Leadership in the
AI Era
A 2-day executive intensive in Saigon. The curriculum was designed with Dr. Brooks Holtom of Georgetown's McDonough School of Business and is now used in Georgetown's Executive MBA program. Leadership comes first, AI is the accelerant.
95% of AI initiatives report no ROI. The problem is not the technology
Every company has people who took an AI bootcamp, bought the tools, hired a consultant. The result: pilots that stall, teams that resist, ROI that never shows up. Three gaps sit behind every one of those failures.
The Leadership Gap
Most leaders were built for a slower world, relying on credibility and heroics instead of systems and clarity. AI demands leaders who can define who they are, communicate with precision, and develop others, not just direct them.
The Data Gap
Half the work in any AI initiative is data work. Most companies have information scattered across systems, in people's heads, and in processes nobody documented. Until that is fixed, AI has nothing to work with.
The Workflow Gap
Your people's workflows work, and that is the problem. They work because people adjust on the fly and fill gaps the process never accounted for. AI cannot do that. It needs clear instructions, not heroics.
An Executive MBA style intensive, built for founders and senior leaders
Two full days for your leaders, director level and up. Leadership comes first. Real generative and agentic AI is integrated throughout, so the speed your team gains turns into leverage, not noise.
A structured journey across three series
Twelve sessions, designed to elevate how you communicate, lead people, and scale an organization in the AI era. Each session ends with a durable artifact you keep.
Lead Yourself
- 01Developing leadership identity and brand
- 02Building emotional intelligence
- 03Communicating with impact
- 04Negotiating internally and externally
Lead Your Team
- 05Acquiring the best talent for the right seats
- 06Coaching talent for high performance
- 07Coordinating efforts and creating accountability
- 08Retaining talent through engagement
Lead the Organization
- 09Designing workflows for efficiency
- 10Using data to inform decision-making
- 11Innovating while executing
- 12Leading change
Twelve durable artifacts, two AI tools built around you
You do not leave with a stack of bookmarks. Every session ships something you keep, calibrated to the leader you actually are, not a generic version of one.
AI Leadership Coach
Trained on your identity, brand, and communication style, so the guidance you get sounds like the leader you are working to become.
AI Coaching Assistant
Trained on your manager voice, so coaching your team stays consistent even when you are not in the room.
This is not an AI bootcamp
Most AI bootcamps
- ✕Focus 90% on tools and 10% on leadership
- ✕Show you 50 tools without explaining how AI actually works
- ✕Ignore the leadership skills needed to implement anything
- ✕Leave you with a list of bookmarks and zero execution capability
- ✕Do not address the people side of transformation
This program
- ✓Develops core leadership skills first: communication, strategy, execution, influence
- ✓Layers in AI as a strategic enhancement to your leadership
- ✓Teaches the foundational principles of generative and agentic AI
- ✓Shows you how to lead teams through change and AI adoption
- ✓Focuses on results and implementation, not just knowledge
Academic rigor meets entrepreneurial experience
Dr. Brooks Holtom
Former Senior Associate Dean at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business. 26,000+ academic citations. Advisor to the World Bank, IMF, and Microsoft.
Dave Hajdu
Former Microsoft data systems builder. Serial founder with products adopted by MLB, Fidelity, MTV, and the NCAA. EO member and EO Global Tech Committee member.
David Nilssen
SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year, founder of two Inc. 5000 companies, author of The Borderless Leader, and former EO Global Learning Chair.
Plus EO Vietnam facilitators Rich Pham and Harley Trung
Twenty years of retention research, not a trend deck
The job embeddedness research behind the program, fit, links, and sacrifice, has been an AMJ Best-Paper finalist, an AME Best-Paper finalist, and standard reading in management curricula for two decades. This is the same body of work taught inside Georgetown's Executive MBA.
If the program helps each of your people do one thing
The program has already paid for itself many times over
Built for leaders ready to do the work
- ✓Founders, senior leaders, directors, and high-potential team members
- ✓Leaders who want AI to compound their judgment, not replace it
- ✓People who will show up consistently and apply what they build
- ✓Non-technical leaders welcome: this is strategic AI application, not coding
Not the right fit if you are looking for quick fixes or magic bullets, want AI tools without the leadership fundamentals, or believe AI alone solves leadership challenges.
The biggest gains happen when a team learns together
Most founders do not send one person, they send their leadership bench. When your directors build the same artifacts and AI tools in the same room, the change actually sticks when they get back to the office.
- ✓Reserve 3 or more seats from one company
- ✓Aligned leadership language and shared frameworks across your team
- ✓The thinking behind your decisions, shared instead of downloaded
One thing we don't do enough is bring our executives up to the same level of learning. We usually learn first, then download our thinking into the company. The hard part is that executives don't see the process behind the decision.
As companies grow, decisions move faster, but when the thinking behind them is not shared, distance builds. This session is designed to close that gap by creating shared context and faster execution.
What past participants say
Frequently asked
Step one is the application
The 2-day Saigon intensive is open to EO members and qualified guests. Tell us a little about yourself and we will be in touch about the August 2026 cohort.
Apply for the AI Era cohort →