Ramit Lamba

Ramit Lamba, Professor of Radiology, Associate Chair, Chief of Abdominal Imaging, CT Director

The business world has always been an interest of mine. I was at a stage in my career where I felt like I already had leadership roles, but was also at a point where I wanted to learn more.

Physicians are very good at taking care of people but are generally not trained in understanding the operations of a business. They tend to be change-averse and sometimes resistant to learning about fields outside of medicine. In contrast, the business world focuses a lot on dynamic leadership, change, nimbleness, and strategy.

Going into the Berkeley Executive Education Program, “strategy” was just a generic term to me. Examples of ‘strategy’ included things such as: ‘this is my strategy to prepare for an exam’, or ‘this is my strategy in dealing with a difficult situation’. Taking the executive education programs at Berkeley Haas gave me not only a better understanding of organizational leadership, but also what strategy means in the context of a business, it's importance, why we need to learn it, and also illuminated how physicians sometimes lack the skills of building and implementing strategy in their practice environments.

Developing a strategy for your practice is a good start, but there's a huge component of how you execute it. My time at Berkeley Executive Education has helped me realize how important it was for me to get out of my current mindset and grow my understanding of business and leadership. Completing the Certificate of Business Excellence (COBE) Program at Berkeley thus has helped me immensely. I realized that just like medicine is a structured science, business is a structured science and to be an effective leader, it must be learned.

The Berkeley Executive Education program, particularly the Certificate of Business Excellence, interested me because world-renowned Haas Professors teach it, and Berkeley has a brand presence and a reputation that is hard to match. Berkeley Haas consistently ranks among the top 10 business schools in the country. It has fueled innovation in Silicon Valley. The reputation is just amazing.

To learn more about Ramit's COBE experience, visit here.