News/Events

WDI Faculty Affiliate John Branch teaches a marketing module during the 2016 Strategic Management Program in Latvia.

Soon after Robert M. Teeter’s death in 2004, the WDI Board of Directors established a scholarship program in his honor to allow owners and managers of small- and medium-sized enterprises in emerging economies to attend the Institute’s professional education programs for free. Teeter was an advisor to several U.S. presidents and a former WDI board member.

Each year, 20 scholarships are handed out to worthy recipients. Recently, WDI’s Education Initiative spoke with four who attended WDI programs in 2016 to see how they and their organizations were impacted by the sessions. Three attended WDI’s 10-day Strategic Management Program (SMP), and one participated in an inaugural program on Strategic Thinking. Both programs were held at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, a longtime partner of WDI Education.

Read the full article and profiles of the four participants here.

Dovilė Pranckevičienė of Lithuania is the co-founder and director of a foreign language training school. “My knowledge was very narrow,” she said. Attending the SMP “was really an eye-opener for me, one who had no background in business management.” She said she “gained a lot of knowledge in a short period of time.”

Aleksandrs Lescinskis has his own law firm in Latvia and also manages a Judo studio and a sports association. He liked the SMP’s condensed timeframe and collaborative atmosphere.

“During a short period of time – two weeks, four modules – you can share your existing experience with professors and colleagues, looking at the same things from different angles, broadening your perspective,” he said. “We are working in different areas, but during this course we can find similar things to discuss, to share. I had to a chance to find out new things, to have new colleagues, new professors, to have communication. All things will help me in the future to go further.”

Santa Krastiņa of Latvia attended WDI’s first Strategic Thinking program. As a leader of an environmental NGO, Krastiņa said she immediately put to work what she learned. Krastiņa shared her training with her colleagues at her organization, and expects their new knowledge to positively impact how they work with partners and how they approach new markets.

“We have a lot to think through about our future – how we will fund ourselves, how we will survive,” she said.

Krastiņais is optimistic the training she received from WDI will help her organization accomplish great things.

“I got new knowledge to put into practice [with] my co-workers,” she said. “Together, we will find a solution.”