Course Facilitators
Exposure to some of the most critical topics affecting companies of today and leaders of tomorrow is what the Global Village is all about. With more than 50 courses presented by 40 facilitators, including at least 12 international instructors, interns discover business trends and best practices needed to understand the global marketplace.  All course seminars are 3 hours in length and offer a small stipend.   For more information on beinbg a facilitator in the Global Village, please contact Sherry Buss, Curriculum Director at slb9@lehigh.edu or 610-758-6509. 

Executive Visitors
During the Global Village, we provide interns the opportunity to interact with more than 60 executives who represent large and small corporations, family-owned businesses, start-up companies, and sole proprietorships. These interactions are a key feature of the program.

Each week in the Global Village, top-level senior executives visit the program to spend time interacting with interns. During these visits, they meet with small groups of interns for informal discussions about business trends, corporate ventures, career paths, successes and failures, and the future.

More importantly, it is the interns themselves who direct the conversation by asking questions, by raising objections, and by offering alternative points-of-view and the best practices of their respective nations. Again and again, visiting executives tell us what a rare joy it is to have the opportunity to learn from others as well as to teach from their own experiences.  

The time commitment for executive visitors is a half-day.  Executives arrive on campus at 8 AM where they will be greeted by their intern hosts.  The interns will spend the next 30 minutes with the executive meeting with the executive in person and finalizing the morning introduction.  At 8:30 AM, executives accompanied by their intern hosts will proceed to the morning meeting.  Each of the five executives that are with the Village that day will have 15 minutes to present their session topic.  For example, you will have 15 minutes to share your story with the entire group of 100 interns and staff.  After each executive has their "15 minutes", then we will proceed to the breakout sessions.  Interns will decide which executive's roundtable they want to sit in based on the executives' presentations. 

Following the morning presentations, each executive will hold two consecutive roundtable discussions with different groups of interns.  These sessions will be moderated by one of our management staff.  This first session will run from 10 AM to 11:15 AM and the second session will be held from 11:30 AM to 12:45 PM. 

A summary of the executive day is as follows…
                       

• 8:00 AM Arrival at Lehigh University
• 8:30 AM Introductions and Executive Presentations
• 10 AM Roundtable Discussion #1
• 11:30 AM Roundtable Discussion #2
• 1:00 PM Executive Day concludes

The afternoons of our executive days are dedicated to group sessions such as country panel presentations and leadership roundtables.  As always, our executives are both welcomed and encouraged to stay with us and partake in the rest of the day’s activities.
For more information on the Global Village Executive Visitor Program, please contact Sherry Buss, Curriculum Director at slb9@lehigh.edu or 610-758-6509. 

Country Panel Moderator
Another opportunity for the corporate community to interact with Global Village intern is Country Panel Competitive sessions.  Executives and entrepreneur challenge our intern’s  skills and knowledge of doing business in their home countries by developing an investment case and moderating a case panel competition that allows the participants to learn about doing business in other countries and working with clients ‘in the real world.’

Twelve individual and unique cases are constructed each year from real-life entrepreneur’s business ventures.  Developed in tandem with the country panel competition director, each short, two or three page investor case provides a framework under which Global Village country representatives/interns compete against each other for the investor’s business.  Cases represent unique opportunities that may span the globe such as the selection of a location for a new manufacturing facility, branch office, sales office, service center, distribution network or similar investment venture. 

During the Country Panel Competitive sessions, intern country representatives or teams responds to their investor’s case by providing a report (optional), delivering a five minute competitive presentation, and responding to questions during a 30-minute Q and A period.  The interns are challenged to convince the investor that their country has the best and most appropriate environment for a proposed business venture to be successful.  Research, country facts and statistics, and in-country knowledge of ‘doing business’ play into this unique learning experience. 

Country Panel Competitive sessions require about a six hour commitment during which the investor develops a short case, reviews any reports provided by the interns, moderates the panel session, and selects the competitive case winner based upon the most persuasive and convincing facts and presentation.  After the session concludes, interns are encourage to discuss with the investor his or her choices, selection criteria and the outcome of the session.  The session provide an unparalleled learning experience for the intern and a unique environment in which the corporate community may interact, teach and learn from our outstanding class of Global Village young business leaders.

For more information on the Global Village Country Panel Investor Experience or becoming an investor yourself, please contact Elizabeth Simmons, Country Panel Director at eas7@lehigh.edu  or at 610.758.5664.

 

Project Mentor
Each of our 14 Consulting Business Projects requires a person who is responsible for overseeing the project team.  The role is not one of a typical Project Manager, but rather a Mentor who encourages and coaches the team to success.  Key responsibilities include coordinating the initial client meeting, overseeing that the project roles and responsibilities are appropriate, ensures that milestones are met, finessing the multi-cultural team dynamics, reviewing the final report, providing feedback on final report and final presentation, and evaluating team success.  The Project Mentor will spend approximately eight days on site during the six-week Global Village program.  Experience in Project Management and/or Consulting is preferred.  Please contact Carol Ham, Project Coordinator at csh205@lehigh.edu or at 610-758-3467.