Meet the MMIE Faculty

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.

Barry Cross is an expert and thought leader in innovation, execution and operations strategy. He joined Smith School of Business after nearly 20 years in the automotive and manufacturing sectors with Magna Autosystems and DuPont, where he led many key strategic initiatives, including nearly 30 program launches in North America, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Barry speaks and consults widely in the areas of Lean Innovation, Strategy, Projects and Execution, enabling organizations to create sustainable value for their customers. He is the bestselling author of three books, including Simple: Killing Complexity for a Lean and Agile Organization, and several Most Read articles.

Nuša Fain is an Assistant Professor at Smith School of Business, specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation management, and is currently the Director of Smith's Master of Innovation & Entrepreneurship program. 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 on the Commerce program and supports the delivery of content for the individual projects on the Master of Management Innovation and Entrepreneurship program.

Peter Gallant 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. 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.