IE Brown Executive MBA students blend humanities and management at Brown University Providence, R.I. (Brown University) October 3, 2014 | Media Contact: Courtney Coehlo| 401-‐863-‐7287 An accomplished group of mid-‐career executives returns to Brown University this week to continue their progress through the IE Brown Executive MBA program. These students are mid-‐way through this 15-‐ month program that helps them broaden their perspectives and advance their careers as business leaders. During this week at Brown, the students will prepare for an intensive January 2015 experience in Cape Town, South Africa with a screening of Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing, a full length documentary film about gifted African singers who study at the formerly all-‐white opera school at the University of Cape Town (UCT). They will explore through discussion with Julie Cohen, the filmmaker, and Kamal Khan, head of the UCT Opera School, the power of art to change perceptions and to transform organizations and lives, and consider their upcoming engagement with businesses in the Cape Town Townships. The integration of the humanities with management sciences is central to the IE Brown EMBA and is the reason many students choose this unique program. They recognize that creating enterprise success depends on a better understanding of the cultural and historic context, and value the multidisciplinarity of the program and the diverse experience of their fellow students. While in residence, the IE Brown EMBA students will work with Brown and IE faculty on financial management, political economy of emerging markets, operations and supply chain management, globalization of the arts, and other courses. They will refine the business plans they developed as teams and pitch these innovative concepts to a group of experts at Betaspring, a Providence-‐based start-‐up accelerator. Joining them as judges from Brown will be Brendan McNally, Associate Director of the Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations program, and Jason Harry and Alden Richards from Brown’s Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME) program. After this session at Brown, the students will continue their studies online, attend another residential session in Madrid, and graduate in May 2015 ready to make a difference. Brown University and IE Business School Founded in 1764, Brown University is the seventh-‐oldest college in the United States. Brown is an independent, coeducational Ivy League institution comprising undergraduate and graduate programs, plus the Alpert Medical School, School of Public Health, School of Engineering, and the Executive Master of Healthcare Leadership and the IE Brown Executive MBA programs. Brown is a leading research university that maintains a commitment to exceptional instruction. Its vibrant, diverse community consists of 6,000 undergraduates, 2,000 graduate students, 400 medical school students, more than 5,000 summer, visiting and online students, and nearly 700 faculty members. Students come to Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, from all 50 US states and more than 100 countries. IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, is consistently ranked as one of the best business schools in the world. Founded in 1973 as an independent, post-‐graduate institution, IE has earned a reputation as an innovative, entrepreneurial school offering a range of management programs in undergraduate, masters and doctoral studies, MBA and executive education. IE has transformed management education with practice-‐oriented programs, by incorporating the humanities into business education, and using blended learning that combines online and face-‐ to-‐face interaction. More than 40,000 IE alumni hold management positions in 125 countries.