Photo: Dominic Agostini
Joan Martinez Evora, the academic director of UM's Global Executive MBA program, says the program targets senior business leaders who are seeking a "career trajectory and the ability to communicate across disciplines."
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Marina Lopez, Director of Global Solution Management, Avnet
MBA Programs
Tackling Global Challenges
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI | GLOBAL EXECUTIVE MBA
Marina Lopez enjoyed all the benefits of a global MBA program without leaving home.
The University of Miami’s Global Executive MBA program attracts executives and senior managers from all over the world — Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, the Caribbean, Spain, Germany, Israel, India, to name a few — as well as from the United States.
Lopez, the director of global solution management at Avnet in Miami, at first set her sights on a global MBA program abroad, but UM’s program checked all the boxes not only because of the mix of students but the courses were globally strategic and culturally relevant. “I’ve been working in the technology industry my whole life, and getting an MBA was a good opportunity to get exposed to what’s going on in other industries,” she says. “I was also looking for that global perspective, and what I appreciated the most were the discussions on current topics and real-life business cases.”
Lopez’s team in the U.S. and Europe engages with Avnet’s enterprise customers to understand their needs and match those with her company’s capabilities to build solutions for them. In her MBA experience, the contract negotiations knowledge was “super beneficial because I’m negotiating contracts every day.” Global operations professors shed light on managing supply chains, an issue she faces regularly. In Lopez’s international role, the global MBA helps with “understanding where (customers) are coming from, their cultural background and also the different regulations and business norms.”
Joan Martínez Evora, a UM business law professor and academic director of the Global Executive MBA program, says that is all by design. Students meet weekly for a live online class and then all come together for three-day residencies at the Biltmore and the UM campus in Coral Gables every other month, with longer residencies at the start and end of the cohorts. Lopez’s 2021-22 cohort of 14 students still informally meets virtually monthly to share strategies and lessons learned.
“The program is targeting senior business leaders who are in a position to influence their organizations but are looking for a career trajectory and the ability to communicate across disciplines. We equip them with the tools,” Martínez Evora says. “It’s really diverse in terms of backgrounds and disciplines, and that’s the richness of our classroom discussions.”
Courses are taught by a team of professors with an interdisciplinary approach. For instance, the high-performance leadership module features professors from management, accounting and finance. The Global Executive MBA also offers C-suite panels during residencies where Miami business leaders discuss strategies, trends and challenges, and that also affords networking opportunities.
“We have the global component in every delivery. You see (the global component) in the way we approach learning, and teaching, and research,” Martínez Evora says. The program also addresses an array of global issues, such as sustainability and social responsibility, supply chain meltdowns and doing business with China. “We are trying to tackle these global challenges through an enriching curriculum and our connection with Miami, an exciting multicultural, international city.”
