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Executive & Professional Education

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Leadership Accelerator

Spring Session: Apr. 4th, May 9th & Jun. 6th, 2025

Reach Your Full Leadership Potential

Bentley's Leadership Accelerator is a personalized leadership intensive aimed at career professionals, executives, and senior leaders with a minimum of 10 years experience. The program consists of three different leadership assessments to determine your leadership style, three days of in-person classroom training to build on the findings, and four hours of one-on-one executive leadership coaching that provide individualized guidance and support. You'll emerge from the program with a detailed leadership plan and the skills and support to apply it in your existing and future roles.

Learn Your Leadership Style

You'll take three leadership assessments including Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey, and DISC to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses and to help customize the program specifically for you.

Develop a Leadership Plan

Engaging interactive sessions that help you develop a personal leadership plan involving leadership dynamics, influence strategies, cohesive teamwork, collaborative excellence, adept navigation of change, fostering innovation, as well as proficient coaching and mentoring techniques.

Actualize Your Plan with One-on-one Coaching

Four hours of personalized, virtual executive coaching introduced during the program and running over a period of time to help participants fully benefit from the leadership assessments and classroom training, finalize their plan, and begin to put it into action. 

Take the next step in your leadership journey

Watch the Video

Leadership Accelerator Faculty Director Paul Tesluk, PhD
Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Bentley University

"Effective leadership is crucial for motivating teams and retaining top talent, which are critical to your business."

"You'll gain deep insight into your leadership potential and develop strategies to inspire others."

Transcend Functional Expertise and Become a More Transformative Leader

Program Topics and Structure

Classroom Experience

Understanding Yourself and Leadership Style

  • Pre-program leadership assessments: DISC, Hogan
  • Understand different leadership approaches
  • Review and interpret leadership assessments
  • Initiate leadership development plan with coach

Influencing Others

  • Identify and approaches to effective influence
  • Explore emotional intelligence, and effective communication styles to advance teams

Teamwork and Collaboration

  • Develop skills to identify, analyze and leverage interpersonal strengths of teams
  • Explore elements of effective teamwork, and recognize and address symptoms of dysfunction

Leading Change and Innovation

  •  Enhance understanding of interactive planning through idealized design, the application of design thinking, and problem dissolution and improvement
  •  Apply a proven framework for leading effective change

Coaching and Mentoring Others

  • Develop strategies to effectively craft stretch assignments
  • Explore the importance of coaching and mentoring
  • Review and apply new lessons, review and wrap up leadership development plan including ways to continue new learnings for your organization

One-on-one Virtual Coaching

During and after the classroom sessions, you'll receive one-on-one coaching to further review concepts, to develop a personal leadership plan, and to begin implementing this plan in your current role. 

Who Should Attend?

High-potential, mid-career leaders (10 years of work experience) from all industries and functions who are seeking opportunities to accelerate their growth as a leader and increase contributions to their organization by scaling through others. The program is particularly well suited for leaders in a manager, director or similar roles as they prepare to move into greater levels of responsibility.

Program Requirements

Participants should have a minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible experience within a corporate or professional organization.

All participants are required to obtain agreement from their selected peers, direct reports, and supervisor to complete an assessment tool in advance of the program start. All results are kept confidential.

Why Bentley?

Proven Reputation

A history of educating and elevating business leaders who make an immediate and lasting impact across all industries.

Expert Faculty

World-class researchers in fields such as leadership, collaboration, change, innovation, creativity, and more.

Business Leadership

Bentley is at the forefront of the latest trends in business from our Gallup Business in Society Report to years of experience in the finance, technology, inclusion, and leadership spaces.

Meet Your Facilitator

Leadership Accelerator Faculty - Mateo Cruz
Leadership Accelerator Faculty Assistant Professor Mateo Cruz
Assistant Professor, Management

Dr. Mateo Cruz is an award-winning teaching-scholar at Bentley University. His primary research focuses on diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice (DEIJ), and change in groups & organizations. His research has been published in top management and psychology outlets including, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Research in Organizational Change and Development and presented to academic and executive audiences in the US, UK, and South Africa. 

As a scholar-practitioner, Mateo’s work is guided by one central goal: To design and deliver evidence-based interventions that advance change leaders at the intersection of identities. He holds 20+ years of experience as an executive coach and organization development & change (ODC) consultant & trainer specializing in inclusive leadership, group & team dynamics, and organizational change.  

Mateo views his academic work as an extension of his passion for teaching and training, leadership development, and community advocacy. He currently serves as a Faculty Advisor to the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University and is a proud member of the Executive Board of Directors for GLSEN National, the #1 LGBTQ+ education advocacy organization in the US. In 2024, he was awarded the Dr. Earl L. Avery MLK Leadership Award for his efforts to advance inclusion in organizations. 

Mateo holds a Ph.D. in social/organizational psychology from Columbia University; an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia University; and a B.A. in social work/psychology from the University of Portland. 

Leadership Accelerator Faculty Senior Lecturer Susan Vroman
Senior Lecturer, Management

Susan Vroman (EdD, EdM), is a Senior Lecturer of Management at Bentley University.  Her research interests include the impact leadership enactment has on organizational culture and employee engagement, authentic leadership, leading teams, and inclusive leadership, with specific focus on supporting flexible work arrangements. 

Prior to her academic career, Susan spent over 20 years as an organizational effectiveness and strategic people and culture executive and advisor both internally and in a consulting capacity. Susan’s passion and expertise lie in values-based leadership development and profit-centered culture development. She has demonstrated superior results in designing and creating engaged workforces with direct business results.

Susan has engaged with companies ranging from 8 to 50,000 employees. Her consulting niche is in entrepreneurial businesses that are “coming of age.” Susan has served as Executive Coach (specializing in high potential emerging leaders), designed and used 360 degree questionnaires to help leaders achieve greater success, and has facilitated retreats to foster better results. Susan has also led Change Management initiatives ranging from organizational re-engineering to culture and human resource assimilation preparing for and in the aftermath of leadership changes, mergers, and acquisitions. Susan’s work facilitating troubled teams has also helped them to overcome obstacles.  Susan has been the architect of corporate universities and has designed and developed programming for leadership development, upskilling, and soft-skills effectiveness.

Susan holds her undergraduate degree in Communication and Human Resource Development from James Madison University; a Master’s Degree in Leadership Studies from Harvard University; and her doctorate degree in Organizational Leadership Studies from Northeastern University.  She is also certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), Predictive Index (PI), Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), ExperiencePoint Change Management, Emotional & Social Competency Inventory (ESCI), Hogan’s Derailers, and in DiSC. 

Leadership Accelerator Faculty Lecturer Veronica Barber
Lecturer, Management

Veronica Barber (MS, EdD), is a lecturer and assistant chair of the management department at Bentley University.  She is a promoter of presence-based leadership, life-enriching work, and healthy organizational change. 

Her professional career spans over 30 years in the healthcare and aging services fields, in which she has worked as a Chief Operating Officer for a health system in New York, a Senior Vice President of Human Resources for a national assisted living company, and continues to function as an organizational development consultant, serving clients nationwide.   

Veronica is also an International Coaching Federation (ICF) and Emotional Intelligence (EQ) certified coach. She has helped countless executives across the United States to develop their emotional intelligence competencies, and is actively involved in the coaching community, whereby she assists with the education of coaches and functions as a mentor coach.  

Veronica’s other passions and expertise lie in the areas of leadership, culture, talent management, and leading change.  She holds an international certification in organizational culture assessment and development and is a DISC certified assessor/trainer. Veronica has a doctorate in executive leadership with a research focus on organizational change, a master’s in health services management and a bachelor’s in mathematics.

Program Details

Program Dates Spring 2025

Friday, April 4th 8:30AM-4:30PM

Friday, May 9th 8:30AM-4:30PM

Friday, June 6th 8:30AM-4:30PM

Program Cost: $8,750

  • Program fee includes tuition, meals, lab fees and instructional materials.
  • Register 30+ days in advance to receive a 20% discount automatically.
  • Register 14 days in advance to receive a 10% discount automatically.
  • Bentley Alumni receive a 50% enrollment discount.

For information regarding the alumni discount, contact: execed@bentley.edu

Group Enrollment - 30% Discount

Empower your team to learn together and grow as leaders. 

Bentley offers a special 30% off group rate discount to companies that send three participants or more. 

Bentley Refund Policy

Bentley University will grant a full refund for cancellations received at least 30 days before the program start date. 

A 50% refund will be given for those cancellations made prior to fourteen days of the program start date. No refund will be granted for those cancellations received after that time.

Supporting Our Community

50% Discount for Alumni, Non-Profits, Veterans, and Job Seekers in Transition. Inquire for more info: execed@bentley.edu.

The most valuable aspect for me was the real life engagement with my cohort and experts. Learning what I didn’t know was eye opening. The program evoked a lot of self-reflection and perspective.
Leadership Accelerator Participant

Elevate your team's skills with personalized, on-site training aligned with your business objectives