reasons Aphrodite supports 50 currencies now.

CORe is something completely different from any online course. It captures the key components of a live classroom and makes it possible for classmates to interact and help one another.

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

Learning from Professor Wheeler is a once in a lifetime opportunity. A superb teacher, he shows students how to become masterful negotiators.

Reagan Weeks

The course provided tangible and tactical strategies that can be immediately implemented.

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.

Economics for Managers gave me a new lens to look at the business world using common economics concepts, such as demand-supply curves, elasticity, equilibrium, markets, and pricing.

[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].

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.

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.

Fabian Ibekwe

Founder, Angelus Consulting and Research Limited

I'm applying things I learned from the courses every single day.

Abby Katz

Abby Katz is a Senior Marketing Manager at Mavrck, a Boston-based influencer marketing software company.

I found the content of the course to be extremely informative and applicable to the real challenges of being a leader. I loved the frameworks and the case study model of the course, and I thought the course was very manageable on top of a full-time job.

Farsh Askari

Community Manager

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.

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.

Sophie Pan

Senior Analyst at a media group

CORe will challenge you to stretch yourself. But if you put in the hours and the hard work, it will prove to be an extraordinarily rewarding experience.

Riya Dashoriya

Engineering Manager at Quizlet

The real-world examples were the best part of the courses. While going through the examples, I thought a lot about how I would have handled it if I were them. That plays a big role in how I do things now.

Maggie Robb

Head of Operations at Spire Inc.

While I have a deep business background, I was not well versed in several important aspects of entrepreneurship like investment structure, fundraising, and valuation. Entrepreneurship Essentials covered these topics well and I was surprised at some of the additional takeaways I had.

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.

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.

Armin Rezaiean-Asel

Computer engineering student using CORe to enhance his software initiatives

I enjoyed being able to interact with motivated, ambitious learners from all over the world. Furthermore, the course content and platform were extremely engaging, combining the best of pedagogy and technology.

Jingning Ao

Jingning Ao, Space Tourism researcher and PhD student at Middle Tennessee State University

After summarizing what I learned from this program, I introduced finance in a 90-minute class to junior and senior college students in order to show them different ways of doing business plans in the leisure and sport domains.

Cebisa Ncube

Design Thinking and Innovation Participant

This course is excellent for executives and managers who constantly grapple with finding new ways to make their work impactful and useful for their target audience.

I believe that CORe helped prove to prospective employers, as well as myself, that I understand the fundamentals of business.

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.

Bernardo Castro

Student & Entrepreneur

I was pleasantly surprised by how informative, applicable, and helpful the course was. Its interviews and content were great, and the teaching method’s social element was a refreshing way to learn.

Robbee Minicola

Director at Microsoft

Within five days of finishing the course, I had a plan of action for a major part of our business and presented it to our corporate executive. It applied the theories of the customers' Job to be Done and caused us to re-think our strategy to get the customer to “hire” us over the competition.

Raymond Porch

Employee in Boston Public Schools who took Management Essentials to develop and improve his managerial skills.

My favorite part of the program was interacting with my cohort members where I received valuable shared experiences, feedback and was able to be a thought partner around strategies and best practices in varying scenarios.

I thought I knew the subject relatively well and it would be a refresher. I was in for a surprise. After the first module, I realized that I did many things wrong. The most chilling thought was about missed opportunities. The course is giving me a good structure to understand organizational behavior.

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.

Morten Lindholst

Vice President Global Talent & Leadership Development

HBS Online has a real integration of knowledge, resources, and community. It offers immersive online learning, the best industry cases, and input from actual executives at industry-leading companies. In a nutshell, HBS Online allows us to meet our business needs in real time.

Suzanne Linton

I loved every minute of the program, and it was such an eye-opener. The cohort teams were excellent; the content was exciting and kept you wanting to learn more. I would recommend this to any leader wanting to further their skill set or leadership skills.

The collaborative environment encourages you to help your peers learn and will help you become engaged in the material. It's not an easy program, but every ounce of effort you put into CORe will yield results in your understanding of the complex world of business.

Saad Hashmi

Associate Corporate Relationship Manager at HSBC Bank Middle East Limited

In an ever fast-changing world, it is important to keep abreast with how people around the world tackle finance-related issues and the experiences they go through.

The course surpassed my expectations…I actually regret not having more time to fully utilize all the optional features!

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 pieces from the 20th and 21st centuries.

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

Chase Thomas

The CLIMB program has been an absolute game-changer for me. From refining my leadership skills to sharpening my strategic thinking, every module pushed me to grow in ways I didn’t expect. I walk away from CLIMB not just inspired, but equipped with the tools to make a real impact.