Faculty & Instructors
Award-Winning Faculty Team
To a large extent, the excellent reputation of Smith School of Business is due to the strength of its faculty. In Smith's Master of International Business program, you will be learning from an outstanding faculty team comprised of some of the best management educators in North America. Our faculty members have worked together to produce a curriculum that is both comprehensive and integrated. The professors who teach in the program include award-winning teachers, widely published researchers, and best-selling authors. They are experts at merging theory and application to guide students in the classroom and beyond. Using a blend of case studies, briefings, class discussions, and experiential learning, your professors will create a classroom experience that is energized and exciting.
In addition to their exceptional academic credentials, the program faculty has extensive business and consulting experience with some of the world’s leading organizations. This allows them to augment class material with relevant, real-world examples.
Smith’s faculty is committed to your success, both academically and in your career. For that reason, you will find them very approachable and available to answer questions and aid outside of class time. The Smith experience fosters close working relationships between faculty and students.
Thought Leadership
Smith School of Business has an impressive record of cutting edge research and thought leadership, and both faculty and graduate students enjoy access to numerous resources that support this effort.
Smith School of Business has created the Smith Business Insight platform to provide the broader business and academic communities with access to interesting research summaries, webinars, papers, videos and interviews.
Meet Your Professors
Jon Aikman is an adjunct faculty at Queen’s University and teaches graduate and executive courses in the Master of Finance, MBA, Master of Management of Artificial Intelligence and Master of International Business programs. He has taught courses on alternative investments, fintech for executives, artificial intelligence and finance, hedge funds and broker-dealers, derivatives and corporate finance.
He is a qualified lawyer in Canada, England & Wales, a member of the New York State and American Bar Associations. He is also a Chartered Investment Manager, sits on the investment committee of endowment and pension fund of Victoria College at the University of Toronto. Jon was a member of a working group on financial stability and systemic risk at the Federal Reserve of Chicago. Jon is an advisor to fintechs, investment managers, banks and other financial institutions. He was Chief Investment Officer and portfolio manager for an alternative investment fund and firm.
Jon was Vice-President and Counsel for Citigroup in London, U.K. He holds an MBA from Oxford University, Master of Arts from the University of Guelph, and a law degree from Queen's University, and has completed advanced certificates on artificial intelligence and fintech from MIT. He is currently completing two books entitled “U.S. and International Hedge Funds” and “AI and Finance”, respectively. He is the author of “When Prime Brokers Fail” published by Bloomberg Press.
A native of Kingston and a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, Dr. Bill Blake spent six years in a variety of leadership positions in the Canadian Navy prior to entering the University of Western Ontario where he completed an MBA and a Ph.D. in business.
Dr. Blake joined Smith School of Business in 2001. In 2002 he was appointed Associate Dean, MBA Programs, and served in that capacity for 6 years. During that time, the Accelerated MBA and Executive MBA Americas (a Queen's-Cornell partnership) were launched and the Full-time MBA was named #1 in the world outside the U.S.A by BusinessWeek in three successive biannual rankings.
Dr. Blake's research and teaching have focused on characteristics of effective leaders and the relationship between cultural adaptability and international effectiveness. He has been actively involved in consulting and executive development and he has delivered programs in leadership, cross-cultural management and human resource management nationally and internationally.
Nailin Bu is Associate Professor of International Business at Smith School of Business. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. training in China at Fudan University and Shanghai Jiaotong University, and completed her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in Canada. She taught at the University of Victoria in Canada prior to her current appointment.
Dr. Bu’s research focuses on cross-cultural management and international human resource management, with a special focus on business and management in China and the Asia-Pacific regions. She has received research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, CGA-Canada and other agencies. Her research has appeared in many scholarly publications, including International Journal of Human Resource Management, Management and Organization Review, Asia- Pacific Journal of Management, and International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management. Her current projects include several studies exploring the networking practices of senior and middle-level managers in Asia and the determinants of voluntary turnover among managers and professionals in China.
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.
Over the next few years, he transitioned to managing an operations and development team building one for the first DevOps groups in Canada.
Years later, Shaun transitioned to Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management and started one of the first Project Portfolio Offices in the public sector. Shaun specialized in change management and software development projects over the next five years.
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.
Dr. Chakrabarti studies corporate strategy dynamics, exploring how firms scan and search for resources, select among alternatives, integrate across business units, overcome institutional constraints, and respond to environmental shocks. He studies these dynamics in the context of business reconfiguration, where firms reorganize using strategies of mergers and acquisitions, internal development, and asset divestiture. His work has appeared in Global Strategy Journal, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal, and has achieved awards from the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada and the Strategic Management Society.
Dr. Chakrabarti’s courses align closely with his research. In the Queen’s Commerce Program, he teaches courses on organizational intelligence and on policy responses to economic shocks and recessions. For PhD students, he conducts seminars on corporate strategy dynamics and on research methodology, examining the application of econometrics to problems of strategy. For executive MBA participants, he has conducted sessions on organization growth and acquisitions strategy. While at McGill, Dr Chakrabarti co-directed the Analytic Mindset Module along with Henry Mintzberg during the initial years of the McGill-HEC Montreal EMBA program.
Dr. Chakrabarti serves as an editorial board member for IIMB Management Review and Strategic Management Journal, and as an Honorary Research Associate at the Center for Economic Research of Korea (CERK). He is active at the Academy of Management and Strategic Management Society conferences, and has served as 2015 editor and 2016 chair of the Strategy Division of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada.
Prior to joining Queen’s, he was Assistant Professor at McGill University. He has previously taught at Duke University and at the National University of Singapore.
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.
He was born in London, England and educated in Montreal. where he earned Bachelor of Commerce and MBA degrees from Concordia University. The first ten years of his corporate career were spent at Gillette and Schering Plough in Montreal. He then joined The Kellogg Company, where, after Canadian and European executive assignments, he served as executive vice-president of marketing and sales in the US. After several years with Kellogg's he joined Max Factor in California as senior vice-president, international, with responsibility for Pacific Rim subsidiaries, including Australia and Hong Kong, and was subsequently promoted to the role of executive vice-president of worldwide marketing.
For the past two decades Darling has focused on program management, teaching, consulting, entrepreneurial and environmental activities. He was on the faculty of New York University's Stern School of Business from 1986 to 2004 where he taught marketing and strategy courses in MBA and Executive MBA programs, was the founding director of Stern's executive development initiative and was actively involved with Stern's Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. He is a recipient of the Citibank Excellence in Teaching award and was listed several times in Business Week's outstanding faculty list. Darling has also taught courses at Pepperdine University in California, Columbia University's Teachers College and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. In addition, he has taught in an MBA program in Italy and has led international study tours to several countries including Brazil, England and Switzerland.
He has written several cases for use in MBA and Executive MBA integrated strategy exercises and has had numerous articles published in Stern Business, Brandweek and other business publications. His focus in these cases and articles has been on changes in strategy and tactics and the impact of these changes.
Darling has served in a consulting role for many corporations including AT&T, Lever/Best Foods, Microsoft, Nynex, The Rainforest Alliance, Seiko, Sony, Thomson Financial, Towers-Perrin and Wachovia Bank.
Dr. Detomasi is an Adjunct Associate Professor & Distinguished Teaching Fellow of International Business at Smith School of Business, Queen's University. He completed his PhD from the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University in 1999, specializing in international political economy. He also holds a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Queen's University, and is a graduate of the Executive Program on the Global Financial System from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Dr. Detomasi's research interests include globalization, corporate and non-profit governance, and corporate strategy. He is nearing completion of the book manuscript Between Market and State: The Oil Multinational in Geopolitical Competition, currently under review at University of Toronto Press. He teaches courses on strategy, governance, and the geopolitics of global competition in undergraduate, MBA, and executive education programs at Smith School of Business and abroad. He has served as Academic Director for Global Business, Queen’s Executive Education. He as has also served for a five-year term as academic director for the Fundamentals of Governance Program, Queen’s Executive Education.
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.
Prior to his academic career, Anthony Goerzen spent almost 15 years in various sales, marketing, and general management positions in private industry. His last position before returning to graduate school was Vice President of Oxbow Carbon & Minerals, Inc., a multinational firm with headquarters in West Palm Beach Florida. He is a widely published researcher whose primary interests center on the strategic management of firms competing in international markets with a focus on the organizational and performance effects of inter-firm networks, alliances, and location.
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.
Greg Libitz is an award-winning faculty member at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business, where he teaches strategy, marketing and management.
Greg is champion of co-curricular activities at Smith, and an active case writer.
Outside of Smith, he is a principal in a boutique consulting firm with a focus on strategy, marketing and management development.
He resides with his family in Kingston.
Duncan is fascinated with pedagogy and loves course creation and design. He is an effective communicator with extensive experience teaching financial modeling, accounting, analysis & valuation. Prior to teaching, Duncan held senior equity research positions with top banks & brokerages. He has solid analytical skills with an Engineering degree, Master of Finance degree and a CFA Charter.
Dr. Raver is an Associate Professor and E. Marie Shantz Faculty Fellow in Organizational Behaviour at Smith School of Business, and is also cross-appointed to the Department of Psychology. She is an authority on interpersonal relations and group processes at work, with a specific emphasis upon the ways in which employees support each other and build high-performance environments (e.g., helping, promoting learning) versus engage in counterproductive actions that undermine each other (e.g., harassment, bullying, relationship conflicts).
Professor Raver's scholarship in this area has been internationally recognized through best paper awards from the Academy of Management and from the International Association of Conflict Management (IACM), and her work on these topics has been published in prestigious outlets including the Academy of Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review. A second area of Professor Raver's expertise pertains to workplace diversity and cultural differences, where her current focus is on the integration of diverse or dissimilar employees into work groups and organizations. Her work has also included cross-cultural investigations of conflict processes and societal control systems. Her scholarship in this domain has also earned awards, including the Outstanding Article Award from IACM, and has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Resource Management Review, and in several book chapters. Professor Raver has worked with a number of organizations from both the private and public sectors in the U.S. and Canada. She is also regularly invited to speak about building positive organizational cultures, teams, workplace harassment, conflict, and diversity to associations of academics, policy makers, and employees. Her work has been profiled in media outlets including The Globe & Mail, the National Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Professor Raver teaches courses in human resource management, organizational behaviour, and group processes that span academic programs (Commerce, MBA, MSc, PhD). She is also actively involved in professional service, including serving on the Editorial Board of Negotiation and Conflict Management Journal and acting as an ad-hoc reviewer for numerous top-tier journals.
Mr. Robertson was an investment banker for nearly 20 years and has over US$100 billion in completed transaction experience. He has extensive M&A experience (>US$80 billion) as well as significant ECM, DCM and restructuring experience products (US$22bn across 50 capital raisings: 35 public market deals, 15 private market deals) across a broad group of sectors. Mr. Robertson has held numerous senior positions, including Co-Head of Investment Banking, Asia and Head of Sectors, Asia (which included both investment banking and corporate banking). Employers have included Lazard Freres, Credit Suisse First Boston/Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and The Royal Bank of Scotland/ABN Amro.
Mr. Robertson has executed numerous award winning and notable transactions across the globe. Independently recognized “Deal of the Year” awards won by transactions led and executed by Mr. Robertson include Best Domestic M&A Deal in Asia in 2006, Best GDR/ADR in Asia in both 2007 and 2005, Best Equity-linked Deal in Asia in 2005, Best Secondary Deal in Asia in 2005, Best Deal in Singapore in 2006 and Best Deal in Korea in 2005. Whilst in New York, as a junior banker, Mr. Robertson executed the largest and third largest M&A deals in history at the time of the transactions (MCI Communications’ US$42.7bn merger with WorldCom and SBC Communications’ US$23.8bn purchase of Pacific Telesis).
During his banking career, Mr. Robertson held a wide variety of committee responsibilities, including: Co-Head of the Investment Banking Management Committee in Asia, Co-Head of the Regional M&A Engagement Committee (Asia Pacific), Member of the Regional Equities Engagement Committee (Asia Pacific), Regional Capital Allocation Committee (Asia Pacific), Asia Pacific Banking Management Committee, Global M&A Engagement Committee, Global TMT Management Committee, Global TMT Capital Allocation Committee and the Asian Global Clients Management Team.
Mr. Robertson lived and worked in Asia (15 years) as well as in New York and San Francisco (4 years). Prior to becoming an investment banker, Mr. Robertson spent over a year volunteering primarily with domestic female indigenous NGOs in remote areas of Central America followed by a year working and volunteering in Nanning and Wuhan, China.
Mr. Robertson currently teaches/has taught over 6,000 students in twelve different finance courses across seven different programs at the Smith School of Business, including courses in the Executive MBA, Master of Finance – Toronto, Full Time MBA, Master of International Business, Accelerated MBA, GDB and Bachelor of Commerce programs. Courses taught include: Investment Banking (MFIN 840), International Investment Banking (MGBL 822), Investments (MBAS 824), Corporate Valuation and Merger and Acquisition Analysis (MBAS 823), Investments and Portfolio Management (COMM 324), Advanced Managerial Finance (MBUS 813), Financial Strategy (MBUS 925), Corporate Financial Decision Making (COMM 323), Global Financial Institutions (COMM 329), Financial Management (GDB – MBAS 821), Finance Fundamentals (MBAS 821) and Introduction to Finance (COMM 121).
He is also works with Smith’s Career Advancement Centre. Students trained/coached have successfully landed jobs at the world’s top hedge funds (including Point72, Citadel, etc.), private equity firms (including Blackstone, KKR, BC Partners, etc.), boutique investment banks (including Ardea, Armentum, Evercore, Greenhill, Lazard, Moelis, etc.) and bulge bracket banks (including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, CSFB/UBS, BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotia, TD, etc.) in a variety of global financial centers including New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, Calgary, Hong Kong and London.
Mr. Robertson is conversant in Mandarin and Spanish. He is also a professional portrait photographer and has photographed people across the globe, often in extreme conditions (www.blairrobertsonphotography.com). Subjects have ranged from Balinese royalty to world class skateboarders to members of the award winning band The Tragically Hip (aka Canadian royalty!). He earned his H.B.A. from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.
Prior to joining Smith School of Business, Dr. Sartor was an Adjunct Research Professor at the Ivey Business School at Western University. He received PhD and MBA degrees from Ivey and a JD degree from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.
His research and teaching are focused on international business and global strategy with an emphasis on the effects of corruption upon the strategies and performance of multinational enterprises. He has published research in Financial Times-50 peer-reviewed academic journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies and the Journal of Business Ethics. His research has received awards from the Academy of International Business (the Buckley and Casson AIB Doctoral Dissertation Award winner; and, the AIB-Sheth Best Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Award winner) and the Academy of Management (the GWU-CIBER Best Paper on Emerging Markets). His doctoral dissertation research was the winner of the Udayan Rege Best Doctoral Dissertation Award which is conferred biannually upon the best Canadian doctoral dissertation in the administrative sciences. Additionally, he was a finalist for the Gunnar Hedlund-Stockholm School of Economics Doctoral Dissertation Award (European International Business Academy). His research has also been nominated for awards by the Strategic Management Society.
Dr. Sartor serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Management Studies and the Journal of World Business. He has received Best Reviewer Awards during the Annual Meetings of both the Academy of International Business and the Academy of Management.
Professor Sartor teaches Global Business Strategy in the Queen’s National Executive MBA Program and the Executive MBA Americas Program (a partnership between Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business and Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business). He is a recipient of the Cornell-Queen’s Executive MBA Americas Program’s Professor of the Year Award. He is the author of multiple business case studies for teaching and he has co-edited a case study compendium for use within China’s burgeoning business education market.
Dr. Sartor has ten years of experience working variously in executive and corporate legal counsel capacities for publicly-traded and privately-held enterprises in the telecom and consumer packaged goods industries, prior to entering academia. Having been employed in the foreign subsidiary operations of a NASDAQ-listed MNE, he is intimately familiar with the opportunities and challenges facing MNEs in foreign markets.