Strategic Leadership in the Age of Generative and Agentic AI
Curriculum
The Strategic Leadership in the Age of Generative and Agentic AI certificate program equips forward-thinking leaders to turn emerging AI capabilities into measurable organizational value. Designed for mid- to senior-level professionals, this 7–8 month online program blends AI literacy, strategic frameworks, live faculty sessions, and hands-on AI Acceleration Projects to help you align AI with business goals, identify high-impact opportunities, design scalable workflows, and lead responsible, enterprise-wide transformation.
AI is redefining decision-making, productivity, customer experience, and competitive advantage. Yet most organizations struggle to convert experimentation into outcomes. This program helps you bridge that gap.
You will gain:
- A strategic understanding of generative and agentic AI.
- A practical approach to evaluating and deploying high-value use cases.
- Hands-on experience with platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity AI, Midjourney, DeepSeek and ElevenLabs.
- The ability to lead human–AI teams and design governance frameworks that ensure responsible, scalable adoption.
Across five structured courses, AI Fundamentals and Futures, Agentic and Generative AI for Business, Generative AI at Work: Workflows and Customization, Building and Leading AI-Powered Teams, and AI Governance and Responsible Leadership, you will build the strategic, technical, and ethical capabilities required to lead AI transformation.
Each course concludes with an AI Acceleration Project applied to your own business context.
Learning Objectives to Become an AI Leader
This transformative learning experience includes structured coursework, live online sessions, case studies, and a capstone-style applied project in every course, providing a holistic approach to leadership in the age of AI.
After completing the certificate program, you will be able to:
- Demonstrate a strong understanding of how AI aligns with business strategy so you can make informed, forward-looking decisions.
- Identify high-value use cases, estimate ROI, and design scalable AI deployment plans tailored to your organization.
- Build and lead human–AI teams by combining human intuition with machine-driven efficiency.
- Design workflows, prompts, and agentic patterns that support business automation and operational excellence.
- Establish responsible AI governance frameworks that balance innovation with accountability, ethics, and compliance.
- Confidently guide enterprise-wide AI transformation, grounded in practical models and leadership principles.
Required Online AI Courses
Eight weeks, with weekly live online sessions.
In this foundational course, you will build a deep understanding of how AI works, why it has accelerated so rapidly, and where its future is heading. You will explore core concepts such as supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning, as well as the value and limitations of generative AI. Through practical frameworks, you’ll learn how to evaluate AI use cases, estimate business value, and identify opportunities that can deliver meaningful organizational impact.
You will learn to:
- Understand the fundamental approaches, terminology, and mechanics behind modern AI systems.
- Evaluate real and emerging AI trends to identify viable strategic opportunities.
- Estimate value for AI initiatives and determine which projects are likely to produce measurable returns.
- Apply your learning to an AI Acceleration Project tailored to your business context.
Eight weeks, with weekly live online sessions.
This course examines how generative and agentic AI are reshaping business models and operational workflows. You will analyze real-world use cases that demonstrate how these tools increase productivity, personalize customer and employee experiences, enhance decision-making, and automate operations. By applying structured frameworks, you will evaluate when and where generative or agentic AI can create sustainable business value.
You will learn to:
- Identify and evaluate high-impact use cases for generative and agentic AI across various business functions.
- Assess opportunities to increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve efficiency using AI-driven workflows.
- Design transformation strategies that align AI capabilities with your business model.
- Complete an AI Acceleration Project focused on a real organizational use case.
Eight weeks, with weekly live online sessions.
This course takes you deeper into the technical and operational foundations behind generative and agentic AI. You will gain practical knowledge of how LLMs operate, how they can be fine-tuned, and how RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) and preference tuning can help tailor models to your organization. You will also design agentic workflows, implement governance controls, and learn techniques that reduce hallucinations and ensure reliability.
You will learn to:
- Build and customize LLMs using RAG, fine-tuning, enterprise data, and preference-tuning approaches.
- Design prompts and structured workflows to improve accuracy, efficiency, and governance.
- Apply guardrails, bias-reduction strategies, and enterprise-grade governance mechanisms.
- Design operational agent workflows using tools, memory, APIs, MCP, and multi-agent orchestration.
- Apply your learning to a hands-on AI Acceleration Project for a real business challenge.
Eight weeks, with weekly live online sessions.
This course focuses on organizational transformation and the human side of AI adoption. You will learn to build and lead teams enhanced by AI, plan workforce transitions, and set the KPIs necessary for measuring AI-driven success. You’ll also explore talent strategy, communication across technical and non-technical groups, and techniques for driving lasting change.
You will learn to:
- Communicate your AI vision and secure cross-functional alignment.
- Build and lead teams that leverage AI as a force multiplier.
- Develop KPIs and measurement frameworks for enterprise AI initiatives.
- Address workforce planning, talent strategy, and compensation in AI-driven organizations.
- Complete an AI Acceleration Project rooted in your organizational context.
Eight weeks, with weekly live online sessions.
This course equips you to lead responsibly and design governance structures that accelerate innovation while managing risk. You will explore ethical, legal, and regulatory considerations and learn to translate complex AI risks into clear business language. You will design approaches that ensure responsible adoption while enhancing the profitability of your AI portfolio.
You will learn to:
- Articulate your leadership philosophy regarding AI, risk, and human oversight.
- Translate complex technical risks into clear, business-aligned governance strategies.
- Develop responsible AI frameworks that balance value creation with long-term sustainability.
- Design governance policies that blend top-down oversight with bottom-up innovation.
Earn a Credential in AI
Upon successful completion of the program, you will receive:
- A certificate from the University of Chicago.
- A digital credential that can be shared on LinkedIn or your professional portfolio.
These credentials affirm your capability to guide ethical, strategic, and scalable AI adoption across your organization.
