Leading Beyond the Classroom

A mountaineering trip by a group of Wharton students in Alaska in 2006 was one of the first times Serhan Seçmen WG06 had been so deep in the wilderness. He can still vividly recall the Wharton Leadership Ventures expedition, which navigated a gorgeous but dangerous glacier and left him in both shock and awe. Like in a movie he can replay frame by frame, he remembers traversing the icy terrain with classmates before realizing they didn’t know their location — and had no cell data or GPS tools to guide them.

“We were in a different place,” Seçmen says. “I didn’t know whether we were actually lost or just made to believe that we were lost by design of the experience.” A range of emotions began to surface among the students. While some wanted to use the satellite phone to call for rescue helicopters, others voted to find the path that would set the group back on course.

For safety measures, teams of four were connected by ropes and harnesses. “You didn’t know whether you’re going to be the guy who needs help or if you’re the one who’s going to be pulling other people,” Seçmen says. The support system reminds him of business partnerships, particularly the ones in his career. Portfolio managers like Seçmen work together to achieve a common goal; stakeholders are linked, and success relies on a high level of collaboration. “You go faster when you’re alone,” he says, “but you go farther when you’re part of a team.”

Seçmen is one of thousands of students who have experienced the Wharton Leadership Ventures program, which is now celebrating its 25th anniversary. A pillar of the Anne and John McNulty Leadership Program, WLV has grown from history-inspired experiences within driving distance of Penn’s campus to adventures in locales ranging from Quantico, Virginia, to New Zealand to Patagonia, with longer, boundary-pushing expeditions like Seçmen’s trip to Alaska and even to Antarctica, where students spend seven days trekking in treacherous conditions, building snow walls to protect their tents from the wind.

While WLV has evolved since 2000, what’s unchanged since its inception is its role within the mission of the School, notes its founder, professor Michael Useem. “These experiences intensify an individual’s commitment to think about ideas more conceptually and analytically,” he says, “which is the purpose of a Wharton education.”

When Useem, now the William and Jacalyn Egan Professor Emeritus of Management, began at Wharton in 1996, the movement to teach leadership in B-schools had already begun. Wharton’s leadership program had been established four years earlier, born of the idea that leaders in business can be developed through team-oriented real-world experiences.

Students stood at the edge of Pickett’s Charge and retraced the disastrous steps of approximately 13,000 Confederate soldiers who were defeated on July 3, 1863. “While Gettysburg was a midpoint of the war,” says Useem, “it was absolutely a change point.” With feet firmly in the field, the Wharton group discussed the importance of strategic thinking — a concept, says Useem, that should be near and dear to anybody in a leadership position. As they walked, they felt the weight of a commanding officer who hadn’t fully considered all that could go wrong.

That experience demonstrated to Useem that when one is learning about leadership, there is a “stickiness” to seeing concepts graphically enacted by being on location, like in a historic battlefield: You don’t just think about something; you remember it. “Those settings couldn’t be more different from where students are going to be working,” Useem says, “but by asking our students to go through points of interest, like this one at Gettysburg, our working theory is that they’re going to leave that much more convinced.”

Useem would soon give students another experience — a boot camp developed with the input of veterans Vince Martino WG02 and Jason Santamaria WG01 (Marine Corps), Pat Henahan WG02 (Army), and Steve Medland WG02 (Navy). Wharton established this partnership with the Marine Corps in 1999 and the following year launched its very first WLV venture, to Quantico. Students traveled to the Marines’ Officer Candidates School, where they endured a 24-hour crash course of physical, mental, and emotional challenges. These challenges — wading through chest-high water, climbing 20-foot walls — presented effectual exercises in leadership, teamwork, and interdependence.

It wasn’t long before WLV reached far beyond the United States, with help from student leaders like Mark Davidson WG98 and early program partner Vertical, founded by Rodrigo Jordan. A few years later, Jeff Klein WG05 GRD24 traveled with Wharton classmates to the Andes Mountains of Ecuador to summit the 19,347-feet Cotopaxi stratovolcano. Klein always had an affinity for the outdoors, spending time in the mountains of Colorado backpacking, biking, and skiing before heading to the East Coast for his MBA. Despite his familiarity with trails, Klein had never attempted to ascend a peak that tall. He remembers the gravitas of concepts unfolding in real time, including risk-taking, emotional intelligence, and building trust, along with the impact that individual actions have on a team’s performance.

The group had prepared by undergoing forms of safety training, including understanding how to self-arrest and to climb out of a crevasse. Students were expected to make their own meals, set up their tents, and adapt to unpredictable weather. Each day saw a different designated group leader with a unique agenda. And as with all WLV experiences, the team sat down to reflect at day’s close with a collective debrief: What were we trying to do? What actually happened, and why? What did we learn that we could apply to the next experience?

Honest dialogue flowed through those “after-action reviews” and ranged from the technical, like the effects of walking at high altitudes, to interpersonal dynamics, such as how to intervene when conflicts arise. “This wasn’t about sitting in a classroom and talking about what you might do in a difficult situation,” Klein says. “It was actually needing to make decisions that would have tangible and felt consequences for yourself and the people around you.”

Klein was motivated to become a Venture Fellow — a program launched by Evan Wittenberg WG02 and Penny Bamber C03 — helping to lead additional WLV trips and facilitate more of these conversations. (Through the Venture Fellows program, selected undergraduate and second-year MBA students receive specialized training to learn how to support peers before, during, and after ventures.) After graduation, he would take on various roles within the McNulty Leadership Program, for which he has been serving as executive director since 2012. Klein, who is also a lecturer at Wharton and the School of Social Policy and Practice, says the mission of these ventures is to prepare future graduates to excel in the workforce: “These are the skills that are going to help build organizations, change culture, and deal with crisis and volatility.”

The WLV team, currently led by Jules Roy, Erica Montemayor, and Kellie Vetter, selectively partners with organizations on the ground at every destination, ranging from the Fire Department of New York City to the Sea Education Association. In addition to offering invaluable tactical support, these instructors help participants understand the larger context and key takeaways from each experience. Wharton’s largest and longest partner is Vertical, a company based in Chile that specializes in exploration and outdoor education. Vertical CEO Eugenio “Kiko” Guzman recalls the first trip the organizations took together, in 2002, to Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia, where he served as a guide. They found that the experience was ultimately too touristy for what they hoped to achieve. “We wanted experiences not found on Google,” Guzman explains. “Places where you aren’t going to see another hundred people doing the same thing.” Even climbing Mount Kilimanjaro proved to be too popular. “The academic term for this is to create ‘containers,’” Klein says, “and the wilderness is an incredible container. It’s difficult to replicate.”

Guzman estimates that he’s helped on 50 to 60 different ventures over the years, most recently on a trip to Avellano Valley, Patagonia, in March in which the group of MBA students didn’t see anyone else for an entire week. In his decades-long partnership, there’s consistently one thing he cherishes most: the opportunity for self-reflection and character development among Venture Fellows and participants alike. He recalls a time when only one plane was able to leave Antarctica, with enough seats for just half the group; students had to decide who would fly home and who would wait for another plane in the coming days. “They were able to manage that,” Guzman explains, “because they were together for a week learning about leadership.”

Unplugged face-to-face experiences are arguably more essential than ever in our tech-dominated, AI-driven world. Jules Roy, the director of WLV, says it’s increasingly rare to be unmediated for a full week. “It becomes an immersive experience without interruptions and distractions,” he says. “That helps students commit to the space and commit to each other.”

This past August, after their summer internships had wrapped, the latest group of MBA Venture Fellows completed their mandatory training over a series of days in Central Pennsylvania’s Michaux State Forest. “We take frameworks from classes like managerial decision-making and small group processes, and we put students in environments where the concepts become actuated,” says Roy. He describes Venture Fellows as “force multipliers,” because these students help peers maximize their leadership development.

Venture Fellows are essential on trips — “They play an enormous role in bringing these ventures to life,” says Useem — and subsequently look to recruit new sets of student leaders for the following year. They won’t have to look very far: Approximately 130 applicants hope to fill the 36 MBA Venture Fellow slots available annually, while 60 applicants hope to serve as one of the 20 undergraduate Fellows.

Even more students, Roy notes, will participate in a venture in some way this year — he estimates about 650 people. “We started out with a much smaller footprint 25 years ago, and we added programming as the interest grew,” he says.

In addition to the longer “Expeditions,” the program offers “Intensives” — immersive but shorter experiences (for example, team sailing in Annapolis or mountain biking in the Shawangunk Mountains) that typically last one or two days. “We’re really proud of the portfolio of ventures we have,” says Klein, noting that WLV serves MBA and Executive MBA candidates as well as undergraduates and student-athletes at Penn. (The student-athletes participate through the Penn Athletics Wharton Leadership Academy.) But they’re still not serving all the students who are interested.

In addition to the 200 to 250 undergraduates who participate annually, there’s always a waitlist, according to Erica Montemayor, senior associate director of WLV. She was hired in 2016 to create parity between the WLV undergraduate and MBA programs and has been building on the foundation established by the late Chris Maxwell, who led undergrads on ventures including the Grand Tetons and the Red Rock Canyons. “I tell all students that ventures are like a mirror,” Montemayor says. “It’s going to show you everything you need to learn, and it’s going to be unique to each person.”

Isaac Nilsson W18, currently an associate at a global investment company in Sweden, worked closely with Montemayor as an undergraduate Venture Fellow. “I liked the approach of learning by doing,” says Nilsson, describing these out-of-classroom experiences as “unscripted.” During his WLV experience in Antarctica, Nilsson witnessed the importance of taking care of yourself before you’re able to contribute to the group. “It’s a little contradictory to ‘teamwork’ on the surface,” he says, but adds that he considers it perhaps one of the most constructive ways one can ultimately support others.

In her first year at Wharton, Kerry Gendron WG07 participated in one of the Marine Corps simulations in Quantico, and shortly after, she applied to be an MBA Venture Fellow. She was a natural fit to lead the group on the 2007 sailing expedition to the Grenadines, in the Caribbean: A lifelong sailor from the “Ocean State” of Rhode Island, she raced in college and is a founding member of the Wharton Sailing Club. Although she served as a great resource for her classmates on that trip — most WLV participants are actually not experienced outdoorspeople — she was motivated to go someplace radically different beforehand. “On the one end of the spectrum, I was very comfortable sailing,” she says, “but I also recognized that a fundamental aspect of WLV was to put you out of your comfort zone.”

Gendron found that friction in WLV’s inaugural trip to Teton backcountry, where the group had to maneuver snowy terrain via telemark skis and endure extremely cold January temperatures at night. (She notes, laughing, that her Wharton classmates in Antarctica that year had a warmer trip by some 50 degrees.) The grueling conditions, including pulling sleds and bearing 40-pound bags packed with camping gear despite irregular sleep, opened opportunities for stress-testing performance in times of unpredictability.

She credits the various professional methodologies she learned along the way in the program, including the VUCA framework of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity — something she’s been able to deploy in her career helping banks innovate through the fast-paced regulatory technology industry — as well as how she manages team members, particularly with empathy and by expressing curiosity. “Feedback comes from a place of seeking to understand,” Gendron says.

Montemayor, who’s a former Outward Bound instructor, is familiar with training people for the outdoors and facilitating learning in that environment. “There’s been a lot more recognition that these out-of-the-classroom experiences are valuable, especially for undergrads who are looking for some feedback about themselves,” she says, explaining that unlike the MBA students, undergrads haven’t necessarily been in the workforce yet and need the chance to test leadership skills. Whereas the MBA students might be recalibrating in their careers, undergraduates could be seeing themselves for the first time in a leadership role. Because of this, their WLV program has a thoughtfully different approach, right down to the conversation prompts and discussions that lead to self-discovery.

“At 18 to 22 years old, you’re just trying to figure out who you are,” Montemayor says. “Having a safe place to make decisions when they’re hard or to navigate uncertainty are good examples of what Ventures can offer students in that stage of development.”

Current student Liesl Brodsky W26 wasted little time getting involved with WLV, applying for a spot on a Patagonia trip just weeks after arriving at Penn. The following year, she spent her spring break in the Atacama Desert near the Central Andes of Chile, and she returned to Patagonia last winter, this time as an undergraduate Venture Fellow. Brodsky, who is studying business economics and public policy, notes that building confidence, along with disconnecting from technology, is especially important for the well-being of undergrads. “When we’re challenged or tired, the tendency is to pick up our phones and scroll,” she says. “Living is a lot less automatic when you’re outdoors. You are where your feet are.” After graduation, Brodsky wants to pursue a career in consulting, drawn to the problem-solving nature of the industry and a future of continuous learning.

“When you take students out into a new setting where no one’s going to be really good at what you’re throwing at them, you have to work together,” Montemayor notes. “Removing them from Penn levels the playing field and enables them to see themselves in a different way.” That separation from the “real world” is essential in creating space for vulnerability, which often leads to strong interpersonal bonds that continue back on campus and extend beyond graduation.

Useem adds that bringing in external aid for WLV and expanding the staff to support its growing footprint is an ongoing effort. “We’d really like to provide opportunities for everybody who would like to take advantage of it,” he says. Making these trips more affordable is one of the program’s goals through its fundraising efforts in this anniversary year, says Klein: “By expanding our Ventures budget, we will offer more financial aid, broaden our suite of programs, and increase trainings.”

Although WLV has explored bi-yearly credit-bearing ventures in partnership with faculty — an experience that might, say, be adjacent to research — the cost of the co-curricular expeditions has historically been the responsibility of the participant. “This is an expensive educational endeavor,” Klein says, “and we don’t want financial means to be a reason that students can or cannot participate.”

In service of WLV’s mission, Serhan Seçmen made a meaningful gift in 2023 to increase accessibility for students and support its ongoing efforts toward long-term sustainability. “I couldn’t find anything more impactful than the leadership program,” he says. “What I’ve given is far less than what the program has given to me.”

Seçmen and classmate Bala Sankaran WG06 were so inspired by the real-life relevancy of their WLV experiences that they organized like-minded alumni trips, which included daily debriefings about logistics, exploring team dynamics, and hiring local third-party instructors. “We were raving about how impactful the program was and how thoughtful the agenda was, with the extracurricular and outdoor activities,” Seçmen explains. “So we said, ‘Why don’t we do something similar?’” From their first excursion in 2009 to the Grand Teton in Wyoming, Seçmen and Sankaran’s group would tackle peaks in the Alps, Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Nepal, and Tanzania, even inviting colleagues and friends to join. “In that cocoon,” Seçmen says, “you learn how you can become a team rather than a collection of individuals.”

Klein echoes that sentiment, noting the need for more of these “proof points” in the world. “You have people who don’t know each other in any meaningful way before they go on a venture,” he says. “They find ways to support each other’s learning and collaborate to solve problems they’ve never encountered before. We need more of that lived experience.”

Ventures closer to home — and closer to the DIY spirit of Useem’s Gettysburg trips — still offer moments that resonate. After 9/11, Useem worked with the FDNY to help build a new generation of leaders; that effort led Useem and Preston Cline GRD17 to establish an FDNY intensive. When WLV students go to Randall’s Island, New York, and attempt to properly hold a firehose, they’re surprised to learn that the student aiming the nozzle isn’t considered the most critical member of the team. Instead, it’s the second person in line, who needs to lean heavily into the lead, offering stability and support to effectively manage the intense weight and guide the pressure from the hose.

“So much of what we do in the workforce, communities, and families is group-based,” Klein says. “We accomplish the things we accomplish because we have the support of people around us. Wharton Leadership Ventures reinforces how critical groups are to individual and organizational success.”

Amy Downey is the editor of Lafayette magazine.

Published as “Leading Beyond the Classroom” in the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of Wharton Magazine.