Growing Into an Executive Role While You Keep Working
- Executive AI Program or MBA After 15 Years in Senior Management?
- Two Directions to Becoming an Executive
- Building Credibility for a Senior Role
- Experience, a Degree, or an Executive Program
- Skills That Keep a Senior Career Moving Toward the C-Suite
- How The Wharton Leadership Program in AI Works
- Questions to Ask Yourself Before Choosing a Route
- Common Questions About Growing Into Senior Leadership
You grow into an executive role while you keep working by building evidence of broader leadership: cross-functional results, an enterprise-level point of view, and current knowledge. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI gives nontechnical senior executives with at least 10 years of work experience current AI knowledge, part-time and alongside the role. Its capstone also gives you an AI implementation strategy for your own organization, which sharpens your point of view on where the business should go.
Executive AI Program or MBA After 15 Years in Senior Management?
If you have led in senior management for 15 years and want to grow along the path you already lead, an executive AI program fits that stage better than returning for an MBA. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI is built for nontechnical senior executives with at least 10 years of work experience. It runs for six months at approximately four to six hours per week, so you keep your role while you build AI and data fluency, and its capstone has you develop an AI strategy for your own organization. An MBA serves a different aim: a broad business foundation or a significant change of direction.
 Senior appointments still rest on what you do in the role: outcomes you deliver across teams, leadership through other managers, and a clear account of how your area contributes to the wider business. The program is designed to sit alongside that work and feed it, with a capstone built on a real decision inside your organization.
Two Directions to Becoming an Executive
Every senior professional reaches a point where the next step is either a deeper or a broader executive role. Deeper means becoming the person the organization relies on for a specific capability. Broader means taking more responsibility for outcomes that other people deliver.
Deeper brings authority in a field, and senior roles can be built around that expertise.
 Broader brings scope: a larger team, a budget, and a seat where decisions are made.
 A useful test is where your best achievements come from. If they come from solving the hard problem yourself, depth is likely the stronger route. If they come from seeing a team solve something you set up, breadth is. Either way, choose deliberately and build toward it.
Building Credibility for a Senior Role
Senior appointments are made on evidence of readiness, and three kinds carry the most weight: outcomes delivered across teams, a clear point of view on the business, and current knowledge in the areas reshaping it. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI builds the third directly and gives you material for the second.
- Outcomes across teams: Show where you brought several functions together to deliver a shared outcome.
- A clear point of view: Explain what you would change in the business and why, drawing on your experience and the needs of the wider organization.
- Current knowledge: In fields shaped by data and AI, structured learning helps you assess new capabilities and their business implications. In Wharton’s program, you apply that learning through a capstone that ends in an AI implementation roadmap for your organization, something you can put in front of your leadership team.
Experience, a Degree, or an Executive Program
Experience, a stretch assignment, an executive program, and a full degree each build something different, and many leaders combine them over a career. For a senior leader who wants to keep working, an executive program such as The Wharton Leadership Program in AI adds current frameworks and a global peer network without pausing the career that experience is building.
| Route | Typical commitment | What it builds best |
| Experience in the role | Continuous | Judgment, relationships, a track record |
| A stretch assignment | One to two quarters | Scope and cross-functional credibility |
| An executive program | Several months, part-time | Current frameworks, external credibility, and a peer network |
| A full degree, such as an MBA | One to two years, often full-time | A broad foundation or a change of direction |
 Experience remains the foundation. A degree supports a significant change of direction; an executive program supports growth in the direction you already lead.
Skills That Keep a Senior Career Moving Toward the C-Suite
Four capabilities carry a senior career toward the C-suite: enterprise thinking, decision-making under uncertainty, leading through other managers, and fluency in data and AI. Broader responsibility and stretch assignments develop the first three. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI develops the fourth, teaching you to identify where AI creates value, align it with enterprise strategy, and navigate its governance, legal, and ethical considerations.
- Enterprise thinking. Understanding how your area connects to strategy, finance, and the customer.
- Decision-making under uncertainty. Acting on incomplete information and explaining your reasoning clearly.
- Leading through other managers. Setting direction for people who run their own teams.
- Fluency in data and AI. Judging where AI creates value, what data and infrastructure it needs, and how it should be governed.
AI fluency is where structured learning helps most, because the field moves quickly. The program pairs its core modules with integrated live webinars on the latest generative AI developments.
How The Wharton Leadership Program in AI Works
If you are a general manager or other senior leader guiding AI-related decisions, the Wharton Leadership Program in AI is built for that work: you learn to evaluate AI, machine learning, and analytics through a strategic business lens while you stay in your role. No technical or coding background is required. The curriculum covers leadership-level perspectives on machine learning, data governance, legal and ethical considerations, AI-driven business strategy, and workforce transformation, at approximately four to six hours per week over six months.
 The program opens with 15 weeks of core modules that combine self-paced online learning with faculty-led live sessions, followed by a required six-week short course, Leading and Managing High-Impact Teams. Live session recordings come with video chapters and transcripts, and an optional two-day recognition ceremony and networking event brings participants to the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia to meet cohort peers and faculty in person.
 Throughout, you build an AI implementation strategy for your own organization through six structured capstone checkpoints. You identify a high-value decision point, conduct a cost-benefit analysis of applying AI, determine the data and technological infrastructure your solution needs, and outline the job transformation and employee training it requires. You finish with an actionable road map for AI adoption.
 The program requires a minimum of 10 years of work experience and is designed for senior executives, C-suite leaders, emerging leaders, and innovation champions. Completion earns a Wharton Executive Education digital certificate. The program also provides one credit toward the six required for Wharton’s General Management Program, which, subject to further qualification criteria and additional tuition, gives you a pathway to apply for Wharton alumni status.
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Questions to Ask Yourself Before Choosing a Route
Before choosing between experience, a stretch assignment, an executive program such as the Wharton Leadership Program in AI, or a degree, a few questions clarify which route fits your next step.
- Which direction energizes you more: deeper expertise or broader responsibility?
- Which part of the next role have you already practiced, and which have you not yet had the chance to?
- Does your organization offer a stretch assignment that would build the missing part?
- Is your field changing fast enough that current knowledge is itself part of the case for promotion?
- How many hours a week can you protect for learning over the next six months?
“My favorite part was the interactive live sessions. I enjoyed hearing the topics shared by our instructors, who provided links to real tools we can look at and try. I enjoyed hearing from industry personnel who have been effective in the field using this technology and humbly shared the good, bad, and the ugly. I enjoyed listening to my classmates and the banter in the live session chats as well.”
– Katherine Walker
Associate Director, RTX
Common Questions About Growing Into Senior Leadership
If your aim is broader responsibility along the leadership path you already hold, choose the executive AI program: it builds AI and data fluency while you keep working. An MBA fits when you want a broad business foundation or a significant change of direction. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI is designed for nontechnical senior executives with at least 10 years of work experience and runs part-time over six months.
Yes. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI is structured to fit alongside ongoing professional commitments, at approximately four to six hours per week. It runs six months rather than 12 weeks: 15 weeks of core modules, then a required six-week short course on leading high-impact teams. Some modules include a required faculty-led live online session, and recordings come with video chapters and transcripts.
The certificate counts most alongside work your leadership can see. Senior appointments draw on outcomes across teams, an enterprise-level point of view, and current knowledge. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI builds current AI knowledge, and its capstone has you develop an AI implementation strategy for your own organization that you can bring to your leadership team. Completion earns a Wharton Executive Education digital certificate.
Choose a nontechnical, leadership-level program that develops business judgment about AI, governance, and organizational change, with learning applied to your organization. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI requires no coding background and covers AI-driven business strategy, data governance, legal and ethical considerations, and workforce transformation. Its capstone has you develop an AI implementation strategy for your organization.
It is worth it when it changes the work you do, not only your profile. In our Wharton Leadership Program in AI, you learn in faculty-led live sessions with cohort peers and build an AI strategy for your own organization. Past participant Wagner Fernando Turri, Sales Director, OEM Asia, at Hypertherm, put it this way: “After completion and by having a capstone project, I felt more capable of having some deep discussions within my organization and among industry peers on the opportunities for AI to leverage sales efficiencies.” The program also provides one credit toward Wharton’s General Management Program, which, subject to further qualification criteria and additional tuition, offers a pathway to apply for Wharton alumni status.
Four capabilities: enterprise thinking, decision-making under uncertainty, leading through other managers, and fluency in data and AI. Broader responsibility and stretch assignments develop the first three. The Wharton Leadership Program in AI develops the fourth, focusing on where AI creates value, how it aligns with strategy, and how to govern it responsibly.
