20 January 2010

Happy New Year to you all!

We began 2010 with our first Leadership Summit Middle East in Abu Dhabi on 17 January. 250 leaders from business, government, media and academia attended our event which focused on ‘Leadership in a changing world: From dreams to action.’ The summit was made possible with the patronage of H.H. General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. For more information on the speakers and programme click here.

At the summit we announced the third group of ‘50 Alumni who have changed the world’. We were delighted to have several of these alumni with us for the Leadership Summit event.

On 12-13 January, we welcomed 500 new MBA participants (298 in Fontainebleau and 202 in Singapore) and were honoured to have two of our alumnus, Yoav Chelouche (MBA’79J) and Simba Gill (MBA’90D) as our guest speakers at the ceremonies.

In December, we held MBA graduation ceremonies on both campuses for 467 participants and were pleased to have Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive WPP and Gilbert Ghostine, President, Diageo Asia Pacific, as our graduation speakers.

Our 62 Executive MBAs graduated on 17 December. Claude Janssen, Honorary Chairman of the INSEAD Board and Chairman of the International Council, attended the ceremony. We also held our first EMBA Alumni reunion on 10-11 December for 25 participants of our EMBA’04 class.
In December we also launched out Global Private Equity Initiative (GPEI), based at our campus in Abu Dhabi. The Initiative combines INSEAD’s research and educational capabilities with our alumni and global professionals in the private equity industry. Claudia Zeisberger, GPEI Programme Director and Affiliate Professor of Decision Sciences will attend the leading global private equity forum, SuperReturn International 2010 Conference, in Berlin on 8 February. For more information please click here.

The upcoming six months of our 50th Anniversary year are going to be extremely exciting and we look forward to sharing news with you during this time.