Meet the MMIE Faculty

Classes are led by a combination of successful entrepreneurs and outstanding professors from both Smith School of Business and the Queen’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. This creates a learning experience that is both practical and relevant. Drawing on their expertise in a broad range of areas from business to design, you will be exposed to leading edge thinking and practice.

Faculty and instructors subject to change.

Shaun Cahill started his professional career as a software developer in the Health Care industry. He then transitioned to system design, networks and implementation, leading a wide variety of projects across North America.

Currently, Shaun is focusing on teaching at the Smith School of Business, where he teaches technology, project management, mathematics, productivity/team management and software development.

Shai Dubey teaches courses in negotiations, cross-cultural management, ethics, domestic and international business law and entrepreneurship.

Shai earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Toronto and his Law Degree from Queen's University. Shai is also a graduate of the aviation Flight Technology Program at Seneca College.

After graduating from Seneca College in 1984, he began his working career as a commercial pilot. In 1985 he founded and ran both an executive aircraft charter company and a flight training school based in Toronto. After selling this company, Shai worked as an aviation consultant providing strategic and regulatory advice to Canadian and foreign clients. He practiced law on Bay Street and then ran a global company prior to joining Queen’s.

Nuša Fain is an Assistant Professor at Smith School of Business, specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation management. She completed her PhD in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on process management within innovative organizations at University of Ljubljana (2010). Prior to joining Smith School of Business, Dr. Fain was a lecturer at Strathclyde Business School (UK), where she taught Managing Innovation, Strategic Global Marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications. She has extensive consulting experience within the field of product development and innovation management with a wide diversity of firms (including oil and gas, manufacturing and retail). Her research interests are two-fold. She is exploring implementation of open innovation practices into mature organizations and looking into pedagogies that support the development of entrepreneurial mindsets in design students.

At Smith School of Business, Dr. Fain teaches entrepreneurship and new venture creation courses in the Commerce program and supports the delivery of content for the individual projects on the Master of Management Innovation and Entrepreneurship program.

Peter Gallant, Director of the MMIE program at Smith School of Business, is an authority on the financing of new ventures. He is Vice President, Business Development and Regulatory Affairs at Veolia Water Solutions and Technologies. In 2012, he was appointed by the Ontario government as a Director of WaterTAP – an organization created to facilitate Ontario’s economic advantage by capitalizing on the province’s innovative water sector. He was also the Founding President of Pathogen Detection Systems Inc. He has a PhD in electrical engineering from Queen’s University.

Jim Hamilton is a proven sales and marketing executive with over 19 years of experience in forming and growing start-up companies, as well as, leading sales and marketing teams in mid-sized and larger companies. Currently, Mr. Hamilton spends most of his time as an instructor. He is a lecturer at Smith School of Business where he teaches courses in marketing strategy, sales and sales management at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Mr. Hamilton owns an advisory firm that provides reputation management, sales, marketing, and CRM strategy services to individual professionals and corporations. Some of his clients have included Bayer, Altana, IBM, and MDS Sciex.

Mr. Hamilton obtained an Honours Degree in Actuarial Science (BSc.) from the University of Western Ontario (Canada) in 1990. He then earned an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business (Canada) in 1995.

James McLellan (Sc’81, PhD’90) is a Professor and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Queen’s. He is one of the founders of, and serves as the Academic Director of the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre. Dr. McLellan is committed to building innovation and entrepreneurship programming at Queen’s and to growing a vibrant entrepreneurial culture in the Kingston region, working with many groups in the Kingston entrepreneurship ecosystem.

 

Elspeth Murray has served as the Associate Dean - MBA and Master’s Programs from 2012-2022 and has been a professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Smith School of Business since 1996. She also holds the CIBC Fellowship in Entrepreneurship, and founded Smith's Centre for Business Venturing. She is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Social Impact. Prior to joining Smith, she worked in industry for 7 years for several firms including IBM, and Canadian Tire. As an integral part of her work in the strategy and new venture fields, Dr. Murray specializes in the management of change. In 2002, she co-authored a best-selling book, Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, Oxford University Press, with Dr. Peter Richardson. She has recently co-developed (with Dr. David Saunders) the Analytics Climate Assessment Tool (ACAT), which is used to assess organizations technological capacity, skill sets, and analytics culture. Current research is focused on best practices in leading and managing change to create an analytics culture.

Dr. Murray teaches on many MBA and Executive Education programs, and consults widely with a diversity of firms including BMW, Detour Gold, Wawanesa Insurance, Versacold Logistics and the Auditor General for Canada. She serves as a Director for several firms and is an advisor to several start-ups and CEO's. Dr. Murray received an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics, and an MBA, both from Queen's University. Her doctorate in Strategy and Management Information Systems was completed at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

Nicole Robitaille's research interests lie in the areas of consumer behaviour and decision-making and their implications for policy. Specifically, her focus is on understanding how individuals make decisions and why they choose to engage in certain actions, and on discovering ways in which we can help them improve their decisions and behaviours. Within these areas, her interests are diverse, and she has focused on the following topics: moral decisions, financial decisions, temporal decisions, and health decisions.

Vitalis Omambia

“I chose Smith School of Business for a couple of reasons, chief of which is the outstanding calibre of professors. I really wanted to learn from professors who are leaders, with hands-on experience running their own businesses. I also wanted to acquire business knowledge from educators who translate their research and experience into classroom learning and I got exactly that from my program experience.”

Vitalis Omambia, MMIE
Director, Technology and Product Management
Wayfound Mental Health Group Inc.