As the 2026-27 year gets underway, UNICON Board Chair Aldemir Drummond (Fundação Dom Cabral) and Executive Director Melanie Weaver Barnett have written to the UNICON membership to share the consortium's objective for the year, the three priorities behind it, and an invitation to every member school to get more involved.
Looking back
Before the year ahead, the year that was
Aldemir takes over as Board Chair from Shalini Bhatia, who chaired the Board through 2025-26. In her year in review, Shalini looks back on record participation at both conferences, eight new member schools, four research reports and a first for the consortium's finances.
Looking ahead
The letter
Dear fellow members of the UNICON community,
We hope you are all doing well. To those of you beginning a new academic year, we wish you every success.
As we look ahead to the year before us, we anticipate a challenging environment for universities and business schools. The significant uncertainties in the global environment and the rapid pace of technological change are putting pressure on executive education operations, particularly in delivering strong financial results.
It is in this context that we emphasize UNICON as a powerful source of research and curated information on executive education. UNICON, as a network of 120 of the world's leading executive education schools, provides a space where you can exchange experiences and learn about the executive education business, both in person and virtually. Like any knowledge-based activity, this network becomes more valuable as its members participate more actively, both contributing and gaining content and experiences that are valuable to the work we each do.
Our objective for 2026-27
Our primary objective for the period from July 2026 through June 2027 is to strengthen UNICON's position as a high-quality, globally relevant consortium in which members create and capture value through meaningful exchanges and by building their capabilities in the executive education business.
Three priorities
To achieve this objective, we have established three priorities:
Activate the network of member schools as a high-impact learning platform;
Ensure a high-quality, global network of member schools;
Lead capability building for member schools in the executive education business.
We are working both on UNICON's internal organization and on activities with member schools to implement these priorities. In this regard, we would highlight the recent creation of the Education Committee, whose focus is to expand our portfolio of programs aimed at building schools' capabilities in the executive education business, as well as the establishment of a task force to review and recommend improvements to the institution's governance processes.
All of this work is being undertaken to improve the quality of the activities that UNICON develops and delivers to member schools. In this regard, we would like to draw your attention to What's ahead for UNICON members, which highlights how you and your colleagues at your school can gain the greatest possible value from participating in UNICON.
We close with an invitation to each of you to connect with and engage in UNICON's activities.
With our best wishes for a successful year,
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