Prof. David Beatty, M.A., O.B.E.

Conway Director, Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics & Board Effectiveness, Professor of Strategic Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

An adventure capitalist for the last two decades, Professor Beatty is the former president of Weston Foods and a founding Chair of Orogen Mineral Resources. He has worked in the Central Planning Office of Tanzania and as an economic advisor to the Prime Minister of New Guinea. As Director of Planning, he helped create the country's economic infrastructure.

Professor Beatty serves on boards of the Bank of Montreal (where he chairs the Risk Review Committee), FirstService Corporation, Goldcorp, Husky Injection Molding and Inmet Mining (where he is lead director). He spent a decade on the board of Peter Drucker's Foundation in California, serving as vice chairman. Currently, Professor Beatty is the Managing Director of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, which promotes best corporate governance practices and aligns the interests of boards and management with those of the shareholders.

As well as teaching in the Rotman School’s Executive MBA programs, Professor Beatty teaches strategy in large diversified corporations.

Prof. Jim Fisher, MBA

CCMF Chair in Entrepreneurship, Professor of Strategic Management, Vice Dean, MBA Programs & Executive Education, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Three times voted “Teacher of the Year” by the second-year MBA classes, Professor Jim Fischer teaches leadership, strategy and organization design in the MBA, Executive MBA and Executive Development Programs. He brings extensive practical business experience to the classroom. Having worked with McKinsey & Company, Professor Fisher co-founded the Canada Consulting Group, the country's largest Canadian-owned strategy firm before it merged with the Boston Consulting Group.  He joined George Weston Limited in 1986 and served as Executive Vice President of Weston Foods, Chairman and President of William Neilson Limited and President of George Weston North American Bakeries.  Currently he serves on a numbers of boards, including Canadian Tire Corporation, Atlas Cold Storage and the ICD Corporate Governance College. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a BA in political science and economics and from Harvard University with an MBA.

Prof. Walid Hejazi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, International Business, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Professor Walid Hejazi’s research interests focus on the interaction between globalization and economic growth. He has written on the importance of trade, foreign investment, human capital accumulation and financial and institutional development for the growth experience of a large number of countries. He has examined, in particular, the strategies pursued by multinationals, and the effects these strategies have had on home and host economies, especially as they relate to the diffusion of technology. His most recent work addresses the social, economic and fiscal problems posed by the rapidly aging populations of East Asia and makes policy recommendations for pension reform. Professor Hejazi has advised the governments of several developing countries on the formulation of optimal monetary and fiscal policies.

Prof. John Oesch, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Professor John Oesch teaches negotiation, decision making, organizational behavior, organizational change and team building at the Rotman School.  His research interests encompass negotiation, decision making and organizational justice.

Lionel F. Laroche, Ph. D.

President, MCB Solutions

Omnium guest lecturer Dr. Lionel Laroche specializes in helping professionals and organizations reap the benefits of cultural differences in their work. Over the past eight years, he has provided cross-cultural training, coaching and consulting services to over 10,000 people in the Americas, Europe and Asia. He is the author of over 100 publications examining the impact of cultural differences on business, including Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions (2002). His Recruiting, Retaining and Promoting Culturally Diverse Employees is due in 2006.

Dr. Laroche has 15 years of international engineering, management, sales and human resources experience, working with people from over 60 countries. He has worked in eight different countries for several multinational companies, including Xerox, Procter & Gamble, British Petroleum and Jeumont-Schneider. He was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Prof J. Mark Weber

Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Professor Mark Weber’s research interests include cooperation, trust, negotiations, the role of values in decision-making, and social and organizational identity processes. Although his research focuses on social psychology in organizations, he also has a special interest in how micro-level processes drive meso and macro-level phenomena (e.g., how solitary normative actors can change cooperation in groups; how individual, values-based identification can lead to long-term strategic advantage for firms; how individual-level dependencies shape interorganizational trust relationships, etc.). Professor Weber’s areas of teaching and training expertise include negotiations, decision making, conflict management, and organizational behaviour.