Chief Revenue Officer Executive Education Program

PROGRAM GUIDE

Chief Revenue Officer Executive Education Program

Blended learning Executive Education program with a four day in-person experience at UChicago’s campus.

Course 1 - Go-to-Market Organization Design

Course 2 - Leading High-Performing Teams

Course 3 - Predictive Analytics

Course 4 - Customer Lifecycle Management

Course 5 - Pricing Strategy

Course 6 - Revenue Strategy and Operations

Course 7 - Leading with Investors and Boards

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

This Executive Education Program is designed for current revenue leaders who want to break through to the
next level by upgrading into the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role. The program is a ten-month, blended learning
model comprising of live synchronous and asynchronous sessions that accommodate the schedules of
experienced leaders. The added in-person experience in Chicago is designed to elevate learning, encourage
camaraderie, and provide opportunities to network with instructors, peers, and other industry leaders. You will
upskill in key areas, including revenue leadership, go-to-market organization design, leadership at the C-suite,
analytics, and more. After successful completion of this program, you will receive a credential certified by the
University of Chicago.

The CRO program artfully blends both cutting-edge strategy and tactics with theory rooted in proven principles
from economics and psychology. Be prepared to lead in the ever-changing landscape of technologies, capital
markets, and economic cycles—even if you transition to different industries throughout your career.

FACULTY
Courageous thinkers and passionate teachers, our instructors are an active community of scholars. Guided by
rigorous debate and cross-disciplinary collaboration, they produce ideas that matter and enrich human life.

Dave Cameron, MSc

Data Science and Predictive Analytics Leader

Dave Cameron is a seasoned data science and predictive analytics leader in corporate and startup spaces. He
brings over twenty-five years of experience to the University of Chicago. As a forward-thinking executive,
Cameron has built and led teams on analytics thought leadership, statistical and product innovation, data-driven
performance marketing, and attribution modeling for consumer acquisition, retention, and profit. He spent over
twelve years at Nielsen Holdings, the global measurement and data analytics company, where he served in vice-
presidential roles in data science, customer segmentation, and statistical methodology. His prior positions
include working as Director of Data Solutions at Merkle, a global performance marketing agency, and his role as
Manager of Target Marketing for Ameritech (now AT&T). Cameron takes a strategic and pragmatic approach to
solving challenging data problems, balancing learning and innovation with efficiency and automation. He holds
an MSc in Applied Statistics from Ohio State and a BS in applied mathematics in computer science from the
University of Detroit Mercy.

Jeremey Donovan, MBA, MSc, CFA

Executive Vice President, Sales & CS Center of Excellence at Insight Partners

Over the past 25+ years, Jeremy Donovan has had an eclectic career spanning semiconductor engineering,
product development/management, and sales & marketing leadership. He is the Executive Vice President of
Revenue Strategy & Operations at Insight Partners.

Donovan is the author of five books, including the international public speaking bestseller "How to Deliver a TED
Talk" and "Predictable Prospecting." He holds a CFA, a BS, and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell
University, an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and an MS in Data Science from the
University of Virginia.

Dan Frailey, MBA

Academic Director of the Chief Revenue Officer Executive Education Program at University of Chicago

Dan Frailey is a three-times CRO, founder of the startup Joy of Thanks, and a revenue and sales enthusiast.
Previously, Dan was the global Topic Lead for B2B Go-To-Market Boston Consulting Group’s PIPE private equity
practice, where he advised Chief Revenue Officers, CEOs, and other sales leaders to develop and execute their
revenue strategies. He created the practice’s global GTM playbook, the GTM FirstLook diligence tool for private
equity investors, and various modules, including Agile GTM and Agile Sales. Before his time at BCG, Dan was a
CRO and sales leader at BBDO, Groupon, and RuMe.

Victoria Gustafson, PhD

Senior Partner, Verde Associates
Victoria Gustafson is a transformational leader with a passion for business growth. Gustafson is a senior partner
dedicated to business evolution at Verde Associates, a boutique growth consulting firm headquartered in
Chicago, Illinois. Before joining Verde, she held various key roles, including corporate strategy, account
management, content marketing, and product development. She has helped the world’s leading brands,
including L’Oréal, Nestlé, Lysol, Mucinex, and TRESemmé, find growth by bringing together the right
combination of people, processes, and technology. Gustafson holds a Ph.D. in Organization Development from
Benedictine University, an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a BA in Economics
from the University of California at Berkeley.

Rachael Rohn, MBA

Senior Vice President, Strategic Partner Engagement and General Manager, Americas West

Rachael Rohn has nearly twenty years of experience catalyzing business expansion and scalability. She is Senior
Vice President of Strategic Partner Engagement at Techstars, a premiere early-stage venture capital firm, where
she leads Techstars’ accelerator programs. Before this role, Rohn was President of Customer Value at Compass, a
national real estate technology company, where she helped establish the firm’s first customer success programs.
Rohn joined Compass in 2017, following 12 years in Chicago tech startup sales and management, including six
years with Groupon, where she rose to become Vice President of Sales of its travel business, Groupon Getaways.
Chris Trendler, Esq. (Juris Doctorate)
Managing Director and Head of Portfolio Talent
Chris Trendler is the Managing Director and the Head of Portfolio Talent at Madison Dearborn Partners. This
private equity firm has raised over $26 billion in capital since its inception in 1992 and operates in a range of
verticals, including software services, financial services, healthcare, and telecommunications. In his role, Trendler
is responsible for leading the firm's talent strategy across the portfolio. Before joining Madison Dearborn
Partners in 2021, Trendler was a Partner at ghSMART and Company, where he advised investors, CEOs, and
Boards on critical talent issues.

Danielle Wilkie, MBA

Startup Advisor and Leadership Coach

Danielle Wilkie is a tech company veteran with a 25-year history of scaling B2B and B2C businesses across
various industries, including property management, home improvement, insurance, stock footage licensing,
online learning, e-commerce, and residential real estate. She is a coach and advisor to companies and individuals
and is launching a startup. Before this work, Danielle was an Executive Officer at Compass as their President of
Central US Operations before launching and leading their national Customer Success team. She was previously
SVP of Marketing for an NBCUniversal business (Craftsy) in online education and e-commerce. Wilkie was
involved with successful startup exits at NetQuote (acquired by Bankrate), ServiceMagic (now Angi), and
SafeRent (now CoreLogic).

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE?

This Executive Education Program is for seasoned professionals who wish to level-up their skills by learning to
align revenue-related functions such as marketing, sales, customer service, finance, pricing, and revenue
management. This program can especially benefit leaders of sales and business development teams—whether
they have formal business education or not—who want to advance to the C-suite. This program is also valuable
for other leaders with revenue-related responsibilities, such as founders, CEOs, managing directors, senior
consultants, and marketing professionals looking to broaden their responsibilities in revenue strategy and
growth.

OBJECTIVES
• Develop the soft and hard skills around sales, marketing, pricing strategy, and organizational design
needed to steer your organization toward revenue growth.
• Adopt innovative approaches to building, managing, and leading teams—particularly those that extend
beyond the revenue organization—fostering high performance in diverse and uncertain conditions.
• Leverage data analytics for customer segmentation, estimating customer lifetime value, optimizing
pricing, and implementing processes and controls for maximizing profitability at scale.
• Lead within the executive team, influence boards and investors, and effectively market yourself for
future roles at the most senior levels of leadership.

TIME COMMITMENT
10 months

This Executive Education program includes seven courses over ten months. The duration of each course ranges
from three to eight weeks. Most participants will spend about eight to ten hours per week on course-related
activities.
METHODOLOGY
Our blended programs are crafted to support your specific professional development goals. By combining e-
learning with live, interactive sessions they strengthen your skill set while maximizing your time. We couple
academic theory and business knowledge with practical, real-world applications.

The four day, on-campus network-building conference allows participants to deepen their professional
connections by reconnecting with the relationships they built during the program's first half. Participants can
engage in in-person projects with their cohort, tap into the feeling of being a student at The University of
Chicago, and take advantage of the many amenities the city of Chicago offers.

COURSE REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS

• Minimum 10 years of work experience
• At least 5 years of experience managing teams related to business development, revenue, marketing,
sales, or customer success
• International experience is valuable but not required
• Fluency in written and spoken English

COURSE CONTENT
Course 1: Go-To-Market Organization Design
In this course, you will learn about go-to-market strategies across industries and company stages and address
fundamental questions about building effective and scalable approaches. It introduces proven concepts from
systems engineering, microeconomics, and psychology to enhance sales organization efficiency and adaptability.

You will also explore applying these principles to special scenarios like liquidity constraints, early-stage startups,
high-growth/low-growth industries, and large design transformations.

You will learn to:

• Design and build a revenue organization to realize the commercial potential of the product, and the
financial potential of the company.
• Optimize the effectiveness, efficiency, and cultural dynamism of any go-to-market organization by
drawing upon proven concepts from systems engineering, microeconomics, and psychology.
• Apply agile principles to drive team engagement and creativity, spur innovation and continuous
improvement, and adapt to changes in the market and the company.
• Adapt GTM organization design to optimize long-term enterprise value at any stage of the company
lifecycle: early-stage startup, high-growth/low-growth, liquidity-constrained, or ZIRP.

Course 2: Leading High-Performing Teams

The second course in the program moves from designing your go-to-market organization to building and leading
teams within it. Our focus is on developing high-performing teams that can thrive even in volatile, uncertain,
complex, and ambiguous circumstances. These teams can differ in key characteristics, including their objective,
size, mix of skills, geographic and cultural span, virtual or hybrid nature, and more.

You will learn to:

• Apply best practices in management and leadership to foster team success.

• Nurture resilience and high performance by individuals and within teams.
 • Apply strategies to manage, motivate, and resolve conflicts effectively on diverse teams—in function,
culture, geography, and skills—and operate in different modalities such as in-person, virtual, or hybrid
environments.

Course 3: Predictive Analytics

During this course, you will use data analytics to find the right customers and market to them effectively. You
will learn and apply analytic techniques to measure and improve marketing performance, predict resultant sales,
and optimize all revenue-generating activities within the enterprise. You will also optimally analyze data,
estimate campaign effectiveness, understand segment and size markets, and use predictive modeling to forecast
both short-term sales and long-term customer lifetime value.

You will learn to:

• Leverage data to target the right audience.

• Segment audiences for an optimal contact strategy.
• Measure the impact of marketing campaigns.
• Predict future purchases by customers and forecast Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Course 4: Customer Lifecycle Management

The fourth course in the program focuses on optimizing customer journeys to enhance value for your customers
and organization. You will learn to analyze the stages in your customers’ lifecycle, from initial awareness to
advocacy, and to identify strengths and friction points. The approach involves utilizing qualitative and
quantitative data to build a deep understanding of customer behaviors and establish success metrics for each
stage.

By the course’s end, you will have the tools to optimize your customers’ lifecycles, enhance value for them, and
increase the CLV for your firm.

You will learn to:

• Utilize both qualitative and quantitative data to gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer
lifecycle and their behaviors at each stage.
• Establish success metrics for each stage of the customer lifecycle.
• Develop strategies for optimizing customer lifecycles.

Course 5: Pricing Strategy

This course addresses the critical role of pricing as a key driver of profitability and company valuation. You will
learn to make optimal product pricing decisions by incorporating insights from economics, analytics, and
psychology. The course also covers scalable execution of pricing strategies and explores various settings,
including Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C), recognizing the enduring impact of early-
pricing decisions on a product, service, or market.

You will learn to:

• Identify the managerial economics underlying profitability for various pricing strategies and apply the
basic approaches to pricing to set the boundaries of a usable price level—cost-based, competitive, and
value-based.
• Analyze and quantify the margin/volume tradeoffs of various pricing strategies.
• Use price discrimination strategies to alleviate tradeoffs between margin and volume for great total
volume creation.
• Anticipate and plan for competitive response to changes in pricing strategy with process control.
Course 6: Revenue Operations and Strategy
This course is designed to equip leaders aspiring to become CROs with essential strategy and operations skills.
Focused on B2B, and Revenue Operations (RevOps), you will learn about forecasting, reporting, sales process
optimization, and aligning marketing, sales, and customer success operations. You will emerge with a
personalized revenue operations playbook and poised to unlock predictable and scalable revenue for your
organization.

You will learn to:

• Identify the key components of a successful RevOps strategy.

• Align sales, marketing, and customer success teams around common goals.
• Develop and implement RevOps processes to improve lead generation, customer conversion, and
retention.
• Use data and analytics to measure and optimize your organization’s performance.

Course 7: Leadership with Investors and Boards

In this course, you will focus on the crucial role of C-suite leaders, especially CROs, in engaging with boards and
investors, particularly in private equity-backed settings. You will learn to understand the dynamics of private
equity, investor motivations, and how investors think about returns. You will also learn how to build and
maintain productive relationships with sponsors, stakeholders, board members, and investors.

The course concludes with creating a personal career vision and playbook, applicable across organizations and
throughout your career.

You will learn to:

• Understand the workings of private equity, including investor motivations and perspectives on returns.
• Build and maintain productive relationships with sponsors, stakeholders, board members, and
investors.
• Create a vision for your career and identify the necessary professional experiences to achieve your
goals.
• Develop a playbook for your own professional development to apply and adapt throughout your CRO
career.

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION
Our Chief Revenue Officer Certificate formally recognizes our students’ development and commitment to
advancing their knowledge and skills in critical areas such as organizational design, team leadership, predictive
analytics, customer lifecycle management, pricing strategy, revenue operations, and leadership with investors
and boards.

After completing individual courses and meeting the mandatory approval criteria, you will receive a Certificate of
Completion in paper and digital format. As a certificate program graduate, you will become part of the UChicago
network. You will also be entitled to a 15% discount on tuition fees in future enrollments.

ACCESS TO PROGRAM ARCHIVE

At the end of the program, and for six months, participants will have access to the virtual campus with all the
contents, activities, forums, and complementary material. Participants will be able to review relevant content
and revisit assignments and forums.
ACADEMIC SUPPORT
Participants will receive support and assistance within twenty-four to forty-eight hours through the virtual
campus inbox or by email.