Wharton Global Youth Program Introduces a New Three-day Learning Sprint in Dubai

A priority this year for the Wharton Global Youth Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania: keep innovating and improving on the delivery of robust business education programs for high school students.

The Global Youth team flipped the calendar year and pursued this goal in earnest with its first-ever Wharton Global Youth Learning Sprint, held in Dubai, UAE, from January 9 to 11, 2026. The focus: modern finance and private equity.

Learning Sprint in Action

Hosted at Arcadia British School, a British curriculum school managed and operated by Arcadia Education, the three-day academic experience for 55 high school students from the Middle East and beyond blended professional and Wharton School insight with hands-on application and networking.

Wharton professors David Musto and Burcu Esmer guided students in connecting Nobel Prize-winning theories to real-world investing and introduced core finance principles like diversification, index funds, IPOs and private equity.  Sachin Khajuria, founder and CIO at Achilles, a private investment firm, delivered a keynote building on the insights from Two and Twenty, his book about private markets.

“What a thrill it was to teach alongside Burcu Esmer and Sachin Khajuria,” said David Musto, Wharton’s Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Finance and Director of the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance. “I’m looking forward to seeing our great students again!” (You can read more program reactions on our LinkedIn post).

Arcadia’s leadership team agreed: 2026 started strong with Wharton Global Youth in Dubai. “We were proud to host the world’s first Wharton Global Youth Learning Sprint,” said Giles Pruitt, Executive Principal at Arcadia British School. “The mission of the Sprint strongly aligns with the Arcadia ethos. It offers students a meaningful platform to understand the complexities of the real world, while honing the skills that will serve them in the years ahead.”

Addressing Gaps in the Market

Since 2019, Wharton Global Youth Program has been finding new and innovative ways to deliver Wharton-led business education programs to high school students, building on the traction of long-time pre-college trailblazers like Leadership in the Business World.

High school students can now apply to 18 different in-person and online Wharton Global Youth summer programs, including Essentials of Entrepreneurship, Essentials of Finance, Future of the Business World and AI Leadership. Across programs, students analyze market challenges, collaborate and present ideas, and learn first-hand about teamwork, critical analysis and the creative thinking that fuels innovation.

The new short, intensive Learning Sprint fills strategic gaps in what Wharton Global Youth already offers, allowing students to try on a Wharton classroom before committing to longer skills-based summer programs. What’s more, it brings Wharton to places like the Middle East, where high school students may not yet have access to immersive business education.

“Learning sprints give students an opportunity to really understand what it feels like to be in a Wharton classroom and to learn from Wharton faculty,” said Lena Elguindi, Senior Director of Programs for Wharton Global Youth (pictured in the hero image with students in Dubai). “It’s the dynamic of: here’s how you analyze a case study, here’s how you work on a project together, and it’s an opportunity for them to get a taste of business education before they make a decision about coming to a Global Youth program or even exploring business and finance further.”

The Student Experience

Shortly after completing the Dubai Learning Sprint this January, high school students began posting about their Wharton immersion on LinkedIn, showing off the digital badge they earned detailing what they learned in the Wharton Global Youth Learning Sprint: Insights into Modern Finance and Private Equity.

Mohammed A., a high school student from Oman, called the three-day sprint “a fantastic experience,” highlighting the class’s examination of diversification and index investing, the dynamics of IPOs, different asset classes, and the fast-growing private markets — and how they “applied these concepts through short, case-style exercises that simulated real investment decisions.”

Ultimately, the student experience is what matters, noted Elguindi.

“We like to say that our Global Youth programs, our summer programs, give students a perspective to help them make an informed decision about what they want to study and what they want to pursue in their later life. The Learning Sprint is just a smaller dose of that,” she said, adding that an international perspective can only enrich the classroom dynamic, whether online or in person. “When we go into these regions, it’s because we understand that a more global perspective only makes our summer programs better. We can reach those students who may not have access or the opportunity to explore the broader scope of business education. So, let’s go to them.”

Where to next? The Wharton Global Youth team is working on it. Stay tuned.

Photos Shot By: Joudi Kalash