Applications opened last fall for the inaugural Stern at NYU Abu Dhabi Class of 2025 One-year Full-time MBA Program, and the response has been strong right out of the gate. That’s exciting news for this latest NYU collaboration between NYU Stern and NYU Abu Dhabi, one that offers the only full-time MBA by a top U.S. business school in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.

The first such professional degree offering at NYU’s Abu Dhabi portal campus, which was established in 2010, Stern at NYUAD features modules both in Abu Dhabi and in New York City. It aims to draw young professionals from around the world who are keen to start their careers in the MENA region after graduation. Commenting on this milestone, Raghu Sundaram, Dean of NYU Stern School of Business, said, “The introduction of this full-time MBA to the MENA region is groundbreaking for students who want to earn an MBA from one of the world’s leading business schools in just one year and build a career in a region that is seeing exponential growth. Through this pioneering collaboration with NYU Abu Dhabi, we have a wonderful opportunity to educate the next generation of leaders and enhance the talent pipeline in the UAE.”

Robert Salomon, a professor of international management at Stern, is serving as inaugural Dean of Stern at NYU Abu Dhabi. An award-winning scholar and educator, his work focuses extensively on globalization and global strategy, with research specifically in international expansion and governance, cross-border knowledge transfer, international trade, foreign entry and location decisions.

As Salomon explains, “This is a program that is preparing students to participate in the global economy, and what better way than to have them learn about the global economy than to be not just in one singular place, but to also have a global experience?”

Left to Right: Rob Salomon, Dean, Stern at NYUAD; John Tate, CEO, Tamkeen; Raghu Sundaram, Dean, NYU Stern School of Business; Rima Al Mokarrab, Trustee, NYU, and Chair, Tamkeen; Linda Mills, President, NYU; Mariët Westermann, Vice Chancellor, NYU Abu Dhabi; Arlie Petters, Provost, NYU Abu Dhabi

A Chat with the First Dean of Stern at NYUAD: Robert Salomon

Robert Salomon (MPhil ’00, PhD ’02), the inaugural Dean of Stern at NYUAD, is excited to lead the MBA program in the MENA region, a budding entrepreneurial ecosystem that will benefit from the skills the MBA students will develop in the program.

In an interview with Accepted.com, Salomon explained, “Abu Dhabi is increasingly becoming a world capital that’s connected to other world capitals, more so every day—more of a finance and fintech capital, a sustainability capital, a consumer products capital, a technology capital. The UAE and Abu Dhabi in particular are investing in these areas because they see the need to diversify their economy away from fossil fuels and toward a more knowledge-based, services-based economy. When you speak to companies and you ask, what is it that you need in order to accomplish your goals, we hear the same answers over and over again: we need people who have managerial skills.”
 

Because Stern at NYUAD is a one-year full-time MBA program, running from January through December, internships are built into the curriculum structure rather than take place during the summer as with the traditional two-year MBA program. Salomon explained, “Students will be working on live projects for corporations operating in the area to perform projects as they go through the program. This provides several benefits. The companies that sponsor the projects—we’re already working with several companies that have agreed to sponsor those projects—get to evaluate and see the talent that is in our MBA class. And the students will get a sense of the companies for which they do projects to evaluate if those companies or industries are a good fit for their careers.” 

In addition, the summer semester for Stern at NYUAD students will be spent at Stern’s New York campus and include additional experiential learning with local companies through the “Doing Business In” course. 

Salomon envisions an inaugural class in the range of 50 students, with the potential to scale over time. “Our goal is to maintain the highest-quality student body that is on par with the student body that we have at NYU Stern in New York.