The Business of the World
Lauder Institute Gives MBAs the Language and Cultural Savvy to Succeed Overseas

When it comes to chit-chat, Sam Sidiqi, G,WG’04, knows just how to handle it.

The 26-year-old grad student is finishing his second year at Penn’s Lauder Institute, where students are prepared for careers in international business by immersion in the language and culture of a region at the same time as earning an MBA. The cultural component has helped Sidiqi, who has chosen the Arabic track, to recognize the importance of making casual conversation in the Middle East. He understands that if you want to close deals there, you can’t simply present your terms and hope for the best: You have to nurture personal relationships. “When you are doing business in the Middle East, you have to do the small talk,” he said.

For 20 years, the Lauder program has been producing graduates who, through Wharton, have top-level business training, and through the School of Arts and Sciences, are uniquely qualified to apply that expertise around the globe. Lauder graduates earn both an MA in international studies as well as a business degree.

The program was launched in response to difficulties experienced by founders Leonard Lauder, W’54, and Ronald Lauder, W’65, who were trying to find professionals who could do business in foreign cultures and conduct negotiations in languages other than English. “Too many MBAs were narrowly trained, had poor language skills, and were awkward with cultural differences,” said Wharton professor and Lauder director Richard Herring.

So far the program has graduated 930 students who have concentrated in one of eight languages that, in addition to English, are the most widely used in the business world —French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin), and, since 2002, Arabic. Students spend about a quarter of their two years abroad, learning the language and culture of their chosen track by working with local businesses. In Sidiqi’s case, the immersion included language study in Morocco and business meetings in the United Arab Emirates. He spent last summer in Afghanistan, staying in mud-brick houses with relatives—his family moved to the U.S. when he was an infant—and working in the fledgling central bank.

Sidiqi plans to use his Lauder education in the Middle East, where he hopes to introduce more efficient business practices. “Economies do better when the private sector is working well,” he said, recalling a Dubai pipe-making company where he worked whose growth was held back by a hierarchy that required a senior manager to approve even minor purchases.

Increased prosperity, he believes, will help to neutralize simmering resentments toward America in less developed areas of the world. “It’s pretty easy to blame other people when you are not doing so well yourself,” Sidiqi said. “Countries need to be dependent on themselves, and if you create a vibrant private sector, that will ease animosity.”

The Lauder Institute attracts “a range of students who would not necessarily do an MBA,” noted Herring. “They have broad interests, a cosmopolitan outlook, and an understanding of geopolitics.”

— Jon Hurdle