I will admit it: I am delighted with the outcome of recruitment for our 2026–2027 cohort, and just as much with its richness. We have a full class of 33 participants, with a healthy balance of 45% women and 55% men. A quarter of them are Swiss, and no fewer than 15 nationalities are represented, drawn from the private and public sectors, NGOs and international organisations.
In an unstable world, the Geneva EMBA serves, more than ever, a generation of executives and decision-makers who understand how the global economy is changing. They also understand that they will need new forms of leadership to drive the transformations ahead and to shape the future. This ambition lies at the heart of our teaching, which rests on two complementary dimensions. Self-Leadership develops self-knowledge and the ability to question oneself. Responsible Leadership means exercising one’s responsibilities with discernment and with a long-term, sustainable perspective.
When admitting candidates, we usually pursue a dual objective: to reach our target enrolment and to build a cohort that is coherent in its professional diversity. Once again this year, we have achieved that goal. The members of this class will travel together through a journey that is demanding, certainly, but also remarkably unifying and stimulating. In its very make-up, this new cohort embodies the international vocation of our programme and of our region.
Four years ago, the Geneva EMBA chose to build its communication mainly on individual testimony and shared experience, offered with full transparency and sincerity. Month after month, faculty, students and then Alumni have generously shared their impressions, their advice and their motivations in a carefully curated Newsroom whose readership grows year after year.
One voice was still missing from this line-up, perhaps the most pragmatic of all: that of business leaders. Our 2026–2027 season will be devoted to them, through a series of interviews with leaders from across the economy of French-speaking Switzerland, in a range of sectors. We will ask them how they read the transformations under way. We will also ask what skills they now expect from their managers and executives, and how education can help prepare them for the responsibilities of a new world in the making. As you know, technological advances, artificial intelligence above all, and the constant reshuffling of the geopolitical deck demand ever more agility, ingenuity, willingness to question oneself and cross-functional thinking. That is precisely what the Geneva EMBA is about.
I therefore wish the professionals of our new 2026–2027 cohort an excellent start. I am convinced that the journey they undertake over these two years of learning will contribute fully to their professional development, and to their personal growth as well.
Jean-Yves Mercier
Executive Director
