Overview

Key Takeaways

Advance Your Leadership Skills

Acquire research-based techniques to develop your unique leadership style, effectively navigate challenging conversations, and prepare for potential situations where you can leverage your leadership.

Broaden Your Personal Impact

Learn modern business trends on leadership, strategy, and innovation that will enable you to drive change within your organization and beyond.

Establish a Strong Professional Network

Connect with other minority professionals in diverse industries and expand your professional network.

Learning Journey

The Bay Area Executive Leadership Accelerator Program learning journey includes three main immersions: Leading Self, Leading Teams, and Leading the Business. Within these three immersions, the learning journey is segmented further into the below components.

Pre-Program Orientation

Begin your journey with a session designed to engage and connect leaders through sharing of personal goals, while gaining insight into the overall learning journey and desired outcomes.

Live Virtual Faculty Sessions

Strengthen your skills as an agile, authentic leader, able to lead through others, navigate ambiguity and complexity, set and achieve priorities with confidence. Led by Berkeley Haas faculty through an immersive virtual learning experience.

In-Person Practitioners Workshops

Through its vast network, Urban League of Greater San Francisco Bay Area has gathered incredible leaders and mentors of color, to share their own personal leadership journeys and lessons, to help accelerate yours.

Peer Collaboration & Networking

One of the most important components of this learning journey is you. Among the most powerful and lasting learnings will be from the sharing of experiences and insight among peers. Engage fully, share openly, and the group will form strong bonds that extend long beyond the program.

Who's it for

Black leaders seeking to advance to higher levels of responsibility by strengthening today's most critical leadership skills during times of accelerating change
Leaders seeking to drive change and model and advance inclusive leadership within their organizations

Mid-tier leaders committed to strengthening their individual impact while advancing the collective impact of Black leaders in business

Format & Structure

Blended

Online and In-person modules combined in a program

Length

Three Months (11 weeks)

Practitioner workshops
Four in-person sessions and six online sessions
An immersive learning experience, combining experiential learning activities and collaboration with faculty and practitioners to provide immediately actionable tools and strategies to apply in your own work
Participatory, active program design, with an emphasis on small group exercises and conversations, and peer coaching with classmates
Networking and community elements, designed to build and sustain connections and impact, well beyond the program

Dates & Costs

Blended

Dec 9, 2025 - Mar 10, 2026

$5,275.00

Apply Now

Other Ways to Participate

Attend this program with a group of your colleagues.

Attend this program with colleagues to gain greater organizational impact. Groups of five or more receive special rates.

Learn More

Customize this program for your organization.

Use this program's curriculum as the foundation of a program based on your company's unique objectives.

Learn More

What people are saying

"The Bay Area Executive Leadership Accelerator has given me the tools to be my authentic self in any environment. Successful leaders are continuous learners that understand the importance of collaboration and active listening to bridge the gap of equity and inclusion."

Government Program Analyst, CalPERS

"The Bay Area Executive Leadership Accelerator program provided me with insight into what direction to take my career next. I stepped into the class eyes, ears, and mind wide open and walked away with my mind blown away from the content shared and knowledge from guest speakers. I now have more confidence in how to approach my next career journey and methods to tackle the challenges that will come as a leader. Thank you Berkeley and Urban League of Greater San Francisco Bay Area for providing this opportunity."

Senior Digital Forensics Engineer, Splunk, Inc.

"I enjoyed the program because it allowed me to connect with other like-minded individuals. I did not feel alone in my experiences in the workforce. The program has certainly increased my level of confidence - that I can effectuate change by stepping into the act of being a leader. "Leadership, not as a title or position, but as an action!"

Legal Counsel - Commercials, Splunk, Inc.

"The skills and ways to manage that I've learned has shown me the steps to scale not only my business, but has given me an opportunity to grow."

Founder & CEO, Purple Heart

"Take it, you will learn content that otherwise takes about 7-10 years to learn on your own."

Assistant General Counsel, Eli Lilly and Company

"One of the most valuable things about this program was actively dedicating 2-4 hours per week to focus on growing as a black leader. That meant proactively making time outside of the weekly meetings to review the content/modules and reflect on what was learned. The other most valuable thing about the program for me was meeting other black leaders that I may not have met otherwise."

Bay Area Executive Leadership Accelerator Participant, 2022