Student Stories

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.

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.

Natacha Godoi

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This program…created so many “ah-ha” moments for me. Even if you've taken similar courses before…CORe walks you through the way of seeing these subjects through the eyes of a manager. It was truly an amazing experience!

Natacha

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

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.

This course was impactful especially using case studies of real-life situations to solve complex and confusing problems. The results of this will help improve my managerial decisions within and outside the organizations to minimize risks and increase profits

The highlight of the program was the content. From the videos with guest business executives to the interactive elements to the way we're continually tested via cold calls, CORe keeps you engaged through and through.

This was an awesome way to get your feet wet in the world of business. I think that the courses were well-designed so as to maximize the impact they have on your real-world outlook.

Sheneka Balogun

A higher ed professional from Nashville, TN

CORe has provided me a dynamic understanding of how to measure and understand those outcomes. I can now confidently translate statistical data into a graphical presentation or employ different statistical techniques to help me better understand the pulse of student progress.

I immediately applied the concepts…I highly recommend the program to students who always had an interest in business and economics but never had the time to devote to course material in their traditional academic curriculum!

Suhaib Ibrahim

Project Engineer from Syria currently working in Chicago

CORe is not an ordinary online learning platform; it is an amazing learning experience that will probably surprise you (as it did to me).

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.

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.

Through CORe, I have uncovered a love for analytics, made valuable connections with people in several countries, and gained a strong foundation that will serve me well in MBA or PhD studies, which I am considering for the future.

Adriel Tjokrosaputro

A Global Masters in Management student at London Business School and Fudan School of Management

In no time, not only will you build fundamental knowledge of the business world, but also be a part of a community that you can fully trust.

Jocelyn Johnson

Working in Marketing/Social Media for an edtech startup in NYC

But in the few years I have been out of school, I have found that being able to understand key business principles is essential, especially in the startup world.

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.

This is now my fourth HBS online course that I have taken. I love the format that lets me learn asynchronously when I have time in my busy schedule. The HBS courses do a wonderful job encouraging interaction with peer learners which amplifies the learning. The HBS courses foster this peer engagement much more effectively than I have found in other online courses that I have taken.

Danielle Mitchell

Marketing and management graduate who took CORe to transition into entrepreneurship

I am applying what I learned in CORe every day!

Gaurang Manjrekar

Meet Gaurang, a CORe participant and avid football fan who is applying CORe to his day job and entrepreneurial pursuits.

Abhilash Sharma

Student and entrepreneur from India using CORe to learn about the business world

Each course provided distinguished knowledge and presented that in a beautiful manner.

If you have no formal education in business, this program will dramatically change the way you think…The combination of subjects covered will give you the fundamental knowledge to think deeper about what it takes to run a successful business, how to win in the marketplace, and how to make decisions as a manager.

Chirag Gandhi

Risk Analyst at Credit Suisse

The best part of CORe was its case-based approach to learning and retaining business fundamentals. No chapter in the entire curriculum had raw theory...It helped in challenging conventional wisdom with strong and practical, real life examples.

Economics for Managers was immensely valuable. Hearing from founders and seeing the power of network effects through various case studies helped me see market opportunities through an entirely different lens. The market knowledge I acquired helped me refine and expertly craft research reports.