VIETNAM EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP PROGRAM
A four-month formation journey designed to upgrade leaders into enterprise architects.
Founding Class of 2026 · May – August
In partnership with Washington University in St. Louis— Olin Business School
THE PROGRAM THESIS
Power → Teams → Strategy → Institutional Design
Most executive programs teach skills. This one builds architecture.
Across four modules, participants move through the four domains that determine whether an enterprise scales beyond its founder: how power operates, how teams perform, how growth is structured, and how institutions endure.
This is not a survey course. It is a sequenced formation — designed for leaders ready to make the transition from operating a company to architecting an enterprise.
THE CURRICULUM
Module I — Power & Influence in Organizations
Leaders cannot scale what they cannot align.
Navigating enterprise politics
Strategic alliance building
Executive negotiation
Stakeholder mobilization
Module II — High-Performance Teams & Execution
Systems sustain performance beyond personality.
Team dynamics under pressure
Incentive alignment
Accountability systems
Operating cadence design
Module III — Corporate Growth Strategy
Growth must be architected, not improvised.
Diversification vs. focus
Vertical integration logic
Geographic expansion discipline
Portfolio coherence
Module IV — Institutional Leadership & Governance
This is where enterprise maturity is determined.
Capital allocation discipline
Governance models
Board dynamics
Succession architecture
Founder-to-institution transition
Olin Business School Faculty
Taught by Washington University — Olin Business School faculty with combined decades of executive education across Fortune 500 companies, top-ranked EMBA programs, and global enterprises.
Michael Mazzeo
Dean; Knight Family Professor, WashU Olin Business School
Strategy scholar and former Senior Associate Dean for Curriculum and Teaching at Northwestern Kellogg, where he taught strategy in the MBA and EMBA programs for 25 years. Co-author of Roadside MBA: Back Road Lessons for Entrepreneurs, Executives and Small Business Owners. Multiple teaching awards from MBA and EMBA students.
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Mike Mazzeo became Dean of WashU Olin Business School in 2023, after a 25-year career at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. At Kellogg, he taught strategy in the MBA and Executive MBA programs, served as faculty director for the evening and weekend MBA programs, and was Senior Associate Dean for Curriculum and Teaching from 2017 through 2020.
He has won multiple teaching awards from MBA and EMBA students. His research on market competition and product differentiation has been cited thousands of times across industries including airlines, banking, healthcare, and retail.
He is co-author of Roadside MBA: Back Road Lessons for Entrepreneurs, Executives and Small Business Owners — a book based on visits to over 250 small and medium-sized businesses across 30 states and 12 countries, applying core MBA frameworks to the realities of operating leaders rather than the textbook cases of Fortune 500 companies.
Module IV — the closing module of the Vietnam Executive Leadership Program — is led by the Dean himself. For Vietnamese founders facing the institutional transition that defines whether their enterprises outlast them, Mazzeo brings the perspective of someone who has spent his career studying how operators actually build durable institutions, and now leads one of the top-ranked U.S. business schools.
Dr. Minyuan Zhao
Associate Professor of Strategy, WashU Olin Business School
Strategy scholar focused on multinational expansion, innovation, and intellectual property. Published in Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of International Business Studies. Associate Editor of Strategic Management Journal. Multiple EMBA teaching awards across Wharton, Michigan Ross, NUS-UCLA, and WashU's St. Louis and Shanghai EMBA programs.
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Dr. Minyuan Zhao's research examines how firm strategy interacts with global environments — particularly the strategic decisions multinational firms make around innovation, intellectual property, and cross-border expansion. Her work has been published in Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of International Business Studies. She currently serves as Associate Editor of Strategic Management Journal and as Senior Editor of Management and Organization Review.
Before joining Olin, she taught at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania), Ross School of Business (University of Michigan), and Carlson School of Management (University of Minnesota). She has won teaching awards from the Michigan EMBA program, the NUS-UCLA EMBA program, the Wharton MBA program, and WashU's EMBA programs in both St. Louis and Shanghai — a teaching record across three continents and four top-25 business schools.
She earned her PhD from New York University. Before academia, she worked across entrepreneurship, think tank research, and the automotive industry.
For Vietnamese leaders making the strategic decisions that define enterprise trajectory — whether to diversify or focus, how to integrate vertically, when to expand geographically, how to hold portfolio coherence — Zhao brings both academic rigor and global perspective shaped by teaching senior operators across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Dr. Markus Baer
Vice Dean of Executive Education; Knight Family Professor of Organizational Behavior, WashU Olin Business School
Global authority on creativity, innovation, and leadership under uncertainty. Featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and MIT Sloan Management Review. Has led "Leading Teams Through Uncertainty" sessions for senior Vietnamese leaders through Vanguard. Named to Poets & Quants World's 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40.
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Markus Baer leads Olin's executive education function as Vice Dean and is one of the most senior figures bringing global executive content to Vietnam through the Vanguard partnership. As Knight Family Professor of Organizational Behavior, his research focuses on how individuals and teams generate breakthrough ideas, adapt to uncertainty, and lead transformation through scale and disruption.
His work has been published in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Science, and Strategy Science, and featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has been named to Poets & Quants' list of the World's 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40, and in 2025 he served as Research Fellow at Judge Business School, Cambridge University.
He earned his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. Before academia, he worked in the German automotive industry and was part of the founding team of a university-affiliated startup.
Senior Vietnamese leaders have already worked with Prof. Baer through Vanguard's "Leading Teams Through Uncertainty" executive briefings — sessions that drew strong reviews from CEOs and group CFOs across regulated industries, education, and family enterprises. Module II builds directly on those sessions, deepening into the operating systems and team architectures that sustain performance through scale and disruption.
Dr. Alyssa Liang
Visiting Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, WashU Olin Business School
Organizational psychologist, executive educator, and former entrepreneur. Research on the psychology of entrepreneurship, internal venturing, and how leaders build influence through relationships and networks. PhD, National University of Singapore. Recent research featured in WashU's The Source.
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Dr. Alyssa Liang's career bridges two worlds that rarely come together: organizational psychology and operational entrepreneurship.
Before earning her doctorate at the National University of Singapore, she launched and led business ventures across China and Singapore. That operating experience — building companies, hiring teams, navigating uncertainty under real commercial pressure — shapes how she teaches. Her research focuses on the interpersonal dynamics that determine whether ambitious leaders actually convert ideas into outcomes inside organizations: how entrepreneurial behavior gets recognized and rewarded, how networks function as carriers of influence, and how individuals build credibility and mobilize support across organizational lines.
Her recent work, co-authored with Olin's Vice Dean of Executive Education Markus Baer, was published in Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal (2025) and featured in WashU's The Source. The research examines how employees who behave entrepreneurially — challenging the status quo, building coalitions, launching internal ventures — convert that behavior into tangible career and organizational influence. It is directly relevant to Module I's central question: how senior leaders mobilize people, capital, and political support to move decisions across complex organizations.
Dr. Liang has consulted for entrepreneurs, executives, and organizations across Asia, Europe, and the United States. For Vietnamese leaders — many of whom are first-generation founders managing the transition from operator to enterprise leader — she brings both the research rigor of a published academic and the practical instinct of someone who has actually built and run businesses.
Format
Duration: 4 months · May – August 2026
Structure: 4 modules, 2 days each (8 days total in-person)
Cohort size: Limited to 20–25 leaders
Location: Ho Chi Minh City
Language: English
Cohort: Founding Class of 2026
Two Pathways
Full 4-Month Formation (Recommended)
The integrated cohort journey. All four modules. Maximum peer learning, full faculty access, complete arc from Power to Institutional Design. Priority admission.
US$6,250 per participant
Standalone Executive Modules
Targeted capability upgrade. Pick the module most relevant to your current inflection point.
US$1,750 per module
Pricing exclusive of VAT. Corporate seat blocks available — contact us for terms.
Who this is for
Founders and CEOs leading enterprises through scale transitions
C-suite executives at companies above US$6M in annual revenue
Senior leaders preparing for board-level and institutional responsibility
Operators who have mastered execution and are now architecting institutions
This program is not designed for first-time managers or generalist leadership development. It assumes a baseline of operating experience and is calibrated for the leadership density Vietnam needs over the next decade.
Why WashU × Vietnam Vanguard
Global faculty, contextualized for Vietnam's enterprise challenges
On-the-ground delivery via Vanguard, in partnership with Rēsu
Designed specifically for the leadership density gap in Vietnam
Not imported theory — applied enterprise formation
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