LeBow Highlights Graduates’ Competitive Advantage and Career Progression in New Campaign

At a time when the value of higher education has come into question and technological changes are transforming entire industries and, in some cases, the very nature of work, prospective students are increasingly asking, as they weigh their futures: How will a business degree benefit me?

Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business is ready with an answer: by focusing on skill building and career development from day one, LeBow prepares job-ready graduates who gain extensive industry experience alongside their academic studies. This means graduates are positioned to land full-time roles with competitive salaries, earn promotions sooner and rise to the top of their fields.

A new brand campaign for LeBow puts the experiences and skills that drive career progression at the forefront, demonstrating how LeBow’s undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs help graduates get ahead — and stay ahead — as industries adapt and new ones emerge.

“Across over 100 years of business education at Drexel, we’ve honed our programs to provide students with the tools to drive industry forward and create lasting value,” says LeBow Dean and R. John Chapel Jr. Dean’s Chair Vibhas Madan, PhD. “Our students graduate not just with a credential, but with a mindset and a skill set that are complementary for making thoughtful decisions in a world shaped by technology, uncertainty and change.”

Building a Competitive Advantage

A recent deep dive into what makes the LeBow community different, with feedback from students, faculty, staff, alumni and industry partners, made clear that students prepare for their future careers not only by taking advantage of Drexel’s co-op program — ranked #2 nationally by U.S. News and World Report and which offers up to 18 months of full-time work experience before graduation — but also through opportunities unique to LeBow.

Examples of these opportunities, which provide students with deep exposure to the industries they seek to enter, include:

• An industry-aligned curriculum across programs, with business leaders from companies like Bloomberg and Vanguard teaching courses alongside experienced faculty, and a strong focus on technical and analytical skills, including use of applied Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and programming languages.

• Hands-on business consulting courses, which engage students in solving pressing business challenges for local, national and international firms, with guidance from faculty, staff and industry partners before presenting findings to company leaders.

• The Howley Finance Academy, designed to prepare students to better compete for top jobs in investment banking, private equity and other high-level areas of finance through advanced coursework, networking opportunities and industry guest speakers.

• The Lawrie Advanced Global Leadership Program, a leadership track within the LeBow MBA program that provides students with the knowledge and tools to assume leadership positions as early as possible within their careers.

Through experiences like these, Drexel “drives a really strong sense of ownership and action — you develop an instinct to identify gaps and then step up to fill them,” says Julie Kimelman, BSBA marketing ’17, MBA ’20, brand manager for Lavazza North America. Kimelman launched her career in marketing with a Philadelphia-based agency after completing her undergraduate degree; her desire to move to the brand side of the business prompted her to return to Drexel to earn her MBA.

Through her LeBow MBA studies, Kimelman says she “gained a more holistic perspective of how different pieces — finance, operations, sales, strategy — all connect together.”

Demonstrating Career Outcomes

Throughout the 2026–27 academic year, LeBow will be highlighting students and alumni who enter the workforce with energy and initiative, land fulfilling jobs that utilize their skills, and gain promotions and increased levels of trust and leadership.

Shared on LeBow’s website and social media accounts, as well as through online advertising campaigns, these stories will showcase:

• Graduates who have used their unrivaled experience to build their own companies, land offers for their dream jobs before graduating and immediately apply what they learn in the classroom in solving business challenges on the job.

• LeBow’s commitment to industry-aligned learning and adapting curricula based on feedback from the companies that engage co-op students and hire new graduates.

• The professional connections that LeBow facilitates and the career moves that graduates make by drawing on their networks.

Even amid technology-driven disruption spanning industries, the return on investment from a LeBow degree remains strong, reflecting Drexel’s track record of job placement — 93% for MBA and MS graduates within one year of completing their degree, based on surveys by LeBow’s Center for Career Readiness — and higher lifetime earnings — among the top 3% among U.S. universities, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

2026 Executive DBA graduate Michael Cogliano, president of Gettysburg Hospital at WellSpan Health, recalls “taking what I learned back to work right away. I was already questioning the decisions and deliberations around different projects and asking whether the data supported what I was being told.”

Well established in his career after decades working in healthcare, Cogliano took away new perspectives from what he calls “data-driven, practical education that teaches the whole process from start to finish.”  

As Drexel reenvisions its academic offerings ahead of a transition to a semester-based calendar for the 2027–28 academic year, LeBow’s enriching, industry-aligned experience remains at the core of its offerings across academic programs and majors. Each successive class of graduates continues to demonstrate that a LeBow degree is how you get ahead.