Program

Learn from accomplished leaders

GradEL offers a variety of experiential workshops covering topics relevant for today’s grad students. Experienced industry leaders, engineers and scientists, and MIT faculty lead the two-hour sessions. Students gain crucial skills and knowledge to help them be more successful in industry, research, or academia. All MIT grad students are welcome to attend GradEL workshops. Students interested in earning GradEL’s Graduate Certificate in Technical Leadership must attend four workshops (can be spread out over multiple academic years).

Previous workshops

Pathways Beyond the Lab – Leadership Skills for Success
Anna Frebel is an astrophysicist, professor of physics and head of astrophysics at MIT
Designed to explore skills and career pathways outside of the lab, this workshop focuses on leading effective teams, understanding your transferable skills and public speaking skills.

AI and Your Leadership Toolkit: How to Maximize Impact With This New and Rapidly Evolving Technology
Kate Bergeron is a Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Apple
Hear from Kate, an industry leader, on how AI is changing the way teams work and how you can develop the habits, skills, and behaviors that will help you thrive in your future career.

The Power of Storytelling for Technical Leaders
Linda DuCharme, seasoned engineering and business leader with nearly four decades of experience at ExxonMobil driving innovation and organizational excellence across global energy and technology operations
Narayan Nallicheri, PhD, experienced strategy and leadership consultant whose career spans senior roles advising global organizations on complex business challenges and organizational performance
Storytelling isn’t fluff; it’s a cognitive tool that helps people understand, remember, and care about complex technical ideas. In this interactive workshop, students will learn why narrative activates more of the brain than facts alone, how great technical stories are structured, and how to craft clear, compelling explanations tailored to any audience. Through real examples and guided practice, participants will transform a technical concept from their own work into a two-minute story that is memorable, engaging, and strategically aligned with their goals as emerging engineering leaders.

Lives on the Line: How Engineering Leaders Make Tough Calls
Karen Anigbo is a seasoned quality and product safety leader in the medical device and life sciences sector
Kim Soter is an accomplished quality leader, a former VP of Quality for Olympus Surgical and Quality & Compliance Director at Johnson & Johnson MedTech
What does it take to make the call on a product recall when patient safety is at stake?In this interactive workshop, industry leaders from medical devices, pharma, and life sciences will walk you through how engineering teams escalate and evaluate risks, even when information is incomplete. Working in small groups with our guests, you’ll step into real-world recall scenarios, grapple with the trade-offs, and practice making tough decisions under uncertainty. Together, we’ll debrief the approaches and insights that shape engineering leadership in critical moments.

Managing Up Your Advisor or Supervisor
Dr. Diana Chien and Dr. Jac Goldstein, Senior Program Manager and Instructional Designer of the School of Engineering Communication Lab
Our relationships with research advisors and professional supervisors have a tremendous effect on our well-being and growth. This workshop will teach communication principles and skills to help you “manage up” your supervisors here at MIT and beyond, creating more positive, productive working relationships. Skills will include identifying the overlap between your interests and your advisor’s, advocating for your own needs, and optimizing your day-to-day interactions.

Crafting Impactful Op-Eds: Writing Workshop Hosted by the MIT Communication Lab
Martha Eddison, principal writer and strategic communications advisor to three successive presidents of MIT since 2007
Feeling like you need to break out of the ivory tower? Want to learn skills for reaching out to your home town, state, or other community to share about problems that matter to you? In this interactive workshop for MIT students and postdocs, attendees will…
Learn about how op-eds can reach diverse audiences, start conversations, and spur action
Identify strategies for writing impactful op-eds, such as composing a compelling lede, crafting a story, and choosing effective evidence (including personal experience)

Leading Engineering AI and Trust
David Niño GradEL senior lecturer
Brian Subirana, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at EADA Business School and a member of the faculty for MIT’s Designing and Building AI Products and Services course
How can we trust AI when it acts as the architect and engineer of record for an entire building? Or when it builds a full software component with thousands of lines of code? What does a meaningful code review look like in such contexts? We will explore how trust is created, led, and engineered in a world shaped by intelligent systems – one increasingly saturated with adversarial attacks and mediated, deepfake, and hallucinated content. Students will engage in interactive leadership activities to develop a practical framework for action, alongside exposure to AI engineering approaches to increase the trustworthiness of end-to-end generative AI applications.

Persuasive Communication for Technical Leaders
Rachel Moore Best, GradEL lecturer, experienced strategist and the founder of The Human Factor
How do you get others to act on your ideas? In this interactive GradEL workshop, you’ll learn and practice persuasive communication strategies that technical leaders use every day – whether it’s advocating for resources, influencing design decisions, or navigating tough conversations. Come ready to experiment with communication frameworks that will sharpen your ability to make your voice heard and your ideas stick.

Systems Thinking for Technical Leadership
Dr. Emily Moore, leader in engineering education and leadership development, Director of the Troost Institute for Leadership Education (ILead) at the University of Toronto
As engineers, we are trained to think about physical systems, but technical leadership involves navigating complex social structures as well. In this workshop, we will explore how systems thinking tools can help leaders to integrate social and technical considerations, and support interdisciplinary collaboration and decision making with a particular focus on sustainability.

The Science of Charisma: First Impressions
Dr. Oliver Niebuhr is Associate Professor of Communication and Innovation at the University of Southern Denmark
Olivia Fox Cabane is the bestselling author of The Charisma Myth
You only get one chance to make the right first impression. Within a few seconds, people judge your level of intelligence, trustworthiness, friendliness and social success. This happens in an instant, yet can impact the way you’re perceived from then on. How can you make sure you never miss, especially when the stakes are high? This practical workshop will give you concrete tools to make great first impressions both online and IRL, using researched-based science on which actions are effective and why.

Exploring Technical Leadership from Executive to Entrepreneur (Co-Hosted by MIT HEALS)
Rahul Singhvi, Sc.D., MBA, Co‑Founder and CEO of National Resilience, Inc.
Explore what it takes to lead in engineering – from the boardroom to the startup garage. In this interactive GradEL workshop, you’ll dive into the mindsets and skills that unite technically-minded executives and entrepreneurs alike: navigating uncertainty, leading cross-functional teams, and making tough decisions in the face of failure. Through real talk, reflection, and stories from a leader who’s done it all, you’ll uncover what kind of leader you want to become – and how to get there.

100-Day Plans For Any New Job: A Leader’s Perspective
Linda DuCharme, Former President of ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company
The first 100 days of any job is a critical time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Learn from the Hiring Manager’s perspective how to prioritize between gaining job knowledge, developing a peer network, and exceeding expectations in execution. Review and improve examples of real starting assignments and 100-day plans to inform your own.

Resolving Non-Technical Showstoppers in Complex Systems
Professor Emeritus Joel Schindall, Globalstar Sr. VP and Chief Engineer
MIT Bernard Gordon Professor of the Practice of Product Development founding director of GEL and GradEL
What issues do you think emerged when designing the world’s first worldwide satellite comm system? No, not Starlink. We’re talking about Globalstar, launched in the late 90’s and still operating today! Learn from the Globalstar Sr. VP and Chief Engineer who made it happen, Professor Emeritus Joel Schindall. You will hear about the unique design and collaboration challenges they encountered. Through hands-on case study exercises, you will learn how to execute multi-dimensional trade offs.

Technology and Finance
Prof. Olivier de Weck, Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics and Engineering Systems, Associate Department Head of Aero Astro (Course XVI)
Explore cutting-edge methods for assessing the economic potential of emerging technologies. Learn key financial tools like Net Present Value (NPV), Real Options Analysis (ROA), and Portfolio Management to make informed R&D investment decisions. Gain insights into risk assessment, resource allocation, and strategic financial planning to optimize technology portfolios and drive innovation sustainability. Don’t miss this opportunity to align technology strategy with business success and gain a competitive edge in the market!

Engineering Curveballs: How to Navigate the Unexpected
What happens when you face a technical challenge that no class or training ever prepared you for? In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn problem-solving techniques like root cause analysis, problem definition, and the power of asking the right questions. Then, put your skills to the test with industry guests as they share real, unexpected challenges from their careers—guiding you through an investigation to develop and refine solution proposals.

Secrets to Taking Charge of Your Next Role
Panel discussion
Are you prepared to “hit the ground running” at your next internship or in a new role after graduating? Learning how to “take charge” and actively engage with your new responsibilities is an important skill to master. This workshop will help you understand and build this skillset as it relates to your future goals. Hear from a panel of MIT Grad Students as they share their experiences and advice on successfully kickstarting their careers.

World-Class R&D for Geographically Distributed Markets
Reza Rahaman, Managing Director, Technical Leadership and Communication Programs (UPOP, GEL, GradEL, CommLab)
This workshop gives a high-level view of where R&D fits, strategically and organizationally within the enterprise. It looks at some of the issues in operating across cultures and highlights how cultural differences may lead to product development solutions that optimize for different value equations. This is brought to life by a group exercise that looks at developing a simple cleaning product across two geographies.

Reimagining the Hearing Aid Industry – the Case of Eargo
Danny Shen, Funder and President of Ruby Robotics, Serial Entrepreneur
From garage to IPO, MIT alumn Danny Shen shares his story of founding Eargo, a company that challenged an industry of entrenched incumbents to reimagine the hearing aid industry and break down barriers to adoption. This is an interactive workshop where product and strategic questions faced by the founders are presented and discussed.

Making Informed Tradeoff Decisions: What Do Stakeholders Care About?
Joia Spooner-Fleming, Global R&D Senior Executive
Learn how technical leaders make important tradeoff decisions while taking into account the engineering results, the business impact, and the variety of stakeholder needs that come with all challenging issues.

How Women in STEM Lead
Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D panel discussion hosted by Monica Pheifer, Principal Lecturer, GradEL
A panel of women in science, technology, engineering, math, manufacturing, and design will share the unique challenges they’ve experienced and the unique value they’ve provided in their technical leadership careers.