It may go without saying, but communication is a prevalent and critical component of today’s workforce. The skillset is especially essential for professionals seeking to excel in a leadership role. Regardless of industry, professional communications is imperative for leading effective meetings, mitigating crises, and navigating negotiations and conflict resolution.
“Communications is a critical part of doing business, especially in today’s environment. News travels fast. A bad customer experience can become a social media sensation before the CEO is even informed of the problem,” said Mary Caraccioli, Chief Communications Officer for The Central Park Conservancy. “On the flip side, you can use the power of social media to engage directly (and more deeply) with customers, employees and other stakeholders. You can use the power of the communications revolution to your advantage by making communications part of your business strategy.”
Caraccioli is teaching a master’s-level course in Communication for Effective Leadership, a fully online, 10-week class that will help students build on their critical thinking skills and apply oral and written communication strategies to solve organizational problems and drive organizational change. Throughout the course, students will focus on topics such as negotiation and facilitation, crisis communications and public relations, virtual and global communications, and stakeholder management.
By the end of Communication for Effective Leadership, students should be able to:
- Develop, execute and measure communication plans to manage stakeholders, solve organizational problems and drive organizational change.
- Adapt communication strategies and use digital technologies to align with organizational, cultural, virtual, and global needs.
- Build a portfolio of communication campaigns including crisis response, company positioning, and media statements.
This course is available for professional development or as part of several GPS graduate programs. To learn more, submit your information or contact the GPS office for more information or to request a syllabus: 781-736-8787 or gps@brandeis.edu.
Michael Figueroa, CISSP, is President and Executive Director of the Advanced Cyber Security Center, a Boston-based nonprofit that organizes the private and public sectors to operationalize collaborative defense, strengthening each member’s cybersecurity posture and preparing the region’s response to large-scale cyber threats. Michael has a diverse IT background, serving at times as an executive technology strategist, chief architect, product manager, and disruptive technology champion. His past work has spanned a broad spectrum: preparing cyber technologies for transition, managing research and development, applying non-security emerging technologies such as deep learning and human analytics to security problems, and serving as the Principal Investigator for a DARPA-funded effort to design and develop an innovative secure network and communications platform for cloud and mobile applications. Michael has served as a CISO for a late-stage financial services startup, was a strategic program advisor for CISOs at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the World Bank Group, and has managed consulting teams securing large-scale systems integration efforts at DHS. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and received his masters degree from the George Washington University (GWU) in Forensic Sciences, concentrating on High Tech Crime Investigations.
Keishalee Shaw is a native of St. Ann, Jamaica, and was raised in Maryland.
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Sean Milligan, an instructor in the online 
In addition to teaching in the program, Sean serves as a Global Services and Support Director for a privately-owned software development company specializing in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions for the manufacturing industry. He has more than 25 years of experience in managing projects and programs for a number of industries. He is a member of the Project Management Institute, is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), and is a certified Myers-Briggs Practitioner.
Across the industry, there’s been a massive shift concerning the needs and wants of organizations looking to grow their marketing programs. Many of the “old school” marketers have focused on harder-to-measure aspects of marketing such as brand advertising. While brand is still important, it stands that nearly everything in today’s marketing world is able to be tracked, measured and analyzed. Even billboards can be measured. Digital marketing, of course, lends itself to testing, iteration and improvement.
Brandeis GPS is excited to introduce Sue Bergamo, the chair of our online MS in Information Security Leadership program.
