Leeds’ Career Impact Initiative shapes the leaders of tomorrow
A world-class program is a game changer for preparing graduates for long-term career success.
Today’s business landscape features an accelerating rate of technological advances, increasing interconnectivity and interdependencies, and expanded diversity of many kinds. The stakes for navigating this environment are high for established companies, growing ventures and employees alike.
To get in front of these changes, the Leeds School is rolling out innovative enhancements to its undergraduate and MBA business core curricula, advanced communication skills workshops, expanded experiential learning opportunities, an internship accelerator, upgrades to its best-in-class mentorship program and a growing partnership with the College of Engineering and Applied Science.
This focus on quality is producing results. The undergraduate program ranks in the top 6 percent of business schools nationally and the MBA program in the top 15 percent. Placement rates of Leeds students consistently surpass 90 percent within three months of graduation.
Now Leeds is embarking on a new aspiration: creating a world-class career impact program that will become a hallmark of the Leeds graduate.
The Career Impact Initiative takes a long-term approach to educating the next generation of business leaders. While initial placement rates of graduates are important, the ultimate goal is ensuring that graduates are on an accelerated trajectory over the course of their careers.
The Leeds advantage
Leeds boasts a key asset that other business schools can only envy: outstanding academic excellence combined with a world-class business community at its doorstep, recognized globally for being innovative, entrepreneurial and focused on creating economic and social impact. Under the leadership of Dean Sharon Matusik, Leeds is committed to building deep and mutually beneficial partnerships with business communities across the region and around the globe, harnessing their insights in the educational experience Leeds provides for its students.
It starts with listening
Over the past year, Leeds engaged in conversations with more than 70 key business leaders and influencers from around the country to ask what the future looks like in their fields and what it will take to lead in that future. The focus of these discussions was not what employers currently look for in recent graduates, but rather what it will take to lead the business world of the future. These insights form the foundation for how Leeds is driving forward its mission to positively transform the future of business through the Career Impact Initiative.
Key insights that came out of these discussions include the importance of:
- Communication skills
- Leading amid uncertainty
- Resilience
- The drive for results
- Emotional intelligence and empathy
- Teamwork
- Experiential learning
By mapping these insights onto the undergraduate and graduate experience, Leeds is preparing its students not only to respond to change, but to embrace and lead that change. The result of the Career Impact Initiative is an extraordinarily well-qualified pipeline of Leeds graduates. This initiative will amplify the positive placement of students and the career success of graduates long term, raising the school’s reputation and leading even more talented students to seek a Leeds education and for top employers to turn to Leeds for their hiring needs.
What’s next?
The Career Impact Initiative models the continual learning and innovation that Leeds imparts to its students. With each new enhancement, Leeds will systematically assess effectiveness and adopt improvements. Continuing to listen to the business community and soliciting input on how the world is changing will enable Leeds to continue preparing the forward-thinking leaders of the future.
