Business Leadership for Engineers Connects the Classroom with Real-World Leadership Lessons

The Christensen Center’s EGR 190 Business Leadership for Engineers course continues to prepare Pratt engineering undergraduate students to become effective leaders by connecting technical education with real-world leadership experiences. Student demand keeps growing with the Fall 2026 course having filled all 20 available seats with a waitlist.

The course is taught by Mike Salvino, former CEO of Fortune 200 company DXC Technology, and Adria Dunbar, PhD, Managing Director of the Duke Christensen Family Center for Innovation.

Dylan Nguyen, (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Class of 2026 & A. James Clark Scholar) who has taken the course and also served as a teaching assistant, put it best:

“There are very few classes at Duke whose lessons still ring clearly months or years after you first learn them. Business Leadership for Engineers is one of those classes.

What most stands out is just how valuable it is to have someone remarkably successful in their career—CEOs, lawyers, surgeons, head coaches—come to this small classroom and be honest about how much they have had to overcome and what they are still struggling with. It has shown me that success is anything but effortless, and it’s freeing to know that the path to success involves stumbling, restarting, revising and struggling.

Business Leadership is not really a course about business strategy or managing others. It’s a class about how to become the kind of person who makes a good leader—which generally also means it’s about how to become a good person.”

The course will also be offered in the Spring 2027 semester.