Career Acceleration Modules

Business-to-Business Marketing. (6.0 hours)
Participants in the Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing module will prepare for careers in brand management, sales, and sales management. The module includes learning firsthand the current best practices in B2B marketing through intense interaction with B2B company executives at every level. Career activities will focus on skill set practice and application through developing B2B marketing strategies, relationship management, strategic pricing in a competitive marketplace, sales force and distribution management, and negotiation. 

Brand Management. (6.0 hours)
The “Customer-Driven Decision Making” module focuses on preparing students for careers in marketing management, primarily in product and brand management for consumer goods (B2C marketing.) The module is organized around the structure and content of a basic marketing plan, with the goal that students will develop a rich understanding of the tools and frameworks of product or brand management as they are applied in the contemporary customer-driven organization.

Corporate Finance.  (6.0 hours)
The module in Corporate Finance is designed to prepare students for careers in corporate financial decision-making, consulting, and financial analysis. The module aims to develop students’ understanding of financial analytical tools and to improve students’ ability to interpret and analyze issues typically faced by corporate controllers, treasurers, CFOs, and their staffs.
Entrepreneurship. (6.0 hours)

The Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses module. (6.0 hours)
This module focuses on three things: The creation, financing, valuation and management of both smaller enterprises and new businesses; Working with or managing the smaller enterprise or family business, and thoroughly understanding the strategies and structures of investing and financing through both Venture Capital and Private Equity sources. Students prepare business plans and complete entrepreneurial internships with local companies. This module incorporates continuous participation by Executive Partners and community business leaders.

Enterprise Engineering. (6.0 hours)
The Agile Enterprise considers the current turbulent business environment where managers must negotiate highly disruptive technologies, globalization, hyper-competitive markets, shrinking product life cycles, increased product variety, increasing regulation, and new organizational and collaborative structures.  This Module is intended to provide students with an integrated set of practical skills and experiences, from an Operations and Information Technology standpoint, that will allow them to take a leadership role in the design and operation of flexible, responsive value-creating activities that are capable of surviving and flourishing in this highly dynamic business environment. 

Financial Markets. (6.0 hours)
The Financial Markets module will focus on developing successful careers in investment banking or related financial services by learning through interactions with current business leaders. Participants will practice and apply the skills needed for careers in investments and financial services by exploring the public equity offering process, private placements, securitization, acquisitions, corporate restructuring, research-driven sales, and trading.

Consulting. (6.0 hours)
The Consulting CAM will focus on the major components of consulting to include:

1) how to respond to request for proposals (learn skills for eliciting, specifying, and validating proposal requirements), 2) making presentations to clients, 3) conducting effective organizational diagnosis/analysis to include the development and use of various consulting tools (face-to-face-interviews, facilitation of focus groups, survey questionnaire, analyzing archival data,  preparing for and giving feedback and asking good questions), 4) effective client relationship management (contract setting, negotiation, effective collaboration and partnering, executive briefings, and so on), 4) developing and successfully implementing, in cooperation with clients, consulting projects (change plans), 5) evaluating change consulting efforts (develop metrics that assure improved consulting performance), and 6) completion of final consulting reports. 

The course will rely on case analyses, guest speakers who are experts in consulting, and on-site visits to various consulting firms to learn first-hand how they conduct their consulting engagements and run the business side of the firm.  The CAM will also provide students with opportunities to work on consulting projects on the W&M campus, in the local Williamsburg Community and participate in a real-world Change Management/Consulting Simulation.  Finally, the consulting CAM will serve as a bridge to student's upcoming work in their Field Consultancy course