Chief Risk Officer

Leading Change 

People often dislike uncertainty at work and often fear or avoid change altogether. One of the most important roles of leadership then is to manage change and cope with uncertainty in your teams and organizations. This session explores the challenges and opportunities involved in change management, especially the areas of employee resistance, how to overcome it, and how to champion results. This session is a joint session with other C-Suite participants. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Tori Grady, Associate Professor of Management, Costello College of Business, George Mason University 

Being a Leader in the C-Suite 

This session builds your capacity to engage in the successful practices of leadership as a member of the C-Suite. The emphasis is on your way of being as a leader (the observer you are) and enhancing your capacity to declare commitments to future possibilities and engage others in sharing and fulfilling those commitments. The Session discusses the importance of context in confronting managerial challenges and creating opportunities. Explores the role of leadership in shaping conversations that create empowering contexts for organizational actions. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Greg Unruh, Arison Chair in Values Leadership, Associate Professor, College of Humanities and Social Science, George Mason University. 

Relational-Based Leadership 

It is up to leaders to create an environment in which individuals find meaning and motivation, perform, thrive, and are resilient. This comes not just from money or prestige, but because of the positive relationships they hold at work. This session allows individuals to appreciate how leaders can improve by taking a relational view towards others in the organization. To lead is to speak directly to the workforce, to understand their concerns, pinch points, frustrations, and pain. Taking a relational view goes beyond your individual relationship with each employee; it encompasses understanding the network of employee relationships. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Kevin Rockmann, Professor of Management, Costello College of Business, George Mason University. 

Creating a Positive Corporate Culture 

Introduces the construct of emotional culture and demonstrates the importance of cultivating a positive emotional culture for employees, teams, divisions, and organizations. Distinguishing among the key emotions impacting culture and describing how individuals and organizations can achieve enhanced employee health and wellbeing. Provide evidence-based techniques that managers can integrate into their daily work practices to increase personal and professional success. 

Faculty:  

• Mandy O’Neill, Associate Professor of Management, Costello College of Business, George Mason University. 

Building Business Acumen for the C-Suite 

Provides an overview to the principles and practices of business acumen; what separates C-Suite Executives who excel from those who do not; and how to successfully engage with other members of the C-Suite by applying the principles to everyday conversations and interactions. This session is a joint session with other C-Suite participants. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Tom Davies, Executive-in-Residence, Costello College of Business, George Mason University 

Value Creation and Customer/Stakeholder Equity 

In this session, participants will learn how executives make decision to create, communicate, capture, and deliver value to their customers or stakeholders. Successfully developing and deploying a critical value-based strategy that focuses on maximizing customer/stakeholder value and need satisfaction is essential for organizational performance and mission successful. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Brett W. Josephson, Associate Professor of Marketing, Costello College of Business, George Mason University. 

Business & Sustainability 

Historically, social expectations of businesses have been limited to the creation of wealth for shareholders and the simultaneous creation of jobs and economic development in their communities. Now, however, the last two decades has seen societal expectations shift toward creation social and environmental value in addition to economic returns. This course provides participants with frameworks and strategies they can use to align their business value creation with emerging social and environmental expectations.  

Faculty:  

• Dr. Greg Unruh, Arison Chair in Values Leadership, Associate Professor, College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

Innovation 

This session strengthens the participant’s innovation acumen by acquainting them with the latest thinking on innovation and exposing them to proven strategies and best practices to transforming promising ideas into actionable innovations that move their organizations forward. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Tom Davies, Executive-in-Residence, Costello College of Business, George Mason University 

Strategic Thinking, Value Proposition Models and Mission Fulfillment 

This session provides analytical tools to focus on value creation in an organization through the concept of business model innovation and its links to strategic management and strategic thinking. This session is a joint session with other C-Suite participants. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Mahesh Joshi, Associate Professor of Management, Costello College of Business, George Mason University 

Developing and Executing a Strategic Plan 

In this session, participants will gain an understanding of what is strategy. Identify links between organizations and types of strategy as well as how resources and assets link to different business models and mission objectives. 

Faculty: 

• Dr. Mahesh Joshi, Associate Professor of Management, Costello College of Business, George Mason University. 

The CRO as a Leader in the Organization 

This topic provides an overview of the role of a CRO, potential risk management areas of scope for a CRO, and a view as to what a CRO could be across multiple industries, setting, or government agencies. It concludes by providing the road map for the program.  

Faculty:

• Marcelo Brutti, Chief Risk Officer, City National Bank – An RBC Company 

Risk Management Strategies, Tactics, and Looking to the Future 

This session enables risk leaders to understand the importance of how and why their risk strategy is critical to the ultimate success of their organization through risk informed decision-making. The session emphasizes the role played by risk management tactics as well as the methods, practices, tools, techniques, and policies that actualize risk management now and into the future.  

Faculty:  

• Chris Mandel, RIMS-CRMP, RF, ARME, President and managing Consultant of Excellence in Risk Management LLC 
• Dr. Mark A. Livingston, Assistant Director of Personnel Security, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, & Senior Executive Fellow, Costello College of Business, George Mason University 

Risk Policy, Regulations, and Compliance 

This session focuses on developing an understanding of how an organization’s ERM program and its risk environment is influenced by the nature of the legal, regulatory, and compliance requirements imposed on the organization. Those obligations and constraints form a crucial part of the context in which organizations function and include the interests of governance entities (e.g., Board of Directors, political and congressional oversight, etc.), business executives, organizational risk managers, and external stakeholders. CROs can influence how the organizations address its compliance mandates. 

Faculty: 

• Ken Fletcher, Former Chief Risk Officer, Transportation Security Administration, Founder of Kestrel Hawk Consulting, Inc., a veteran-owned small business. 
• David S. Halwig, Senior Principal, IntelliVen Inc. 

Data Analysis and Metrics of ERM 

Provides the key frameworks to understand the value of ERM data and how data analytics and metrics can be leveraged for risk assessment, mitigation, and management. CRO’s live in an environment with increasing data availability but need to know how and when to use it. Session also provides an overview of IT Risk Management, information security and data privacy, and different qualitative and quantitative approaches.  

Faculty: 

• Marcelo Brutti, Chief Risk Officer, City National Bank – An RBC Company 

Ensuring Business Continuity 

Introduces participants to the role of the CRO in building a Business Continuity Plan and the best practices for current crisis planning. The Focus of this session is the evolving role of the CRO to assist in business impact analysis, BCP training and exercise development, as well as BCP plan development and strategizing.  

Faculty: 

• Dr. Mark Livingston, Assistant Director of Personnel Security, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, & Senior Executive Fellow, Costello College of Business, George Mason University 

Linking Organizational Strategy to ERM 

One of the challenges a CRO finds is that at times, their role and function might seem not seem to align with the broader strategy and mission of their organization or firm. This session focuses on the basics of ERM and demonstrates its linkages to overall strategic principles for firms and organizations. 

Faculty:  

• Dr. Mahesh Joshi, Associate Professor of Management, Costello College of Business, George Mason University. 

Scenario Analysis and Stress Testing 

This session provides CROs with the necessary frameworks to understand and appreciate scenario analysis and stress testing of organizational systems and procedures. Participants will see how these tools can be leveraged for risk assessment, mitigation and management as well as how to analyze the output of different stress testing techniques. Participants will also see how to create scenarios themselves, assess controls or mitigants and understand outcomes. 

Faculty:  

• Marcelo Brutti, Chief Risk Officer, City National Bank – An RBC Company 

Linking Human Centered Design Principles to ERM 

This session focus on the design of ERM tools through a human-centered design thinking lens to improve effectiveness. ERM practices are often slowed by cultural barriers that exist within an organization. Business leaders will learn to focus on what barriers are present inside their organizations to determine what needs to be done to remove them so progress can be realized. 

Faculty: 

• Dr. Karen Hardy, RIMS-CRMP-FED, Chief Risk Officer & Principal Consultant, Strategic Leadership Advisors LLC 

ERM and Environmental, Social, and Governance Issues 

The focus of this session will be on enabling risk leaders to understand the role played by ESG at the strategy setting level in organizations and the contribution it makes to ultimate mission delivery. Emphasis will be placed on understanding “what’s” material to business and operating models and how the fundamentals of risk management can be applied within the ESG paradigm. Participants will examine the various international frameworks and standards that comprise the current state of ESG knowledge and how these contribute to the current state of Governance of Organization’s principles. 

Faculty:  

• Peadar Duffy, Global ESG Lead, Archer IRM 

Data Protection and Privacy 

Achieving privacy in a digital world is increasingly becoming a problem. Privacy preserving solutions are harder to construct and, at the same time, are significantly more computationally intensive to perform. This session describes the practical tools and cryptographic protocols that protect data integrity and privacy as well as protocols.  

Faculty:  

• Dr. Foteini Baldimtsi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, College of Engineering and Computing, George Mason University 

A combination of George Mason faculty, adjuncts, and subject matter experts teach in the program. 

Costello College of Business faculty with the support of an advisory council of c-suite professionals developed the program curricula. Topics and outcomes are reviewed and revised yearly based on feedback and emerging industry best practices.

Not at this time. 

Preferred pricing for government employees is $7,650. A promotional code will be provided to those accepted into the program. Please call (703) 993-8275 if you are a Mason employee or would like to discuss a group rate.   

The $8,500 program cost includes all materials, activities, catering, receptions, and a certificate of completion.

Follow this registration link to register for the program. You will receive an emailed response with directions on payment.

Participants should expect to spend seven full days at the George Mason University Mason Square Campus as well as participating in 5-6 online topics delivered in two-week increments. For each two-week topic there will be approximately 8-10 hours of learning including readings, videos, presentations, live session, discuss boards, and deliverables.

Over the course of five months, there are seven in-person days and five two-week online topics.

In-person days include morning and afternoon learning sessions, catering, and a reception.

Online topics include a combination of asynchronous components such as discussion boards, presentations, videos, and assignments, as well as live synchronous sessions. Expect one to three scheduled live sessions for each online topic. These generally start between 7 and 8 p.m. eastern time. Live sessions are recorded and posted the next day. 

Zoom is used for live online sessions. A tutorial is provided to participants in .pdf format, and an optional live tutorial session is offered as well. All registered participants are given access to Blackboard approximately two weeks prior to the start of the program. 

This is a non-credit executive education program so you will not earn university credit. However, CEUs (continuing education units) authorized by George Mason University are available upon request. At least two weeks prior to the start of the program, please send your request to execdev@gmu.edu. You will be asked to provide additional personal information in order to have your CEUs properly recorded.   

Participants will not be graded, but In order to receive a certificate of completion, participants will need to complete a minimum of 80 percent of the work assigned (including assignments, deliverables, discussion boards, and live sessions). At the end of each topic, faculty are asked to provide a summary of participant’s engagement. 

The maximum number of participants for a single cohort is 20. 

Most participants have at least six years of management experience and are at the Director level or above. Approximately half of the participants have been from the public/non-profit sector and half from the private sector. The average age of participants is 45. 

No. Participants are admitted on a rolling basis up to the start of the program or until the cohort is full. 

No. This program is a non-credit course, therefore not eligible for 1098-T reporting.