Executive MBA Program

The Executive MBA Program at Alba is a 20-month, weekend-based program designed for experienced executives and leaders. The program focuses on leadership, strategy, innovation, and AI, and is taught by senior faculty and top business thinkers from leading schools.

Overview

The program is built for experienced executives and leaders who want to challenge their thinking and lead growth and renewal. It is designed for those who aspire to transition to senior leadership, functional leaders who want to strengthen their general management perspective, family business leaders who plan the next stage of growth and renewal, and entrepreneurs who want to scale their ventures and build stronger organizational capabilities.

Curriculum

The Executive MBA Program is a broad, general management acceleration program that includes a portfolio of courses and seminars. The curriculum is designed to provide participants with the business acumen and skills needed to enhance their leadership development. The program consists of five modules:

Module 1 | Big Picture Challenges

• Global Challenges: Learn to assess the structure of the global business environment and its impact on industry structure, company strategy, and performance.
• Sustainability: Learn how to balance shareholders' expectations of financial performance and the non-financial demands of other stakeholders on ESG performance.
• Technology Frontier & the New Economy: Understand how social networks, Big Data, mobile technologies, cloud computing, and services impact businesses.
• Business Ethics and Responsible Leadership: Explore how ethical questions arise in managerial decisions, stakeholder relationships, and organizational life.

Module 2 | Mastering The Fundamentals

• Managerial Economics: Develop tools to analyze key issues of the industry and general economic environment of a company.
• Customer Insights & Marketing Strategy: Learn to develop powerful customer insights and enhance marketing decision-making skills.
• Financial & Managerial Accounting: Learn to critically assess financial statements and understand financial planning, operation of financial and capital markets, and long-term investment planning.
• Production & Operations Management: Focus on managerial decisions in production and operations and their interrelationships with other functional areas of the firm.
• Strategy in the Age of AI and Ecosystems: Develop an understanding of how firms create value and how to assess the competitive context and dynamics of firm resources and capabilities.

Module 3 | Developing Personal Capabilities

• Managerial Communications: Master the tools for crafting, practicing, and delivering impactful communications.
• Leadership: Assess and improve leadership readiness, develop an awareness of the knowledge and skills that underlie leadership effectiveness, and craft a personal leadership development action plan.
• Leadership & the Art of Judgment: Explore Aristotle's concept of Phronesis and its links with contemporary theories of human judgment and leadership.
• Leadership Development II: Reassess leadership skills, reflect on career and leadership challenges, and focus on career transitions, job crafting, and work identity.
• Negotiations, Power & Influence: Explore the art of effective negotiations, practice negotiation skills, and develop methods for exercising influence.
• The Cultured Leader: Dive into the world of art to find novel means for interacting with complexity, ambiguity, and serendipity.

Module 4 | Developing Organizational Capabilities

• Talent Management: Develop an understanding of what drives the effective management and utilization of human capital.
• AI & Customer-Centric Digital Strategies: Explore the latest thinking on how AI and digital innovations transform customer behavior and disrupt organizations.
• Supply Chains & Services: Examine strategic supply chain issues, such as capacity expansion or consolidation, make or buy decisions, production, procurement, and logistics planning.
• Strategy Execution with Balanced Scorecard: Learn to execute business strategy by means of the Balanced Scorecard, a strategic performance-management tool.
• Building an Innovative Organization: Explore what innovation is in a business context, how to make it happen, and how to build an organization that can foster it systematically.
• International Finance: Examine the institutional and economic forces affecting international financial markets and the firm.

Module 5 | Renewing The Business

• Global Advantage: Study strategies and tactics in managing opportunities and threats posed by the globalization of markets and industries.
• Leading AI-Driven Change: Expose yourself to complementary approaches to change, from discrete interventions to AI-driven distributed innovation.
• Creating Blue Ocean - Generating & Road-testing the New Business Model: Explore the Blue Ocean methodology to generate value innovations and transform them into a full-fledged business model.
• International Field Trip: Travel abroad for a week-long field trip to gain insights into global economic and business trends, and visit premier business organizations.

Faculty

The program is taught by top business thinkers from leading schools, including Alba's senior faculty. The faculty includes:

• Kyriakos Kyriakopoulos, Academic Director of Executive MBA
• Kostas Axarloglou, Dean of Alba Association
• Christos Cabolis, Chief Economist and Head of Operations at the IMD World Competitiveness Center
• Dionysis Dionysiou, Academic Director of the MSc in Strategic Human Resources Management
• Olga Epitropaki, Professor of Management at Durham University Business School
• George Hadjinicola, Professor of Operations Management, University of Cyprus
• Lars Häggström, Senior Advisor, IMD
• Michael Jacobides, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School
• Charalampos (Babis) Mainemelis, Professor of Organizational Behavior
• Pietro Micheli, Professor of Business Performance and Innovation, Warwick Business School
• Urs Muller, Associate Professor of Practice, SDA Bocconi Affiliate, Program Director, ESMT Berlin
• Nikos Mylonopoulos, Director of The SEV Center of Excellence in Creative Leadership
• Om Narasimhan, Professor of Marketing, London School of Economics
• Thanos Papadimitriou, Fellow, SDA Bocconi, Founding Partner, Charge Ventures
• Jordan Siegel, Associate Professor of Strategy, Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Faculty Fellow, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
• Andreas Soteriou, Professor of Operations Management, University of Cyprus
• Androniki Triantafylli, Associate Professor in the Practice of Accounting
• Stefanos Zarkos, Academic Director of The Alba MBA & MSc in Finance

Tuition and Finance

The tuition fee for the Executive MBA Program is €29,850, payable in installments throughout the duration of the program. This includes books and comprehensive catering during class days, but does not include accommodation or flight expenses for the international field trip.

Admission Process and Assessment

The admission process involves three steps:

1. Application online with scanned documents
2. A personal interview with the Academic Director
3. Evaluation by an Academic Committee

Candidates must submit:

• Completed application form with a recent photograph
• Two letters of recommendation
• Official academic transcripts and certified copies of degrees
• Proof of English language competence
• Three essays
• Receipt of the non-refundable application fee deposit

Assessment criteria include:

• Formal criteria: degree and management experience
• Past accomplishments: evidence of successful leadership and progression
• Academic curiosity: reflective, thoughtful leaders intrigued by new knowledge

The program accepts applications all year round, and candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.

The American College of Greece (ACG) is an independent, non-profit, non-sectarian, co-educational institution founded in 1875 in Smyrna (Izmir), Asia Minor, by missionaries from Boston, Massachusetts. Following the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the college relocated to Athens in 1923 and has operated there ever since. It is the oldest and largest U.S.-accredited, comprehensive educational institution in Europe, with over 150 years of transformative education and a long-standing role in fostering intellectual and cultural ties between Greece and the United States.

ACG is chartered as a U.S. 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity by the State of Colorado, and is governed by an independent board of trustees. Its motto — Non Ministrari, Sed Ministrare ("Not to be Served, but to Serve") — reflects its foundational commitment to education in service of society.

Three divisions:

ACG operates across three distinct academic divisions, each serving a different stage of education:

• Pierce: a pre-kindergarten through secondary school offering a Gymnasium, Lyceum and an International Baccalaureate Programme, with campuses in Aghia Paraskevi and a Pierce East Campus in Spata
• Deree: the undergraduate and graduate college, with all instruction delivered entirely in English, located on the main 64-acre campus in Aghia Paraskevi.
• Alba Graduate Business School: a specialized postgraduate business school located in downtown Athens, built on ACG's long-standing legacy of academic excellence.

Accreditation

ACG was first accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) in 1981, becoming the first U.S. institution abroad to achieve this distinction. In 2023, The American University of Greece (AUG) — ACG's newly incorporated U.S. affiliate — received full institutional NECHE accreditation, which includes ACG's operations in Greece through a validating agreement. This means Deree graduates hold degrees with the same credentials as graduates of other NECHE institutions, including MIT, Harvard, Brown, Boston College and Amherst.

Deree is also validated by The Open University (UK), providing graduates with an additional internationally recognized award pathway. In 2024, AUG launched a Global Campus offering fully online degree programs rooted in ACG's academic tradition.

Campus

The main campus in Aghia Paraskevi sits on the western slopes of Mount Hymettus, about ten kilometers from central Athens, and was originally designed by the renowned Greek architect Constantine Doxiadis. Its 64 acres include smart classrooms, science and STEM laboratories, fine art studios and exhibition spaces, a Center for the Arts with multiple performance venues including the Pierce Theater, a black box theater and the Irene Bailey Theater, a library, a gym, a swimming pool, tennis courts, a soccer and track complex, a chapel, and student lounges. The campus offers panoramic views of the Athens basin.

Student life

Student life at ACG is active and diverse. Students can join academic societies, a wide range of clubs, and student organizations including the Deree Student Association, the Research Scholars Organization, and the Student Emergency Response Force. Intercollegiate and intramural sports are organized under the Deree Griffins banner. Arts programming is extensive, with music, theater, dance and visual arts performances running throughout the academic year under the Arts at Deree initiative. An International Honors Program is available for high-achieving students, including a Stanford Summer component and a dedicated merit scholarship. Service learning projects connect students to the broader Athens community.

Research and institutes

ACG's research activity spans applied academic research and public policy engagement through four dedicated centers:

• ACG Research Center (ACG-RC): supports interdisciplinary applied research, with active projects including a study on the role of the Greek-American diaspora in bilateral U.S.-Greece relations from 1974 to 2024
• Institute of Global Affairs: hosts research, public events and publications on international policy and geopolitics
• Institute of Public Health: conducts public health research and runs an annual lecture series open to the wider community
• The Demos Center: dedicated to democratic values, civic discourse and public engagement

Sustainability

Sustainability is a core institutional commitment at ACG. The college has been listed among the Princeton Review's most environmentally responsible colleges for seven consecutive years, and is one of only four European institutions to appear on the list for 2025. In 2024, ACG was recognized as a top performer in five categories of the AASHE Sustainable Campus Index — Campus Engagement, Energy, Grounds, Purchasing, and Wellbeing and Work — making it the highest-ranked STARS institution outside the United States and Canada. ACG also received the 2024 EPEAT Purchaser Award for the second consecutive year for sustainable electronics procurement, and was featured in Greece's inaugural Hellenic Impact Report for its integration of sustainability across academics, operations and partnerships. The college currently offers 149 sustainability-focused and sustainability-inclusive courses across undergraduate and graduate levels.

Student support services

• Student Academic Support Services (SASS): learning facilitation, peer tutoring and academic resources
• Career Services: career planning, internship placement, and employer connections including an annual ACG Career Days event
• Student Success Center: holistic advising and student wellbeing support
• Counseling and Health and Wellness Center: mental health services, wellness coaching and medical assistance
• Financial assistance: merit scholarships, grants, work-study, and access to U.S. Federal Loans and Veterans Aid for eligible students
• On-campus and nearby housing for undergraduate and study-abroad students

International reach

1. ACG welcomes study-abroad students from universities worldwide through semester, summer and intensive programs in Athens. Special programs include the Hellenic Studies Summer School, the Heritage Greece program, and a longstanding collaboration with Harvard University's Center for Hellenic Studies. Through its Outbound Study Abroad Programme, Deree students can study at partner institutions in cities including Stanford, New York, Boston, London, Rome, Seoul, Shanghai and Berlin. A parallel studies pathway also allows students enrolled in Greek public universities to earn a Deree degree simultaneously.