George Mason Vantage Point

George Mason Vantage Point

Leadership, Innovation & Emerging Technology Programs

About George Mason University

• George Mason is an innovative, entrepreneurial institution with national distinction in academics and research. George Mason holds a top U.S. News and World Report “Up and Coming” spot for national universities, is ranked as the most innovative university in the Commonwealth of Virginia and is recognized for its global appeal and excellence in higher education. George Mason has the designation of an R1: Doctoral Research – Very High Research Activity Highest Research Institution by the Carnegie Classification, recognizing our impact as one of the major knowledge creation engines in the world. George Mason leverages this thought leadership and knowledge generation to create impact and consequence educational programs, especially for the commercial and federal workforce.
   
• George Mason is Virginia's largest university, with nearly 45,000 students and 6,000 faculty and staff. George Mason provides over 200 degree programs at campuses in Arlington, Fairfax, and Prince William County. Our exceptional faculty includes world-class academics and industry-leading practitioners in engineering, business, government, and many other sectors.

George Mason University – Costello College of Business

• Dedicated to excellence in research and teaching, the Costello College of Business educates future business leaders through world-class, innovative academic programs and strategic business partnerships. Ranked among the top 100 undergraduate business school programs and top 50 part-time MBA programs by U.S. News and World Report, the Costello College of Business is accredited in both business and accounting by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International. Faculty are deeply engaged in the regional, national, and international business communities; their academic expertise and real-world experience bridge the classroom from academic theory to business practice.

George Mason University – Costello Executive Education

• Executive Education at the Costello College of Business delivers advanced, real-world solutions for organizational and professional challenges. We are well-positioned to draw on the expertise of faculty across George Mason University’s eleven schools. Costello College of Business faculty are experienced in delivering executive programs focused on areas such as finance and accounting, change management, business analytics, leadership, and strategy. We develop programs to achieve specific goals for clients and individual professionals seeking to accelerate their careers. Executive Education provides high-level learning experiences to meet any business objective through custom-designed and open enrollment programming.
   
• As a team, we bring over fifty years of experience from executive education, business, and industry to enable a collaborative environment with the client and faculty to ensure the design of custom solutions to meet the demands and challenges of the future.  Our primary goal is to partner with you to achieve results with impact. 

• Open Enrollment Programs
   
• Location: All courses are scheduled for George Mason campuses in Northern Virginia including the Arlington, Fairfax, and Manassas Campuses. Specific campus location will be confirmed with registration.   

Program Courses

Leadership Judgement, Trust, and Decision-Making

Programs that build the reasoning, communication, and human-skills discipline leaders need when facing incomplete information, high stakes, sustained pressure, or emerging technology.

• Leading Under Pressure — 4.5 days
  • People in high-pressure roles — crisis responders, senior operators, and program leads managing high-stakes deadlines — don't usually fail for lack of technical skill. They struggle when pressure erodes the human skills: reading themselves and others accurately, keeping conflict from turning destructive, making sound calls with incomplete information, and getting other people to move with them rather than against them. This program builds those skills in sequence — selfawareness, conflict management and relationship-building, structured problem-solving and decision-making, negotiation, and group decision-making — so leaders have a reliable process for the moments when instinct alone isn't enough.
  • Program Fee: $3450 per person
     
• Leading with Purpose, Backed by Data — 5 days
  • In a technology-driven, hyper-connected world, leaders face a wealth of data and information from every part of their organization, and intuition alone is no longer an acceptable way to run a team or unit. This course equips senior leaders to meld their own leadership style and mindset with a critical understanding of modern analytical techniques, so they can make better strategic decisions and turn those decisions into actionable priorities that break down functional data silos. It moves from personal leadership style and communication in the first half toward data fundamentals, analytics, and AI in the second, culminating in a leadership strategy grounded in data.
  • Program Fee: $3,450 per person
     
• The Strategic Decision Lab — 3 days
  • A critical-thinking and judgment lab for leaders who make or influence complex decisions. Participants work with incomplete information, conflicting evidence, assumptions, trade-offs, and constructive challenge — building the discipline to identify decision traps, separate fact from assumption, structure complex decisions, test recommendations, and communicate clear and credible decisions.
  • Program Fee: $2750 per person
     
• Digital Trust Command Center — 2 days
  • A leadership communication lab focused on credibility, information quality, uncertainty, and confidence in fastmoving environments. Participants evaluate simulated information and practice communicating what is known, unknown, and being verified — building the judgment to assess information quality, recognize unreliable signals, communicate uncertainty responsibly, explain verification logic, and build a digital-trust protocol.
  • Program Fee: $2750 per person
     
• The Human-AI Teaming Lab — 3 days
  • A responsible-work-design lab for leaders and teams incorporating AI into workflows. Participants clarify human and AI roles, identify where judgment must remain human, design verification points, and examine accountability — mapping a current workflow, distinguishing automation from judgment, defining decision rights and verification points, identifying risks in AI-supported work, and creating a responsible 60-day workflow experiment.
  • Program Fee: $2750 per person
     
• Intrusive Leadership Seminar — 2 days
  • Resources, assets, and projects get managed. People need leadership. Intrusive Leadership is a style of leadership that every leader must know, understand, and utilize to meet the unique challenges of today — one that puts people at the center of focus and helps leaders unlock employees' untapped potential. For organizations to succeed in this globally competitive climate, Intrusive Leadership must be an integral part of their workplace culture, creating a psychologically safe environment where everyone can thrive. Through instructional presentations, group discussions, videos, self-assessments, and case studies, participants take a deep dive into Intrusive Leadership — defining it, identifying the characteristics of an Intrusive Leader, understanding its resultant impacts, and recognizing the critical moments and opportunities that require it — leaving able to put this style into immediate practice. Each participant receives a copy of the Intrusive Leadership book.
  • Program Fee: $2150 per person
     
• Negotiations and Influence — 3 days
  • Most people carry incorrect assumptions about how to manage a two-party negotiation, and many avoid conflict altogether — inhibiting their ability to maximize value. This course corrects those assumptions while building participants' comfort across negotiation and conflictmanagement situations ranging from simple change orders to complex, multi-issue strategic relationships, progressing from comfort with conflict and the fixed-pie bias, through planning to negotiate and knowing your counterpart, to managing the process in real time.
  • Program Fee: $2750 per person

Innovation & Creative Problem-Solving

Programs that give participants a repeatable method for generating and testing new ideas under real-world limits.

• Design Thinking Workshop — 2 days
  • A two-day design sprint that equips participants with the design thinking and experimentation skills needed to develop innovative solutions to real operational challenges. Working in small teams, participants learn and apply the five steps of design thinking — empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test — to a live project, leaving with a shared toolkit, a tested concept, and the confidence to apply the same process to the next problem their organization faces.
  • Program Fee: $2150 per person (team participation is strongly recommended but not required)
     
• Innovation Under Constraint — 3 days
  • A creative problem-solving lab for professionals working with limited time, resources, information, or authority. Participants use stakeholder insight, structured creativity, modeling, prototyping, and feedback to move from challenge to testable possibility — reframing complex challenges, generating options, building and testing an early prototype, incorporating stakeholder feedback, and designing a responsible 90-day experiment.
  • Program Fee: $2750 per person

Acquisition & Program/Life Cycle Management

Technical, acquisition-focused programs on managing cost, sustainment, and partnerships across a program's life cycle. 

• Life Cycle Cost Analysis — 5 days
  • Organizations award and sustain programs worth substantial sums every year, yet most of a system's lifetime cost is locked in long before it reaches production. This five-day course equips acquisition and program management professionals with the tools to identify, estimate, and compare the full total ownership cost of competing alternatives — covering total ownership cost, cost estimating, economic analysis, sensitivity and risk analysis, and procurement application — so budgeting, source selection, and sustainment decisions are made with a complete picture of cost.
  • Program Fee: $3450 per person
     
• Life Cycle Logistics — 3 days
  • Sustainment, not acquisition, typically accounts for the majority of a system's total ownership cost over its life cycle, yet sustainment planning is too often treated as an afterthought to the purchase decision.This three-day course builds understanding of the rules, regulations, processes, and activities that make up total life cycle logistics, and the relationship between total ownership cost and purchase price, culminating in a practical, program-ready action plan.
  • Program Fee: $2750 per person
     
• Strategic Partnering — 2 days
  • No acquisition organization delivers a mission-critical capability alone. This two-day course equips acquisition professionals with the skills to identify and advocate for the right partners, negotiate agreements that align incentives on both sides, and sustain those relationships over the long term — covering identifying partners, advocating for partnerships, negotiating win-win agreements, and sustaining relationships.
  • Program Fee: $2150 per person
     
• Data Centric Sustainment — 3 days
  • A three-day course designed to improve the planning for, design of, and execution of support contracts that require performance sustainment over the long term. The course is focused on preparing both the contracts and the program teams to effectively collaborate to drive performance through contracts.
  • Program Fee: TBD

Emerging Technologies

Technical and strategic programs in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Drones, and Mechatronics.

• This hands-on robotics workshop introduces mechanical design, electronics, and programming through the development of ground robots for object-retrieval tasks. Working in teams of three, participants will design, build, program, test, and refine modular robotic systems while gaining practical experience in system integration and troubleshooting. Short lessons and guided activities will support rapid prototyping and iterative improvement as teams develop both individual components and complete systems. The workshop culminates in a team-based robotics competition featuring hidden information and opportunities for deceptive play. An after-action discussion will examine how engineering decisions, system design, and strategic choices influenced the performance.
   
• Program Fee: $3475 per person (teams of three are strongly encouraged, but not required) 

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