This seminar on leadership and management examines the life work of Thomas Jefferson by studying the many roles he played in the founding of our country. The basic scheme of the seminar dictates that the students read a book a week, write a one-page paper each week summarizing their impressions from the readings, and then engage in a discussion about their thoughts on leadership and management as related to the readings. The seminar meets in the Colonnade Club Pavilion on the Lawn at the University of Virginia, a setting that contributes to a means for Darden students to obtain a greater understanding of the culture and traditions of Mr. Jefferson's University. Reading selections are taken from the six-volume biography on Thomas Jefferson written by Dumas Malone, the book Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, the book Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, the book John Adams by David McCullough, and the two prize-winning films on Jefferson by Ken Burns. The seminar participants include students and faculty from the Darden School along with interested University of Virginia alumni.

This course is based on a pioneering new approach-using pre-scripting and rehearsal-to prepare business managers/leaders for values-driven decision-making and action. Rather than simply talking about these difficult decisions and conversations, you will have the opportunity to practice them.

This course will address the various requirements for operating in a crisis & leading in uncertainty. The course will help students frame uncertainty & how to bound the various uncertainties to be able to move forward & make decisions. It will also explore the differences in decision making when in a crisis & how to be better prepared for operating in that environment. Finally, it will address the need to be able to understand & fully manage an array of stakeholders.

The objective of the course is to present a disciplined, valuation based process for security analysis. The course will focus on melding theory and practice using examples across industries and geographies. Investing is as much art as it is science, and therefore, particular attention will be paid to both quantitative and qualitative aspects- including financial statement analysis, valuation methodologies, and competitive strategy.

This course introduces students to selected areas of business law of particular relevance to general managers and their financial advisers, excluding tax law. The focus is less on the substance of particular legal rules, for which managers rely on their legal advisers, and more on the basic tools of legal analysis. This knowledge adds value in two respects. First, it facilitates communication with lawyers and understanding the advice they provide. Second, it demonstrates a way of analyzing problems that is different from, but complementary to, those taught in core business courses. The course begins with an overview of the foundational topics of the American legal system: the law of contracts, property, and torts. It then moves to substantive areas that managers routinely encounter, such as corporate governance, bankruptcy, intellectual property, and antitrust. The course examines the structure of the court systems and legal profession in the United States and provides some comparative analysis of other legal systems. Students learn to read and understand basic primary legal materials and recognize standard analytical techniques.

This course builds on First-Year Strategy to focus on multi-business firms and expands beyond the classical strategy concepts (i.e., capabilities analysis or five forces) to understand how firms can best optimize their scope, develop new business models, and leverage existing resources. The course is for anyone interested in managing, investing, financing, or advising a company that operates in multiple markets. As modern firms span many geographies and categories, this course is for anyone interested in developing new strategies and effectively running a business today - big or small.

Many of our most successful entrepreneurial companies have been founded and significantly influenced by professional venture-capital firms. This course focuses on the professional world of venture capitalists and how venture capitalists work with entrepreneurs to create substantial, enduring ventures. The course addresses three topics: how venture-capital firms are formed, funded, and managed; how firms manage their relationships with the limited partners who provide their investment capital; and how the parties work together to build successful major companies.

"In this course, we explore how to create value in the emerging metaverse. Class sessions will cover topics such as: the underlying economics, the innovations enabling virtual reality; the technology ""stack"" developed to support these environments; the economic principles informing online markets and economies; as well as the strategic dynamics among the players in the evolving metaverse."

GEMstone is a second-year capstone course that builds on the monetary and financial electives offered in the GEM area, specifically Economics of Money and Banking (EMB) and Global Financial Markets (GFM). As a capstone, this course is designed to help students consolidate the knowledge they have accumulated over two years at Darden into an unshakable understanding of international finance and monetary economics.

This is a business-world-focused course on game theory: the mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) actors. Some of the common applications covered in the course include competition between firms, trading in financial markets, auctions, international politics, warfare, and artificial intelligence.