Latest News
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
David Coderre, Public Servant in Residence at Telfer School of Management, and Christian Lohyer, Office of the Comptroller General, have received an international award for “Technology Innovation”. The objective of their work was to transform the way internal audit and financial monitoring is conducted in Canadian federal government departments by improving the ability of auditors and financial officers to access and use financial data through analytics. The analytics provide the auditors and finance officers with easy access to departmental SAP financial data in a common format that allows for the development and sharing of ACL scripts (analytics) to assess key business processes and financial controls, and to monitor departmental financial performance and trends.
The data is not held centrally as each department has its own instance of SAP for its financial system. The departmental auditors and finance officers obtain the data from the departmental financial system using an SAP extract program and then run a common set of ACL analytical routines against the extracted data. Approximately one hundred analytical routines and financial tests were developed and provided to government departments. While at the Telfer School, Mr. Coderre also designed and developed data analytics to perform continual monitoring and assessment of financial risk using quantitative indicators of risk.
The innovative series of interconnected ACL analytical routines support auditors and finance officers across the federal government in the use of data-driven approaches to monitor and test controls, and assess financial risks on an ongoing basis. The analytics examine trends across fiscal years, and support financial monitoring and the examination of the accounts payable, procurement cards, payroll, and contracting business processes. This improves government efficiency and effectiveness, increases public confidence, transparency and openness, and supports the independent assessment of government spending and stewardship of resources.
David Coderre can be reached at
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Once a year, the Ottawa Business Journal nominates professionals for their business achievements to be in their Forty Under 40 list.
Among this years’ nominees, nine are University of Ottawa’s alumni from which two studied at the Telfer School of Management. For this achievement, the Telfer School would like to congratulate:
- Christa Casey, BCom 1997
- Andy LeValliant, EMBA 2012
The Telfer School would also like to congratulate Iwona Albrecht, Solomon Friedman, Michael Horne, Ian O'Meara, Charles Rifici, Matthew Rinfret and Pascal St-Jean, who all graduated from the University of Ottawa.
This year's Forty Under 40 awards gala will take place at the Hilton Lac-Leamy Hotel on June 19, 2014. The event will feature cocktails, fine food, music and dancing and is in part sponsored by the Telfer Executive MBA.
- Category: Latest News
Samir Saadi is the lead investigator in a project to be funded by the Telfer-Sprott Research Fund. His project, “Does Value Based Management Performance Affect CEO Turnover and Compensation?” will receive $10,000 over two years, it was announced at the Telfer-Sprott Research Forum at the end of April. Saadi is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Telfer School.
Description of the project:
There is a general consensus among academia and practitioners that capital markets reward firms that focus on value-based management (VBM) practices and long-term value creation. VBM is commonly measured using Economic Value Added (EVA) and Market Value Added (MVA). The existing literature, however, puts a great deal of emphasis on the relationship between value creation and stock return performance. Samir Saadi with colleagues Vijay Jog, Carleton University and Shantanu Dutta, University of Ontario Institute of Technology seeks to extend the literature by examining whether tenure and compensation structure of senior managers would be tied to relevant VBM performance metrics of the firm. The team will also investigate whether the quality of corporate governance influences the relationship between a firm’s performance, and probability of CEO turnover and compensation structure. Finally, they will examine whether and how the recent financial crisis affected the relationship between a firm’s performance and compensation structure and the probability of CEO turnover. An empirical analysis will be conducted using a sample of S&P 1500 firms from the years 2002 - 2013.
- Category: Latest News
The 5th Annual Telfer-Sprott Research Forum 2014 was held on April 24, 2014 under the theme The Performance Challenge – New Questions, Recent Management Approaches. Building upon the success of the previous forums, this event provided a unique opportunity for faculty members to exchange research knowledge and form new linkages that will lead to ongoing collaborations. The conference heard from two keynote speakers, Toby Fyfe of the Institute on Governance and Daniel Watson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Government of Canada. Lysanne Lessard, Telfer School of Management discussed “Modeling Service Performance in Knowledge-Intensive Business Service (KIBS) Engagements: Toward Effective Tool Support.” François Brouard and Leighann Neilson of the Sprott School of Business presented their analysis of change in fundraising activities in small charities. Walid Ben Amar from the Telfer School examined boards of directors through the lens of sustainability management. Niraj Bhargava from the Sprott School presented “Entrepreneurship and Sustainability: Academic and Applied Research with a Sustainable Energy Agenda Example.” And Mika Westerlund from the Sprott School discussed strategies and management roles for sustainability innovation. The event concluded with the announcement of the 2014 winning project under the Telfer-Sprott Research Fund, led by Samir Saadi of Telfer.
- Category: Rising Stars
Students from the Telfer School of Management have placed among the top student leaders in Canada at the Enactus National competition that was held in Calgary, Alberta from April 28-30, 2014. This success comes on the heels of many accomplishments this year, including huge success at the Enactus Regional Exposition.
Ajmal Sataar won Student Leader of the Year, and Kathleen Kemp was named the HSBC Woman Leader of Year, Central Canada, and was the runner up nationally. The team won 6 other awards, and was a Semi-Finalist among the Top 8 teams in Canada.
“These are tremendous accomplishments that speak to our students’ personal dedication and hard work” said Stephen Daze, the Telfer School’s faculty advisor for Enactus uOttawa.
Awards received:
- First Place in the TD Entrepreneurship Challenge Central Canada
- First Place in the Capital One Financial Education Challenge Central Canada
- First Place for Best Project in the RBC Newcomer Advancement Project Fund
- Third Place in the Scotiabank Ecoliving Green Challenge
- Third Place for Best Project in the Walmart Women's Economic Empowerment Grant
- Ajmal Sataar - Student Leader of the Year
- Kathleen Kemp - HSBC Women Leader of the Year, Central Canada, and Runner Up nationally
- Stephen Daze - John Dobson Fellow for his work with the team as a Faculty Advisor
- Semi-Finalist in the National Competition, Top 8 in Canada
Photo gallery
- Category: Student Announcements
On May 10, 2014 forty candidates from the Class of 2015 travelled to Silicon Valley as a part of Telfer Executive MBA's Innovation and Entrpreneurship Trip and Consulting Project.
Over the duration of the week, candidates will finalize their findings and report for their North American client. In addition, candidates will also visit several of the world's leading technology companies, attend private executive briefings with senior Silicon Valley leaders and see first-hand previews of the future technology and innovation. Technology companies on the agenda for this year include Google, Apple, Cisco, IBM, and Younoodle.
Teams will be contributing to a daily blog which will be featured on the Telfer Executive MBA webpage as well as the Ottawa Business Journal.
Day one: Seeking the Spark of Innovation
Monday, May 12, 2014 By Susan Munn, Telfer Executive MBA candidate
Day two: The Winding Hill to the Top
Tuesday, May 13, 2014 By Susanne Grundy, Telfer Executive MBA candidate
Day three: The Importance of Culture
Wednesday, May 14, 2014 By David Fraser, Telfer Executive MBA candidate
Day four: Trends and Values in the Valley
Wednesday, May 15, 2014 By Quasim Chaudry and Arelis Medina-Recio, Telfer Executive MBA candidates
Day five: Networks and Networking
By Ron MacEachern, Telfer Executive MBA candidate
- Category: Donations / Fundraising
On May 8, the Telfer School of Management and the Telfer School’s Alumni Association welcomed alumni and donors to its annual donor recognition event “Back to Telfer - Come Back. Give Back.” This event aims to unite alumni and donors to celebrate and encourage graduates to Come back and Give back to their alma mater, the Telfer School.
In addition to celebrating our alumni, we also presented the following awards:
Telfer Donor of the Year Award: Welch LLP
Welch LLP has supported the Telfer School and its students for a number of years now. They are a Platinum Sponsor of the Accounting Club and sponsor other key student events. Welch LLP also provides financial support and incentive to Telfer School of Management students with the Welch LLP Accounting Scholarship. They reward students who distinguish themselves through a well-rounded approach to life, involvement in the School or community at large and academic success.
Telfer Young Donor of the Year Award: Omar Hashem and Abdul-Aziz Garuba
As students, Aziz and Omar were very involved in the Telfer community, student clubs and associations. Aziz and Omar recently created the Garuba-Hashem Admission Scholarship to help us continue to attract the best and brightest students.
Telfer Loyal Donor of the Year Award: Louise Pagé-Valin
Louise Pagé-Valin has supported the Telfer School of Management and its students for the past 27 years. In 2004, Ms. Pagé-Valin created the Pagé-Valin Family Scholarship that honours the Pagé and Valin families, who have studied or worked at the University of Ottawa for the past several decades.
.jpg)
- Category: Student Announcements
The Telfer MBA program focuses particular attention on high performance organizations. The trip to Europe is designed to provide MBA students with a perspective on what high performance organizations look like in a European environment. With this in mind, the Telfer School has arranged for the MBA students to travel to Paris, Antwerp and Brussels to meet with executives from Sodexo, Ivanhoe Cambridge, Ferrari Brand Perfumes, IDInvest Partners, Alcatel-Lucent, Deloitte, Nike and Audi. Students from the Telfer MBA program will be blogging about their experience on this trip.
[These articles are no longer available.]
Baguettes, Berets and Balanced Scorecards: Telfer MBAs do Paris
John Adams, Alexandra Lyn, Oshada Mendis
The Power of a Network
Helena Gorancic-Lazetic, Roberta Kramchynsky and Ella Yang
Au Revoir Paris - Goedemorgen Antwerpen!
Angela Valdes Loyola, François Kontak Desmarais and Kimberly Barrett
Local culture while learning at Deloitte (Brussels) and AB InBev (Leuven)
Michelle Navarro, Adrian Papara, and Wesley Payne
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Accompanied by a grant of $10,000 to be applied towards research on innovative teaching practices, this award was established to honor leaders of university education who have excelled both in the classroom and in the field or laboratory, and who have been recognized by students and their peers.
Professor Durocher is receiving this award in recognition of his outstanding teaching skills, his pedagogical initiatives, his great contribution to the curriculum of our school as well as the many testimonials he has received from his students and colleagues.
Having initially joined the Telfer School of Management in 2004 as a part-time professor, he was promoted in 2006 to the rank of Associate Professor. From the very beginning, he distinguished himself by the quality of his teaching and the relevance and rigor of his research. The dynamism and passion with which he shares his knowledge make him very much appreciated by his students and afford him, session after session, excellent feedback and teaching evaluations. He has published in numerous quality journals in his field of expertise and he is the co-author of a reference book entitled Comptabilité intermédiaire – Analyse théorique et pratique adopted by many francophone management schools in Canada.
It is with great pride that we extend our most sincere congratulations to Professor Sylvain Durocher whose quality of education enriches the student experience and brings honor to the Telfer School and to the University of Ottawa.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Shaping tomorrow’s health care service leaders for the past 50 years
Read more › [This link is no longer available]
On May 3, 2014, the Telfer School of Management and the Telfer MHA Alumni Association held a gala at the Château Laurier to highlight the 50th anniversary of the Master of Health Administration (MHA) program.
The Gala was host to some of the elite in health care management and policy in Canada. More than 300 alumni, professors, preceptors, professionals and members of the community were present, representing 39 of the 50 years of the program.
“I have been extremely privileged to be part of this health care system and like many graduates, it all started for me with this MHA program.” said Cameron Love, MHA 1997. “I will always remember my times as a student and resident. During the first 50 years, the program has seen many great moments and has resulted in many great leaders in our health care system and I am sure it will continue to strengthen and evolve to be a key health leader training program over the next 50.”
“I want to extend, on behalf of the classes of 1985 to 1989, a large measure of thanks to our professors, the Telfer School and the University of Ottawa for providing us with a solid foundation upon which to build our careers and, in many respects, our lives,” said Donald Sanderson, MHA 1989.
Dean François Julien took this opportunity to announce the creation of the Telfer Health Transformation Exchange thanks to an initial $1 million investment from the School. The main purpose of the Telfer Health Transformation Exchange will be to contribute - through the exchange of ideas and best practices, and through research and education - to the transformation of health care delivery with the long-term objective of improving the quality of patient care while providing efficient and effective health services.
Several other great events were organized throughout the weekend, including professional development sessions.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
The Telfer School of Management is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Dana Hyde to the position of Director of the Bachelor of Commerce program. The Telfer BCom is the flagship undergraduate program of the Telfer School, which has earned accreditations from three of the most demanding organizations in the world—AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS.
Dr. Hyde has been a member of the Telfer School faculty since 2002 and is a highly regarded professor in the MBA and Executive MBA programs, as well as in the BCom program. She has also served as a faculty member at Babson College (Wellesley, MA) and at the Ivey School of Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario, where she won several teaching awards.
Dr. Hyde has worked and studied in more than 20 countries around the world. The recipient of several international prizes for her teaching case studies, including several worldwide bestsellers, she serves on the US Board of The Case Centre, an 800+ member organisation whose role is to promote case method education around the world. In her new role at Telfer, Dr. Hyde’s responsibilities will include supporting the quality of teaching and learning in the BCom program, in order to provide our undergraduate students with a first rate and enriching educational experience.
- Category: Rising Stars
All students in ADM4350 (Equity Valuation) took part in a case competition where they had to estimate the value of a real-life company and propose a course of action that the company should take to solve its problems. This term, the mandate was to estimate the value of Ozile’s Marina and Tackle Corporation.
We would like to congratulate:
First prize:
- Vincent Baulne-Charland
- Steve Kavanagh
- Nour Alyoussef
Second Prize:
- Tony Ehteshami
- Drew Alexander
- Oliver Alexander
- Douglas Spark
Third prize:
- Folco Colonna
- Jean-Pierre Godeme
Best posters (two groups):
- Rita Anne Awad
- Lara Salem
-
Eric Werner
- Jessica Gilbert Gagné
- Robert Allan Frank
- Layla Ahmed Reza
Creativity Award winner:
- Joshua Andrew King
- Bradley Garrett Ney
- Andrew Reid Potter
We would like to thank all judges: Kash Pashootan, Jeff Drinkwater (Scotia Bank), Jeff Blattman (EDC), Yves Grandmaitre (Owner of Ozile's Marina and Tackle) and Pouya Safi.
- Category: Rising Stars
A total of 85 students divided in 10 groups were responsible for analyzing a case involving a real-life local or Canadian company and report on accounting issues being faced by the subject company. The best groups had to present on April 4th in a competition. The winners received the Certified General Accountants of Ontario (CGAO) Case Competition prize for Case Studies in Accounting.
We would like to congratulate the winners:
- Leah Wright
- Eric Chausse
- Osman Issack
- Vincent Paquette
- John-Joseph Patafie
- Taylor Servais
Thank you to CGA Ontario for sponsoring the event and to Professor Brian Conheady, Professor Sheldon Weatherstone and André Auger from Welch, LLP for being judges.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Nominations are invited for students who deserve to be recognized for outstanding Social Responsibility Leadership. This award is open to BCom students who will be returning to complete their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year of study as a full-time student.
The prize consists of $2,000 towards the recipient’s 4th year tuition fees.
Nominations can be made by completing the nomination form and sending it via email to Susan Redmond at
Social responsibility projects undertaken by nominees do not have to be associated with the Telfer School of Management and can be pursued at large in the community.
Nominations can come from staff, faculty, alumni and members of the business and local community.
Nominations are due May 16, 2014. The selection committee will make a decision by May 26. The award will be presented at the Telfer School of Management Pre-Convocation Awards Brunch on June 15, 2014.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management is very pleased to welcome Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, new faculty member and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Chair in Gender, Work and Health Human Resources.
“Professor Bourgeault is a tremendous addition to the Telfer School, a researcher who has garnered an international reputation for her work on health professions, health policy and women's health,” said Dean François Julien. “Her appointment enables us to contribute valuable knowledge on the links between gender, work and health and to deepen our research and teaching expertise in health systems management.”
Professor Bourgeault had been with the Faculty of Heath Sciences where she became a prolific researcher and leader in her field. She held the CIHR/Health Canada Chair in Health Human Resource Policy from 2009-2014. “Ms. Bourgeault has been a model applied chair - a key and respected leader in the community and champion of applied health policy research,” said Dr. Robyn Tamblyn, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research.
The new Chair awarded to Ms. Bourgeault is one of nine chairs in gender, work and health established by CIHR. “This new CIHR Chair will support research focusing on addressing critical knowledge gaps in the area of health human resources,” said Dr. Joy Johnson, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Gender, Work and Health. “Ms. Bourgeault’s studies will increase our understanding of how gender influences quality of work, the types of task that are assigned to different health workers, and the movement of health professionals both within Canada and internationally.”
Ms. Bourgeault is the Scientific Director of the pan-Ontario Population Health Improvement Research Network, the Ontario Health Human Resource Research Network and the pan Canadian Health Human Resources Network. She has also developed active research collaborations with faculty at Telfer and she supervises students in the Master of Science in Health Systems Program.
Health systems management at the Telfer School
Long standing relationships with the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Health Sciences (including among others the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences and the School of Nursing), the Institute for Population Health and hospitals in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have enabled the Telfer School of Management to position itself as a leading centre for expertise in health systems. The Telfer School offers two dedicated graduate-level programs in this area, the MSc (Health Systems) and (celebrating 50 years this May) the Master of Health Administration (MHA).
Photo: Cecilia Van Egmond, Assistant Director, Institute of Health Services and Policy Research, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR); Professor Ivy Bourgeault; François Julien, Dean of the Telfer School of Management
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
The Robert Wood Johnson award recipient from the Telfer School of Management, Taylor Linseman, has always had a passion for healthcare management. After completing a Bachelor of Life Sciences from Queen’s University in 2007, Taylor began her healthcare career in Dublin Ireland, where she was the manager of a home care service for individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities. This line of work later brought Taylor to Melbourne, Australia, where she led a community outreach program supporting adolescents with disabilities, mental health struggles, and contact with the criminal justice system. Since returning to Canada, Taylor has worked in the Aboriginal Health and youth services arenas.
Deciding to pursue postgraduate education in 2012, Taylor chose the Telfer School of Management’s Master of Health Administration program because of its uniquely close link to the MBA degree. She graduated from the Telfer MHA in December 2013 and was inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma society this past March. With strong business foundations and experience in community-based care, Taylor is very excited to continue her healthcare career with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. She currently manages the Youth Net (Réseau Ado) program: a peer-to-peer mental health support service for adolescents in the Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec regions. Taylor’s passion for supporting vulnerable populations holds throughout her professional and personal life; she is equally proud to volunteer as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Therapeutic Riding Association of Ottawa-Carleton within her spare time. Taylor plans to continue learning through involvement with the Canadian College of Health leaders and aspires to impact accessibility within our system in her healthcare future.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
The Regroupement des gens d’affaires de la Capitale nationale (RGA) recently honoured the laureates of its 2014 Excellence prizes. These were awarded during the organization’s annual gala that took place on April 12, 3014 at the Ottawa Convention Centre.
The RGA 2014 Gala of Excellence brought together more than 700 RGA members, members of the business community, leaders and politicians from Eastern Ontario and Outaouais.
Annually, RGA honours outstanding professionals for their organization's performance, their commitment to the community and the importance of bilingualism in business.
Marc Lebouthillier (MHA 1982): Leader of the Year
Directeur général, Hawksbury & District Hospital
Eugène Tassé (Alumni of the Commerce class of 1944, DU 2009): Coup de cœur award – Philanthropy
Photo: Joanne Lefebvre, CEO of RGA; Eugène Tassé; Denis Bouchard, General Director of Bell Média Inc.
- Category: Rising Stars
MBA teams of students in Professor Garrick Apollon's MBA 5211 – Corporate Governance and Ethics course worked on a term project named Global Anti-Corruption Project aiming to develop an anti-corruption corporate governance compliance program for small Canadian global companies. The students' challenge was organized according to the format of the television show, "The Apprentice." The students had to submit a written report and make an oral presentation to an evaluation committee composed of:
- Sgt. Pat Poitevin (acting as the chief judge for the Global Anti-Corruption Project ) Senior Investigator - Outreach Coordinator Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sensitive and International Investigations National Division
- Alison FitzGerald, Associate at Norton Rose Fulbright in Ottawa
- Yolanda Banks, Senior Corporate Social Responsibility at Export Development Canada
- Mark Grenon, CPA, Managing Forensic Accountant at PWGSC (Government of Canada)
- Professor Garrick Apollon, Telfer School of Management
- Susan Côté-Freeman, Programme Manager, Private Sector Programmes at Transparency International
- Allison Caverly, General Manager GoodLife FITNESS and alumnus of the Telfer School
- Professor Michael Miles, MBA Director at the Telfer School
Congratulations to the members of the challenge-winning team:
- Juhee Anderson
- Mark Lyons
- Craig Marsh (team leader)
- Alex Nderitu
- Paola Osorio
- Deyanira Reyes-Moran
- Brad Smith
- Connie Sung
As explained by Professor Apollon, it is not common for students to be required to make a presentation and be evaluated by members of the business community and not only by their professor.
"I was nervous for them and I am proud of their accomplishments and their work. Just like in "The Apprentice" show, they got some harsh but very constructive criticism about their work. They didn’t get fired but they definitely learned a lot and most importantly got a lesson of humility. I also want to express my deep appreciation to Sergeant Patrice Poitevin from RCMP who acted as our chief judge and worked passionately on this project with me and all the judges, who all generously gave more than one workday to this Telfer School project," said Professor Apollon.
Inspired by his experience with Professor Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Professor Apollon’s intentions in creating the Global Anti-Corruption Project was to have his students work on a real project of a social and ethical nature.
“My father came to Canada from Haiti for a better future because Haiti always experienced until today severe problems with political instability and corruption. However, corruption is not just a problem happening in developing nations like Haiti; recently our country has faced its share of corruption scandals. Therefore, like I always say to my students’ ethical leadership in business or in our lives is something that we should all aspire and work on every day. This is why the Telfer School decided to partner with RCMP instead to work with one company, like Alain Doucet, Assistant Dean, External relations at Telfer said to me we will have the chance to have a meaningful impact not just to one company but to the whole business community in Canada because RCMP will be able to use our work and research. The Global Anti-Corruption Project was only possible because of a great team effort and I was honoured to have the chance to “quarterback” this project. We are currently running the Global Anti-Corruption Project in my undergraduate class of Multinational Business Policy. We are starting something big and sustainable that RCMP would also like to replicate in all business schools across the country”.
- Category: Rising Stars
The winners in the 7th annual Engineering Graduate Poster Competition from E-Business Technologies (MEBT / MSc) and System Sciences (MSc / MSysSc) were all students supervised by Telfer School professors! These are terrific results that highlight the burgeoning research collaborations between the Faculty of Engineering and the Telfer School through these two joint programs. Telfer professors publish high-quality papers with graduate students in these programs and secure valuable external grants.
The competition was held on March 27 at the School of Information and Computer Science as part of Graduate Studies and Engineering Research Day and involved 30 judges from industry and government funding agencies. It was the first year in which EBT and Systems Science participated and they were extremely well represented with 9 of the 59 research posters presented. Several of the faculty and students in the competition are also involved in projects supported by the IBM Centre for Business Analytics and Performance at the Telfer School.
Congratulations to all Telfer School / Systems Science and EBT participants:
1st Place
Brain-based Biomarkers for Depression Diagnoses
By: Fadwa Gamal Al-Azab (EBT)
Supervisor: Bijan Raahemi of the Telfer School
2nd Place
Risk Analysis in Coastal Communities Decision Making
By: Sara Mohammadi (Systems Science)
Supervisor: Dan Lane of the Telfer School
3rd Place
Business Intelligence - Enabled Adaptive Enterprise Architecture
By: Okhaide Samson Akhigbe (Systems Science)
Supervisor: Daniel Amyot of the Faculty of Engineering and Greg Richards of the Telfer School
Other students supervised by Telfer faculty members
- Mona Rezaei, Systems Science (Combining Balanced Score Card and Data Envelopment Analysis for Analyzing the Performance of Small Scale Fisheries) with Dan Lane.
- Alex Chung, Systems Science (Emergency Preparedness and Response Planning: A Value Based Approach to Preparing Coastal Communities for Sea Level Rise) with Dan Lane and Colleen Mercer-Clark.
- Fahad Saleh Alaieri, EBT (Knowledge Management in Collaborative Environment) with Bijan Raahemi.
- Morvarid Kardan, EBT (Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining using Twitter: A quantitative research on the correlation between specifically defined Twitter feeds and Consumer Confidence Index) with Gurprit Kindra and Michael Guolla.
- Category: Donations / Fundraising
Dean François Julien and the entire Telfer community wish to express our sincere appreciation to Rob Ashe (BCom 1982, DU 2010) and Sandra Herrick (BCom 1984) for their generous gift of $375,000 which will provide funding for the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Telfer School of Management for five years. The position has been named in honour of Dom Herrick.
Rob Ashe is the former CEO of Cognos and General Manager of Business Analytics for IBM. Serving as CEO of Cognos Inc, he helped grow the company into a $1Billion-plus business intelligence software giant. Following the acquisition of Cognos by IBM in 2008, Ashe led IBM’s growing Business Analytics division as General Manager, where he served until March of 2012. In his near 30 year tenure at Cognos, Ashe held several leadership positions across key departments including CFO, Senior Vice President of R&D, Senior Vice President of Services and Support, Chief Corporate Officer and President and COO. Rob has also been a strong supporter of the YMCA-YWCA National Capital Region, United Way, the Ottawa Food Bank, Royal Ottawa Campaign for Mental Health, the Ottawa Public Library, the Ottawa Hospital, the National Gallery of Canada and Ashbury College. Mr. Ashe was presented with the Trudeau Medal by the Telfer School of Management in 2000, in recognition of his leadership, initiative and contributions to the business world, the community and his alma mater.
Sandra is a Telfer graduate and a Chartered Accountant. Sandra worked within Ottawa's high technology community at Kinburn Capital and Mitel. After combining a consulting career with raising a family, she has spent the last many years as a financial advisor.
Dom Herrick, father and father-in-law respectively of Telfer alumni Sandra Herrick and Rob Ashe was a local businessman with a very keen interest in the development of the city's business community. He worked on the team at E.R. Fisher's in Ottawa for close to 30 years and dedicated countless hours to the Ottawa Executive Association (OXA). Dom developed an appreciation for the importance of Entrepreneurship in the local community. Dom closely watched the growth in the technology community in Ottawa - and Cognos specifically. Through this, he advocated for a greater entrepreneurial spirit in the local community. For this reason, Rob and Sandra have chosen to honor Dom with the Dom Herrick Entrepreneur in Residence position.
- Category: Donations / Fundraising
We would like to wholeheartedly thank André Giroux (Civil Law 1982 & BAdm 1979), President of Legico-CHP, for his generous donation of $30,000 for the creation of the Legico-CHP scholarship. The scholarship will be awarded to francophone students from Québec upon admission in the Telfer BCom program. Three scholarships of $2,000 will be available every year for five years.
Legico-CHP is the result of a merger between Legico, founded in 2000, and CHP, in business since 1992. Since their respective inceptions, the two organizations have been playing a vital role in important local and international construction projects.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The first Telfer Trading Competition took place March 22, 2014 and consisted of an all-day event hosted by Pouya Safi, the Manager of the Financial Research and Learning lab and one of his Lab Assistants, Alex Tyutyunnik. Twenty plus students registered for the event which consisted of a Social Outcry using a proprietary excel macro created by Alex Tyutyunnik of Telfer, and two simulation based cases using the Rotman Interactive Trader software which was recently acquired to complement the Financial Research and Learning Lab. Competitors could either choose to compete individually or in pairs. Upon registration students would receive details on how to download the software and how to access a sample case in order to familiarize themselves with the system. Tutorials were provided in advance of the competition to any students that were interested. The two actual cases, one on arbitrate trading and one on commodities went live on Wednesday before the competition. Competitors were encouraged to formulate a strategy and modify the VBA based spreadsheet to suit their needs and create their buy and sell signals.
The event kicked-off by a brief intro and outline of the day and quickly moved onto the Social Outcry competition. In this portion, students competed individually to gain the highest profit based on the Telfer-500 index, a highly volatile index which simulated 30 days of trading in 20 minutes. The price moved based on news releases that would appear on screen alongside the candle-stick chart. Competitors would yell their bid and ask prices and trade between themselves. The atmosphere was quite exciting as students ran around and mimicked a stock trading floor of old times. Following this event, lunch was served and the competitors moved onto the case based section of the competition. The two cases consisted of an Arbitrage case and a Commodities case. The Arbitrage case consisted of 5 rounds of 5 minutes each and students were required to find arbitrage opportunities due to mispricing between two securities and an index consisting of only these two securities. The commodities case consisted of 2 rounds of 30 minutes each and competitors were required to trade natural gas futures based on news and economic news releases. Many students created their own excel spreadsheet which would calculate inherent mispricing for the arbitrage case and pricing of the futures contracts based on inputs from the news.
Overall winners of the competition were determined using a ranking system in order to minimize speculation profits and encourage those who underperformed in one round. For example, a student who consistently placed in the top five would fare much better overall than a student ranking first in one round and last in the next.
Students were able to see theoretical concepts they've been learning in their finance courses and how they apply in a simulation environment. Adding experiential learning opportunities like these really help strengthen core understanding of our students, better prepare them for real-life scenarios as they enter the job market and give them the best possible student experience while attending the University of Ottawa. The common feedback from students was to see more simulation based cases related to their courses, and to continue to have events like these while opening registration up to students from around the Ottawa region. The Financial Research and Learning Lab is quite excited to start organizing our second Telfer Trading Competition, one that is much bigger and also helps start our preparation for the largest trading competition in the world, the Rotman International Trading Competition.
The day's winners were as follows:
Overall:
- Ethan Zhang
- Tyson Rigg and Akeem Daniel
- Wenjun Tian and Zhuohang Yu
Social Outcry Winner: Cassy Aite
Arbitrage Case Winner: Ethan Zhang
Commodities Case Winner: Ethan Zhang
- Category: Telfer Announcements
- Category: Rising Stars
Winter 2014
The Telfer School of Management held the Winter 2014 Michel Cloutier Marketing Competition on April 1, 2014 at the Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the winning team, Team 2 (Julie-Anne Gagné, Julia Nikonorova, Katiana Paré, Christine Rahep, Tamara Saikaley), who provided the best insight into how the Regroupement des gens d'affaires' Business Assistance Program could increase its visibility and encourage use of its services by local organizations.
The winning team received a cash prize of $1,200 and Corrin Whiteway, the student with the best presentation skills, received a $500 prize.
Fall 2013
The Telfer School of Management held the fall 2013 Michel Cloutier Marketing Competition on December 3, 2013 at the Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the winning team, Team 2 (Jocelyne Dramisino, Marinela Dzonlic, Lauren Lemay, Ned Nadima Khenzu, Lindsay O'Bryan), who provided the best insight into how Julie Blais-Comeau could maximize sales of her new book on business etiquette.
The winning team received a cash prize of $1,200 and Vanessa Khoury, the student with the best presentation skills, received a $500 prize.
- Category: Rising Stars
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation is an exciting and integrative learning opportunity for BCom students as part of their 4th year Strategic Management class.
From March 13-16, students participated in this simulation at the Telfer School of Management’s Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the members of the winning team:
- François Forrest
- Rebecca Mandal
- Emily Ramji
- Sophia Pavlou
- Pierce Colley
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation has been a component of the 4th year strategy course for close to 20 years. It aims to teach students the concepts of strategic management in a simulated online world known as Intopia. The simulation allows students to practice their skills in a concentrated amount of time where they can get immediate feedback on their decisions.
This capstone activity has recently been renamed to recognize CGA Ontario’s comprehensive contribution of $370,000 to the Telfer School to support students, teaching and research.
- Category: Rising Stars
We are proud to announce that every team we sent at Happening Marketing finished in the top three for the academic cases. This year, the competition took place at Université Laval in Quebec City.
B2B (Business to business Marketing) - 1st place
- Antoine Bégin
- Corey Ellis
- Linda Mouhamou
Coaches : Professor David Large, Christopher Sisto
Assistant Coach: Diane Mugeni
International Marketing - 1st place
- Carley Clouthier
- Vincent Baulne
- Martin Rivard
Strategy - 1st place
- Lloyd Alexander
- Sara Valentino
- Saxon Giddings
Relationship Marketing - 3rd place
- Brittany Blain-Wambolt
- Julie-Anne Gagné
- Andrew Packer
Integrated Marketing Communication - 3rd place
- Raphaël Morin
- Samantha Buch
- Vineeth Sampathkumar
In addition, the Telfer School was named the school who improved the most this year.
- Category: Rising Stars
This country’s largest student leadership development organization, Enactus Canada, hosted their 2014 Regional Exposition – Central Canada at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto on March 13-14, 2014. The event inspired and celebrated the entrepreneurial action of student teams and student entrepreneurs across Central Canada.
The Regional Exposition brings together over 500 student leaders, academic professionals and top executives and entrepreneurs from Central Canada around the shared cause of transforming lives through entrepreneurial action.
During the event, post-secondary students competed for prestigious regional championship titles by showcasing their community outreach projects and business ventures to judging panels composed of business professionals.
Three team-based competitions focused on entrepreneurship, environmental issues and financial education, as well as an individual-based competition for full-time students operating full-time businesses, took place during the Regional Exposition.
Enactus uOttawa was named Regional Champion of the Capital One Financial Education Challenge and Regional Champion of TD Entrepreneurship Challenge in League A. The team also placed as second runner-up for the ScotiaBank Ecoliving Green Challenge. Enactus uOttawa Co-President, Kathleen Kemp, was recognized as one of the HSBC Woman Leaders of tomorrow for Central Canada.
Regional champions move on to the national level of competition taking place April 28-30 at the 2014 Enactus Canada National Exposition in Calgary, Alberta.
To learn more about Enactus uOttawa’s community projects, visit www.enactusuottawa.ca
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
- Category: Rising Stars
Congratulations to Gabrielle Vacon for winning the April Nauta Award and being named Telfer CO-OP student of the year.
When doing her placement with BDO Canada, Gabrielle Vachon worked on a number of accounting, tax and certification projects. She also dealt with numerous clients during the course of her work at BDO. Gabrielle was given responsibility for the Ottawa East region, a challenge she found quite interesting. Her supervisor described her as someone able to work very well not only on her own but also as part of a team. She gained experience analyzing various types of information, an important skill accountants must possess. Gabrielle is an employee who believes a great deal in her work in accounting and will complete her certification requirements.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management has launched a new website design.
In addition to the new and improved look, the new website layout is now responsive, which means that the website will automatically adjust to fit any screen size.
More and more people are using our website on mobile devices. These users will now be able to view the entire website on their smartphones.
Users with large displays will also benefit from this new design. The website expands to take up more space on their monitors so they will not be limited to using a small portion of their screen.
The new website is also compliant with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. By complying with these guidelines, we are ensuring that users with disabilities will be able to access the information.
For the best possible experience, we encourage users to upgrade to the latest version of their browser.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Wojtek Michalowski presented the 2013-2014 Laurent Picard Distinguished Lecture at McGill University, March 14, 2014 in Montreal. This annual event recognizes leading scientists with clear impact on multi-disciplinary research domains. Professor Michalowski drew from his experiences designing, developing, and implementing clinical decision support systems (http://www.mobiledss.uottawa.ca) to discuss the challenges associated with introducing non-medical innovation in healthcare. The talk explored the links between the bench-to-bedside culture of medical research and the process of introducing innovative business of medicine solutions derived from Operations Research models and health informatics. It also explored how participatory medicine affects the innovation process in healthcare.
For more information, including the abstract of Dr. Michalowski’s lecture, visit this link.
- Category: Student Announcements
Professor André Potworowski invited Marc Garneau, Member of Parliament and first Canadian astronaut, to give a conference to MBA students.
Mr. Garneau talked about his career in the Navy where he became officer before becoming the first Canadian astronaut and later the President of the Canadian Space Agency. Elected to the House of Commons, he is now involved in various projects is different fields such as international affairs.
- Category: Community Engagement
From March 9-14, 2014 Telfer BCom students will sleep outside to create awareness and raise funds for the homeless in communities across Canada. It is the fourth time that students of the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa will be taking part in 5 Days for the Homeless.
5 Days for the Homeless is a five-day charity campaign in which university students live "homeless" on campus to raise money and awareness for a local charity.
This year, the campaign will be held at 26 campuses across the country. To date, the national organization has raised over $1,212,000!
Show your support by stopping by Morisset Terrace March 9-15 and come say hi to our sleepers!
Below is a list of participants for 5 Days for the Homeless 2014:
- Aayush Shah
- Brianna Barry
- Brittany Blain-Wombolt
- Chloe Hutcherson
- Gina Chong
- Isabelle Leblanc
- Lama Kahiel
- Lawrence Quan
- Lukas Jeffery
- Natalina Tuy
- Stephanie Lorentz
- Category: Latest News
Paul Loucks has more than 25 years of experience in high technology. He joined Halogen Software in January 2000, became President in August 2000 and assumed the CEO role in November 2006. Under Paul’s guidance, Halogen has emerged as a leader in the employee performance and talent management market. The company has achieved consistent revenue growth and has built a strong global customer base.
In recognition of his leadership, accomplishments and community building efforts Paul was named CEO of the Year by the Best Ottawa Business Awards in 2013 and received a "Top Forty under 40" award from Ottawa Business Journal in 2001. Prior to joining Halogen, Paul was founder and President of NeoDyne Consulting, a custom software development firm that was named one of Canada's 100 Fastest Growing Companies by Profit Magazine and named an "Up and Comer" by The Globe and Mail's Report on Business. In 1997, NeoDyne Consulting was acquired by Compaq Canada.
Paul holds a Bachelor of Computer Science, with Distinction, from the Technical University of Nova Scotia.
- Category: Rising Stars
Procter and Gamble partnered with the Ted Rogers School of Management to create a national competition combining business and technological innovation, which sets it apart from existing competitions.
Teams from every Canadian province were extended an invitation to compete on March 1, 2014 in Toronto.
Congratulations to Roberta Kramchynsky, Bhumika Bakshi, Kimberly Barret and Sharon Thomas who came back with the bronze cup (3rd place out of 12 teams)!
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management is delighted to announce a new partnership for its International Exchange Program with the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Business Economics.
The University of Hong Kong is Hong Kong’s oldest university and one of the world’s top 30 universities*. It has been educating leaders and producing important research since 1911. The Faculty of Business and Economics has been closely involved in this endeavor. The Faculty of Business and Economics, comprising the School of Business and the School of Economics and Finance, offers a full range of high quality degree programs and serves different business and community needs. Their goal is to educate responsible business leaders for Hong Kong, China and the world.
Their position at the East-West pivot is highly attractive to students from around the world. The faculty boasts:
- International joint programs with Fudan University, London Business School and Columbia Business School
- Growing numbers of non-local students – almost half of the total non-local student intake of the University of Hong Kong
- Nearly half of the academic staff members are international
- International accreditation by EQUIS and AACSB
*According to the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2013, the University of Hong Kong ranked 26th in the world.
For more information, please visit www.fbe.hku.hk or the Student Services Centre in DMS 1100.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
The U.S.-based Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) has awarded its 2014 Canada Award to Joe Irvine, who is Director, Technology Transfer and Business Enterprise (TTBE) at the University of Ottawa, in recognition of his outstanding service to the technology transfer community. He travelled to San Francisco, California to receive the award. Joe Irvine has worked tirelessly to strengthen ties between the University’s researchers and the community at large.
- Category: Rising Stars
She has owned stages across Canada and the United States and is only at the dawn of her promising music career. Fourth year student Krista Jane El-Khoury is doing a bachelor of commerce with a specialization in accounting — and she’s also a singer. With a raspy soulful voice, El-Khoury hopes that her career will be one driven more by passion than fame. We caught up with her to discuss her love for music, her career goals and her world-renowned opera singer sister, Joyce El-Khoury.
Read the article in the Gazette [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
We're pleased to have once again participated in the Nicol Entrepreneurial Award. Our winners, CigBins, will now be entered into the National Competition to be held late March in Ottawa. Congratulations to our other finalists: AllergyFree and Knowline!
- Category: Telfer Announcements
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Walid Ben Amar has been appointed Executive Director of the CGA Accounting and Governance Research Centre. An Associate Professor of accounting at the Telfer School of Management, Professor Ben Amar will lead a dynamic team of scholars dedicated to producing leading-edge research in accounting and related fields.
Through the generous financial support of CGA-Canada, which was recently extended for 3 years, the Centre makes highly relevant research contributions that shape the accounting profession and corporate governance practices in Canada. It has developed into a true community of professional learning and academic leadership through publication of studies in top peer-reviewed academic journals that further enhance the Telfer School’s research profile; through research symposia and a distinguished speakers’ series that explores emerging issues in accounting and governance, and through the development of productive new academic partnerships.
Professor Ben Amar succeeds Daniel Zéghal, Ph.D. (uLaval), C.G.A., F.C.G.A., who for more than two decades established the excellent reputation of the CGA-AGRC and helped put the Telfer School of Management at the forefront of accounting research in Canada. Daniel recognized and seized the opportunity that presented itself to the School in the early 1990’s to establish a new research centre focused on the accounting field. He put the Telfer School early on the path of excellence in this important and rapidly growing discipline, contributing a wealth of creativity and a tireless dedication to make that vision a concrete reality. During his tenure, he also became a sought-after expert on a great number of subjects related to the production, communication and use of accounting and financial information. Daniel’s long-time contributions to the centre will be honoured at the Telfer School’s awards ceremony on February 13.
Guiding CGA-AGRC into a new era, professor Ben Amar will focus his energies on developing a dynamic international research program and on fostering and supporting research-based graduate programs in accounting and governance. The research projects supported by the Centre make influential contributions in terms of: a better definition of the role of accounting; an enhanced understanding of accounting issues and challenges, solutions to problems facing the profession and the discipline; and the expansion and clarification of the theoretical, conceptual and practical foundations of accounting.
Walid Ben Amar’s research interests include corporate governance, ownership structures, mergers and acquisitions and corporate disclosure strategies. A certified general accountant (CGA), professor Ben Amar holds a Master's degree in accounting from Université du Québec à Montréal and a Ph.D. in business administration from HEC Montréal. He teaches financial accounting courses at the undergraduate and MBA levels.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Catherine Elliott will research Entrepreneurial Leadership Attributes: Developing a Gender-Neutral Vocabulary using a “Women in Work Incubator Grant” from the Centre for Research and Education on Women and Work at the Eric Sprott School of Business, Carleton University.
Professor Elliott researches and teaches in the areas of human resources management and organizational behaviour. Her numerous publications include the article “Entrepreneurial Feminists: Perspectives About Opportunity Recognition and Governance,” published in 2013 in the Journal of Business Ethics. Professor Elliott also recently examined the challenges and best practices of mentoring for diversity in the Canadian workplace using a grant from SSHRC with professor Joanne Leck.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Dean Francois Julien and Doug Dempster, Executive Director of the Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership, are pleased to announce the appointment of Richard Clayman as an Executive-in-Residence.
The Centre for Executive Leadership is part of the Telfer School of Management and is focused on realizing the enormous potential of executive talent in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors in the National Capital Region and across the country. The Centre offers open enrolment and custom educational experiences for its clients and is the preferred partner in meeting the specific leadership development needs of organizations in the region.
In his new role, Richard will be responsible for supporting the Centre’s expanding portfolio of offerings in the private and not-for-profit sectors as well as several strategic initiatives related to leadership development. Richard brings a depth of business experience following a 30-year award winning career with Manulife Financial. At Manulife, Richard held increasingly senior leadership roles culminating as a Regional Vice-President whose responsibilities centred on multi-billion dollar financial services distribution and customer / brokerage support regions spanning Northern, Central and Eastern Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. His business leadership has been recognized for excellence in such areas as management team and senior talent development, strategic planning, governance, and change management.
Throughout his career, Richard has been active in many civic and community development roles including Chair of the Board of Directors of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce and member of several other Boards such as the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation, the Kiwanis Medical Foundation and the Manulife Field Executive Advisory Council.
Richard had been associated with Telfer for a number of years as a member of its Career Centre Advisory Council and as a highly acclaimed professor in our MBA program. Richard continues to annually moderate a panel on leadership as part of the Telfer School’s MBA Conferences series, and most recently is both creator and host of the new Rogers-TV series entitled “Unlocking the Leadership Door”.
Richard holds an MBA degree from Dalhousie University. Additionally, he is a Fellow, Life Insurance Management Institute and a Fellow, Institute of Canadian Bankers.
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
W. Brett Wilson, iconic Canadian entrepreneur, philanthropist and three-season panellist on CBC's Dragons' Den, was invited as a guest speaker for the Entrepreneurship Bridges Lecture Series.
He shared his experiences in the business world and discussed what he would do differently if he could start over. Attendees of the January 30 event received a free copy of his book. Thanks to Mr. Wilson’s generosity, they had the opportunity to meet him personally at the end to get their book signed or to ask more specific questions.
Here are the top three tips for success proposed by Mr. Wilson:
1. Study marketing
2. Study entrepreneurship
3. Philanthropy is good business
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Telfer students took part in their first JDC Central academic competition on January 24-26. Telfer students placed first overall out of the 5 schools that had only sent a half delegation. The students brought back a third place trophy in the Human Resources Academic Case.
Congratulations to:
- Carley Clouthier
- Kalina Tsaneva
- Brooke Runions
as well as their coaches: David Delcorde, Linda Mouhamou and Matt Archibald.
This success follows shortly on the heels of a tremendous success at les Jeux du Commerce earlier in January. Then, The full delegation of students took home 3rd place overall as well as the Academic Cup for the 6th time in 7 years.
JDC Central is Central Canada’s largest business competition, bringing together over 600 delegates from Canadian business schools in Ontario, Québec and the Maritimes. It was hosted by the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario.
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
On January 24 and 25, students from the Telfer School of Management and the Faculty of Engineering competed in the 4th annual Strat24 Case Competition. Strat24 Case Competition is a multidisciplinary competition run by Enactus uOttawa. The competition requires 2 engineering and 2 business students to work together for 24 hours to come up with a solution for the case at hand. This year’s case sponsor was Hydro Ottawa. “At Hydro Ottawa innovation is critical to our success as a leading and trusted energy service provider,” said Roger Marsh, Chief Energy Management Officer at Hydro Ottawa. “We’re proud to support events like uOttawa’s STRAT24 Competition that helps develop the talent that we need to meet the many challenges of the future.”
The winning team received a $4000 scholarship, jointly donated by the Telfer School of Management and the Faculty of Engineering. Congratulations to this year’s winners!
- Roger Marsh (Hydro Ottawa)
- Soonbum Cha (Team 8)
- Nicholas Guolla (Team 8)
- Mithun Kommular (Team 8)
- Anthony Tarasio (Team 8)
- Michelle Lim (Director of Strat24, Enactus uOttawa)
- Kathleen Kemp (Co-President, Enactus uOttawa)
- Ajmal Sataar (Co-President, Enactus uOttawa)
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Over 500 students participated in this year’s Telfer Networking Convention on January 21, 2014. This event gives Telfer undergraduate students the opportunity to build their network and connect with potential employers from 25 leading organizations.
Many great connections were made between students and the professionals from the following organizations:
- belairdirect
- BMO Financial Group
- Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
- Canada Post Corporation
- Canada Revenue Agency
- Costco Wholesale
- Deloitte LLP
- Fastenal Canada
- First Student Canada
- Ford Motor Company of Canada Ltd
- Freedom 55 Financial
- Giant Tiger Stores Limited
- Hudson's Bay
- Investors Group
- Kraft Canada
- MD Physician Services
- PepsiCo Canada
- Scotiabank
- Summit Search Group
- Sun Life
- Target Canada
- TD Bank Group
- TEKsystems
- Public Works and Government Services Canada
- Treasury Board Secretariat
- Category: Telfer Announcements
We invite you to participate in this placement process so you can benefit from tomorrow’s future leaders. Telfer Students are available for a placement lasting 15 to 17 weeks between May to August 2014.
The job-posting deadline for the first round of interviews (which runs from February 3 to 14). Postings received after January 31 will be kept for the second round period, which will begin on February 24.
Key Dates can be found at: CO-OP Summer 2014 key dates [This link is no longer available].
For more information:
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Cheryl S. McWatters, the Father Edgar Thivierge Chair in Business History at the University of Ottawa/ Telfer School has been appointed editor of Accounting History Review, the leading journal in the history of accounting. Professor McWatters is a long-time member of the journal's editorial board. She becomes the first woman editor as well as the first non-U.K.-based editor at Accounting History Review since the journal's inception.
Accounting History Review is an international forum to investigate and explore the history of accounting across space and time, including the interface of accounting with other management technologies. The journal is cross-disciplinary in nature, encouraging submissions by scholars from a wide variety of subject areas, theoretical persuasions, and methodological traditions. The journal’s editorial board reflects this disciplinary and geographic scope and includes top scholars and journal editors from accounting and cognate disciplines.
Cheryl McWatters, CMA, Ph.D. is active in a number of international research organizations in accounting, management and economic history, as well as serving as ad hoc reviewer for a wide variety of journals and conferences in these areas. She is an associate editor of Accounting Perspectives and a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Operations Management and Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal. She previously was the associate editor and Interfaces editor of the Accounting Historians Journal and remains a member of its editorial board.
An official announcement by the publisher, Routledge, is posted online here.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
QS Top MBA released its 2013-14 Business School Report. To create this ranking, QS surveyed top employers and asked them from what schools they would like to recruit MBA graduates. The Telfer School of Management emerged as one of the elite regional schools and earned a spot among the top 15 best MBA programs in the nation.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The full ranking is available online. [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor François-Éric Racicot was appointed to the advisory board of the prestigious finance journal Aestimatio, published by the Instituto de Estudios Bursátiles in Madrid, Spain. He is the only Canadian member of the six-member group which includes two Nobel winners in economics. An associate professor of finance at the Telfer School of Management, he was also recently named to the editorial board of the Journal of Derivatives and Hedge Funds.
Professor Racicot has published numerous studies in peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of several graduate-level texts in quantitative finance and financial econometrics. He teaches courses in business valuation, options and futures and international financial management, among other areas.
- Category: Rising Stars
The Telfer School of Management finishes 3rd overall at the 2014 Jeux du commerce (JDC) competition.
The University of Ottawa would like to congratulate the team of 90 Telfer School of Management students that represented us at the Jeux du commerce 2014 (JDC). This annual competition, featuring 13 universities from Eastern Canada, was hosted by the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières from January 3-5, 2014.
Congratulations to the President of the delegation, Chloé Laframboise, for her leadership in bringing the Academic Cup back to Telfer. This year's delegation brought home 8 trophies, including the Academic Cup, which has been won by the Telfer School for the sixth time in seven years.
Team Awards:
-
Academic Cup: Top school in the academic activities
Coach: Guy Laflamme (ADM3994 Preparation and participation to Business Cases I)
- 3rd place Overall Standing
1st place trophies:
Strategy (Barbara Robertson, Gabbie Kratchanov, Antoine Robert)
Coach : Laurent Mirabeau
International Business (Jeffrey Laplante, Faheem Savia, Jaclyn Tokarewicz)
Coach: Anika Laperriere
Management Information Systems (MIS (Saxon Giddings, Ashley Rosa, Michelle Lim)
Coach: Samer Forzley
3rd place trophies:
Tax (Dominic Franchi, Ailsa Leitch, Emily Hsiung)
Coaches: Kathryn Pedwell and Simon Couvrette
Operations and logistics (Aghilas Chebini, Brian Spour, Josh Girard)
Coach: Jean Couillard
Marketing (Sarah Rizvi, Aleksandra Jasinska, Marie-Pier Gauthier)
Coaches: Michael Guolla and Mike Weatherhead
The full list of awards is available online (in French only)
- Category: Student Announcements
Strat24 is a great opportunity for Telfer & Engineering students to create an innovative and creative solution to a real world problem and win $4,000! In teams of 4, students are given a case and have 24 hours to crack it and present their solution to a panel of judges. The winners of each pool will advance to a final round where they will present in front of another panel and attendees of the evening event.
After the presentations, there will be a networking session followed by an awards ceremony with prizes being presented by guest speakers.
Only a total of 40 students will be competitively selected to participate in the 2014 Strat24 event.
The night will finish off with a cocktail party where you will have the chance to network with our sponsors! The competition will take place on January 24 and 25!
More information is available online [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor François Chiocchio has been appointed Affiliated Researcher at the Institut de Recherche de l'Hôpital Montfort (IRHM) until 2016. Research at the IRHM centres on mental health, primary health care, nutrition and metabolism, and family health. Professor Chiocchio’s role at the Institute will be to study interdisciplinary collaboration in health teams and how service improvement projects are managed.
Chiocchio is an associate professor in organizational behaviour and human resource management at the Telfer School. His research focuses on teamwork and collaboration has been funded by the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), the Project Management Institute's Research program, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Gurprit Kindra, professor of marketing at the Telfer School, served as an expert witness in a recent case decided by the Federal Court of Canada. The dispute involved Corporation Habanos, the makers of Cohiba cigars, and Tequila Cuervo of Mexico. Corporation Habanos sought protection under Canada’s Trade-marks Act when Tequila Cuervo sought to market a rum in Canada called “Lazaro Cohiba” rum.
Normally, under such circumstances, the applicant has to prove in Court the fame of the brand in question in the marketplace, an expensive and time consuming process. As expert witness, Professor Kindra used the novel idea of using pop culture as a proxy for establishing a brand’s reputation. The Cohiba brand had been widely referenced in film, television, music and other media and Corporation Habanos, on the strength of that evidence, was able to demonstrate that Cohiba trademarks are widely known across Canada. In its decision, the Court prohibited Tequila Cuervo from using the Lazaro Cohiba name in Canada.
The decision (2013 FC 1010) is being appealed by Tequila Cuervo.
- Category: Rising Stars
Frank Bouchard , student in an interdisciplinary program in engineering management, developed the prototype of Wipebook because he didn’t like to waste paper. Wipebook is basically a notebook that allows you to erase what’s on the page and then reuse it.
While finishing his master’s degree in engineering management, he met Toby Maurice and Thomas Sychterz, who were also in Professor Stephen Daze’s (Telfer Entrepreneur in Residence) High-Tech Entrepreneurship course (MBA6262). Toby and Thomas eventually became co-founders of Wipebook.
In MBA 6262, Stephen Daze really emphasized validating an idea through real sales, and so the team took a leap of faith and manufactured 300 Wipebooks. Sales were primarily to students on campus. During the MBA 6262 course, the team made a first attempt at a crowdfunding campaign with Kickstarter, but only managed to raise $200.
Eight months later, the business was going well and over 150 books had been sold. The team decided to give Kickstarter a second try, during global entrepreneurship week, in hopes to gain more awareness and develop a new prototype in large quantities.
The company raised more than $400,000, which is one hundred times above their initial goal.
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Ajmal Sataar and Kathleen Kemp will be attending the largest international undergraduate business plan competition in Canada: the Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition (QEC), presenting their startup: Cigbins.
Now entering its 26th year, the Queen's Entrepreneurs' Competition brings together the brightest young entrepreneurs from around the world to compete for $25,000 in cash prizes. The QEC has received business plan submissions from as far as Australia, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Scotland, South Africa, India, Singapore, Portugal, Sweden, the Philippines, the U.S. and across Canada. The Telfer team made it past the preliminary business plan grading and will have the opportunity to attend the final weekend in Kingston, and to present their plan to Canada's leading business professionals. The QEC final weekend will be taking place on January 16-18, 2014.
The QEC is well-known internationally, and the New York Times hails it as “one of the longest-running and best-known undergraduate business plan competitions in the world”.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
On November 21, the Ottawa Business Journal and the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce organized the Best Ottawa Business Awards (BOBS), sponsored by the Telfer School of Management. During the event, top businesses in Ottawa were highlighted. Harley Finkelstein (JD-MBA 2009) gave an inspirational speech on his personal entrepreneurial journey. The Telfer School and Dean François Julien, who was among attendees, are proud that so many Telfer alumni are affiliated with organizations that are considered among the very best in the Ottawa.
Congratulations to Paul Loucksand who was named CEO of the year. He will be the keynote speaker at the next Telfer School Alumni Breakfast.
Congratulations to Wes Nicol for receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, who among other things, instigated an annual entrepreneurial competitions to which 17 Canadian business schools including the Telfer School.
Congratulations to all winning companies:
- A Hundred Answers
- Abbott Point of Care
- Acart Communications
- Cadillac Fairview / Rideau Centre
- Christie Walther Communications
- Events Ottawa Partnership
- Farm Boy
- Giant Tiger
- Halogen Software
- HazloLaw - Business Lawyers
- Health Wave
- Mitel Networks
- OakWood Renovation Experts
- prairieFyre
- Pythian
- Rimikon
- Ross Video
- Shopify
- Soshal
- TUC Managed IT Solutions
- Windmill Developments
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The International Career Mentorship Program is a career mentorship program for Telfer School of Management international students in their 3rd and 4th year of study. This program is designed to help international students make the transition into careers in Canada after graduation. Mentors work with students on a variety of topics in professional development such as, but not limited to, job search tools and strategies, resume building, interview techniques, workplace culture, professional terminology and communication skills, leadership and confidence building, etc.
The program was launched on October 29, 2013, with a meet and greet event which allowed students and mentors to network. The event was a great success.
The Telfer School of Management is actively seeking new mentors for the 2014-2015 academic year. If you are interested in being a mentor, please contact Kimberley Barclay, Relationship Manager, Career Centre at
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Sophia Leong, Director of the Telfer Executive MBA program, represented the Telfer School at Startup Canada Day on the Hill on November 21, 2013. The theme of Startup Canada Day on the Hill - Entrepreneurship Empowers Everyone – was amplified by the line-up of prominent speakers at yesterday’s event. This event was hosted in partnership with Minister of State for Small Business, the Honorable Maxime Bernier, and drew closed to 800 attendees throughout the day. The day started with Sir Terry Matthews and punctuated throughout the event with discussions on all aspects of entrepreneurship by leaders from three main pillars of entrepreneurship – government, industries and academia. The evening culminated with lessons from Brett Wilson, one of the dragons from the CBC’s hit series ‘Dragons’ Den’. Three words unified the ideas throughout an intense day of activities - movement, collaboration, and culture.
“Entrepreneurship needs to be a movement”, and reinforced by Telfer Executive MBA Director Sophia Leong during the afternoon panel. She emphasized a call to action, “Let’s stop just talking and let’s start doing”.
Entrepreneurship needs collaboration. The focus of Startup Canada is to bring together all innovative activities and innovative hubs to collaborate on an unified platform with a focus on creating an effective entrepreneurial ecosystems where entrepreneurial activities are well supported and promoted by the three main pillars of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship needs to be a culture. Start Up Canada is a step in the right direction for getting the movement started. In order to promote the culture, conversations on entrepreneurship needs to start at a young age. Children need to be empowered with an entrepreneurial mindsets at school and around dinner tables. Furthermore, children need to see entrepreneurship as a viable ‘occupation’ as they grow into young adults.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
The Innovation Advisory Board was formed in 2012 to assist the City of Ottawa in attaining its goals of service delivery excellence in a manner representative of current trends and technology.
The mandate of the IAB is to
- Identify industry trends and innovation in the area of business transformation and service delivery suitable for consideration in pursuit of ServiceOttawa business imperatives; and
- Advise on the planning and on-going leadership of ServiceOttawa’s cultural change to service excellence, its IM/IT investment and the City’s shift to enterprise client centric services.
The Telfer School wishes to congratulate Mr. Langill on this new role.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Professor Sandra Schillo’s collaboration with the research organization Fraunhofer is translating into new opportunities for knowledge exchange between Canada and Germany on science and innovation systems. Schillo, assistant professor in innovation and entrepreneurship at the Telfer School of Management, and her counterpart Rainer Frietsch of the Fraunhofer ISI, were co-organizers of the workshop “Science Systems in Canada and Germany: Structures, Policies and Changes” in Berlin on November 29. It was hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and held at the Canadian Embassy in connection with the 22nd Meeting of the German – Canadian Commission for Scientific and Technological Cooperation.
Workshop participants heard presentations from, among others, Mona Nemer, Vice-Dean Research at the University of Ottawa; Elizabeth Dowdeswell. O.C., President and CEO of the Council of Canadian Academies, Mo Elbestawi, VP Research and International Affairs at McMaster University; and experts from the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and the German Science Council. The panel discussions led to valuable dialogue on what makes Canada and Germany similar or different – or even distinctive – with regard to research environments, science in universities, assessment of science and innovation, science and technology priorities and science policy, and technology transfer. Also on the agenda were the models of collaboration that Canada and other countries have developed with the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft – Europe’s largest applied-research organization, with institutes spread throughout Germany.
The workshop identified the paramount importance of internationalization strategies and joint programs; framework conditions for research organizations; optimization of existing partnerships; adaptation to new frameworks for innovation within the academic system, and new approaches to the assessment of science and innovation. The opportunity to share knowledge on these issues and to further develop the Fraunhofer-Telfer School of Management-University of Ottawa partnership will be explored in a follow up workshop planned for spring 2014 in Ottawa.
Sandra Schillo joined the Telfer School in 2012 and her work focuses on the challenges of public research systems. She completed her doctoral studies at the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, University of Kiel, Germany. She obtained her Masters' degree in Engineering Management from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
- Category: Rising Stars
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation is an exciting and integrative learning opportunity for BCom students as part of their 4th year Strategic Management class.
From November 13-17, students participated in this simulation at the Telfer School of Management’s Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the members of the winning team:
- Wilson Li
- Alex Tyutyunnik
- Brian Juin Phon Chan
- Edward Alexei Porturas
- William Eveleigh
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation has been a component of the 4th year strategy course for close to 20 years. It aims to teach students the concepts of strategic management in a simulated online world known as Intopia. The simulation allows students to practice their skills in a concentrated amount of time where they can get immediate feedback on their decisions.
This capstone activity has recently been renamed to recognize CGA Ontario’s comprehensive contribution of $370,000 to the Telfer School to support students, teaching and research.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The International Youth Fellowship Program, sponsored by AKFC in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD), is designed to develop leadership and management skills and promote learning for outstanding young Canadians who have a desire and an aptitude to work effectively in a global environment. The International Youth Fellowship Program builds on twenty-four years of success in which more than 250 university graduates have received focused study and practical experience that has enabled them to pursue leadership positions in their chosen fields. The program, designed as a stepping stone for careers in international development, has proven attractive to young Canadians from a wide variety of disciplines—including law, engineering, journalism, education, business and public administration, and development studies—wishing to embark on global careers. Each Fellow will spend eight months in a country in Africa or Asia working with agencies and partners of the Aga Khan Development Network, one of the world’s largest and most respected international development agencies. Potential host countries include Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Egypt, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Tajikistan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Deadline for applications to the program is February 1, 2014.
For more information on the program, please visit the Aga Khan Foundation Canada website.
- Category: Community Engagement
- Category: Rising Stars
Only three years after its official launch, local start-up Spoonity has already signed one of Ottawa’s biggest coffee shop chains, Bridgehead, as a client, and is in process of creating a pilot project for national chain Pita Pit. The winner of the 2012 start-up Garage competition, Spoonity is the brainchild of Telfer alumnus Myron Gomes and his business partner, Max Bailey, whose focus is encouraging customer loyalty through digital punch card rewards technology.
While rewarding customer loyalty is not a new practice, the company’s selling point is making the online experience more interactive and engaging for both the customer and the merchant.
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Mayor Jim Watson today announced the 15 residents who will be inducted into the Order of Ottawa during a formal ceremony at City Hall on November 21.
This prestigious civic award was established in 2012 by the Mayor and Members of City Council. This year’s recipients of the Order of Ottawa were chosen by a Selection Committee comprised of the Mayor, City Clerk and Solicitor, Chief of Police, Chief of Protocol, City Archivist, and the Chief Executive Officer of Library Services.
“The Order of Ottawa is recognition of some remarkable residents who are being honoured for their commendable services to our city,” said Mayor Watson. “I am pleased to recognize the contributions of these amazing people who have made a difference in the lives of others in our community through a variety of professional and civic-oriented endeavours.”
The Order of Ottawa recognizes exceptional residents who have made a significant contribution in a professional capacity in many areas of city life, including arts and culture, business, community service, education, public service, labour, communications and media, science, sports and entertainment or other fields of endeavour that benefit the residents of Ottawa.
This year, Rob Ashe was inducted to the Order of Ottawa for his passion for people and incredible involvement in different organizations and boards.
- Category: Rising Stars
(article available in French only)
La ronde finale est officiellement terminée!
Le 9 novembre 2013 a eu lieu la ronde finale de la compétition académique Place à la jeunesse, évènement organisé par Les Jeux du Commerce Ottawa en collaboration avec l’École de gestion Telfer, l’Université d’Ottawa et le Ministère de l’Éducation de l’Ontario. Trente équipes réunissant 90 élèves des écoles secondaires francophones provenant de partout en Ontario ont participé à cette compétition de haut calibre.
Un gros merci à toutes les écoles qui ont participé à la 10e édition, surtout aux enseignants-accompagnateurs ainsi qu’à tous les élèves qui ont grandement impressionné les juges avec la qualité de leur travail et leur professionnalisme.
Au total, 16 bourses d’une valeur totalisant 82 000 $ ont été accordées aux gagnants des volets de comptabilité, marketing, entrepreneuriat et débat oratoire.
Résultats 2013
Félicitations à tous les élèves qui ont participé à la compétition Place à la jeunesse 2013. Ce fut une expérience enrichissante et inoubliable.
Gagnants du cas de comptabilité
1re place – Bourse de 5 000 $
École secondaire régionale de Hawkesbury :
Anita Gut
Mikaëlla Leblanc
Marie-Ange Tessier
2e place – Bourse de 1 000 $
École secondaire catholique de Casselman:
Maria Laflèche
Brady Boisvert
Miguel Laroche
3e place – Bourse de 500 $
École secondaire catholique l’Escale :
Benoit Brunet
Isabelle Bouchard
Valérie Godin
Gagnants du cas de marketing
1re place - Bourse de 5 000 $
École secondaire catholique L’Escale:
Antoine Cantin
Joshua Boyle
Mikaël Gaumond
2e place - Bourse de 1 000 $
École secondaire Étienne-Brûlé :
James Zhao
Kevin Gammage
Michael Norris
3e place - Bourse de 500 $
École secondaire publique Le Sommet :
Charles-William Desroches
Jérémy Proteau
Manuel Leclair
Gagnants du cas en entrepreneuriat
1re place – Bourse de 5 000 $
École secondaire publique Le Sommet :
Dérick Giroux
Sébastien Sauvé
Alexandre Gélineau
2e place - Bourse de 1 000 $
École secondaire catholique E.J. Lajeunesse :
Amanda Drury
Christine St-Pierre
Siri Gauthier
3e place - Bourse de 500 $
École secondaire publique Gisèle-Lalonde :
Hodane Abdi
Narimane Ait Hamou
Sara Zkiou
Gagnants du volet des débats oratoires
1re place - Bourse de 5 000 $
École secondaire Étienne-Brûlé :
Abtine Monavvari
Alphadyo Balde
Safya Lachgar
2e place - Bourse de 1 000 $
École secondaire Saint-François-Xavier :
Christopher Tucker
Marjorie-Ann Hurtubise
Sarah Tessier
3e place - Bourse de 500 $
École secondaire Publique Le Sommet:
Cendrine Lavigne
Tristan Joanette
Charles Séguin
Reconnaissance des meilleurs présentateurs
Comptabilité - Bourse de 1 000 $
Isabelle Bouchard, École secondaire catholique l’Escale
Marketing - Bourse de 1 000 $
Michael Norris, École secondaire Étienne-Brûlé
Entrepreneuriat - Bourse de 1 000 $
Alexandre Gélineau, École secondaire publique Le Sommet
Débats oratoires - Bourse de 1 000 $
Abtine Monavvari, École secondaire Étienne-Brûlé
Les Jeux du Commerce Ottawa, l’École de gestion Telfer de l’Université d’Ottawa et les partenaires de Place à la jeunesse 2013 aimeraient féliciter les gagnants pour leur réussite. Place à la jeunesse a été une fois de plus un énorme succès.
- Category: Rising Stars
Tired of trying to grab a coffee in between classes only to be met with long lineups? If so, KnowLine might be the solution. Like the name suggests, KnowLine is an application designed to let you know about the status of a lineup at a given place. The app was created by four uOttawa students who shared a dislike for long waits and decided it was time for a change.
“Waiting is inevitable in everyone’s daily routine. It’s a pain point that we’ve grown accustomed to. The idea of KnowLine came from wanting to create a wait time-sharing network that would remove these pain points,” explained Chad Malouin, fourth year student in the Telfer School of Management and one of the founders of KnowLine [This link is no longer available].
The crowd-sourced application is available for all mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Blackberry), and in its initial phase, has focused on helping students deal with lineups at university services. According to Greg Somers, the engineer in the group, this is an app that all universities could benefit from to ensure efficient time usage for their students.
This student-made solution to student problems started out as a class project that brought together Veronica Grajewski, a third year student in commerce and communications, Noah Hayes from Telfer, Greg Somers from the engineering faculty and Malouin, with the aim of getting the highest marks. But it grew beyond the classroom, and with coaching from their professor, Barbara Orser, the four realized that it was an idea worth implementing. “When we first introduced the idea to our class we received a lot of positive feedback. Our class then voted for us to attend the Wes Nicol competition, where we were encouraged to create something tangible, as there was a need for it,” said Malouin.
Starting a business whilst a student is never the easiest thing to do, and the KnowLine team can attest to this. As Malouin explained, what makes it even harder is the need to secure funding to get a product onto the market. He added that uOttawa’s resources designed to facilitate this process are helpful.
According to Somers, the team intends to market the product to bars and restaurants around the city looking to manage their wait-times. “Eventually we’d like to get into some data analytics and hopefully be able to improve hospital and airport wait-times by keeping patients and customers informed,” he said.
Are you an entrepreneur in the making? Or do you aspire to be one? Be sure to check out the many workshops taking place during Entrepreneurship Week [This link is no longer available] at the University of Ottawa.
by Louise Umutoni [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Professor Doug Angus participated last month in a workshop on “Franchising in Health” at the Centre for Innovation in Health Management (CIHM) at Leeds University in the U.K. The complexity and variety of services offered within a health organisation point to the need for business models to support them effectively. This workshop is part of a new program of work exploring the potential of franchising – an idea mostly experienced in the retail sector –as a model for ensuring quality and spreading innovation. A follow-up workshop is planned for spring 2014.
Full Professor at the Telfer School of Management with expertise in health economics and health policy, Doug Angus teaches in the M.H.A. and M.Sc. Health Systems programs. He has research activities at the international, national, provincial and regional levels in areas related to health economics, health policy, program evaluation and health care management.
- Category: Rising Stars
Reaching Out MBA is a not-for-profit organization whose "singular purpose [is] to empower LGBT MBA students to become professionals who will lead the way to equality in business education, in the workplace, and throughout society." Each year, they hold an Annual MBA Conference, which "provides a forum for prospective and current graduate business school students, recent alumni and current business leaders to build personal and professional networks, exchange information and promote cooperation within their respective areas of interest." This year's conference (the 16th Annual Conference) was held from October 17-19, in New Orleans, Louisiana and had more than 1,100 attendees.
The Essay Competition this year had the following theme: “What is our role as future LGBT business leaders to help combat international LGBT discrimination?” Vincenzo won 2nd place and enabled the Telfer School to be the only Canadian school to win a prize. Other schools that won prizes are: Harvard Business School, Chicago Booth School of Business, Columbia Business School and UCLA Anderson School of Management.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
- A Hundred Answers
- Avison Young
- BMO – Bank of Montreal
- Canada Post
- CGI
- Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
- Deloitte
- Ernst & Young, LLP
- Export Development Canada
- Gartner, Inc.
- IBM
- Independent Planning Group
- International Datacasting
- Nordicity
- Office of the Comptroller General of Canada
- PPP Canada
- RBC – Royal Bank of Canada
- Scotiabank
- Shopify
- TD Bank Group
- Telfer School of Management MBA Alumni Association
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Congratulations to Telfer alumnus Denis Coderre, who was elected as the 44th mayor of Montreal in the election that took place on November 3, 2013.
- Category: Rising Stars
On November 4, 2013, Brian Carriere, Relationship Manager at the Telfer School of Management, joined Jean Desgagné (B.Com 1986), President and CEO, The Canadian Depository for Securities Limited, TMX Group to open the market in Toronto. The visit to Toronto took place as a part of the curriculum of the Telfer Capital Markets Mentorship Program (CMMP).
The Telfer Capital Markets Mentorship Program (CMMP) is a three-year development program that provides high performing finance students with an exceptional learning experience to launch a career in the field of finance. These students will undertake weekly case-based extracurricular workshops facilitated by financial services professionals. Topics covered in the workshops include venture capital, equity financing, and mergers and acquisitions, among others.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
A unique initiative to develop and make use of our francophone MBA students’ marketing know-how to support the economic growth of developing countries has recently led to the presentation of an export marketing plan for a Honduran company. Members of the Honduran embassy, including Her Excellency the Ambassador, Sofia Cerrato, Consul Hector Ramirez and the Ambassador’s spouse, Mr. Alfonso Fonseka, honoured us with their presence during the presentation of the marketing plan for the Honduran company Fabrica Especias Don Julio, developed by the MBA team tasked with studying the potential of their spicy sauces in Canada.
Over the last twenty years, students taking part in the strategic marketing course of the francophone MBA program have contributed their skills to job creation and poverty relief in developing countries, applying advanced marketing concepts to real business situations. Initiated in 1993 by Professor Georges Hénault, now Professor Emeritus at the Telfer School of Management, a collaborative partnership was established between the strategic marketing course offered as part of the francophone MBA at the Telfer School of Management of the University of Ottawa and TFO Canada (This non-governmental non-profit organization facilitates access to the Canadian market and shares Canadian business expertise to benefit small exporters in developing countries).
Providing appropriate Canadian market penetration strategies
This unique collaborative venture presents students with cases of real businesses operating in developing and emerging economies that wish to export to Canada. As part of their term project, students develop an export marketing plan that consists of: 1) acquiring a good understanding of the company’s skills and context; 2) preparing a thorough analysis of the Canadian market for the targeted goods and services through a study of relevant documents and interviews with importers, wholesalers and retailers; 3) developing a Canadian market penetration plan for the company that includes a segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy appropriate for the goods or services as well as tactics of the marketing mix; 4) proposing an implementation plan and control measures.
Fruitful partnership, enriching learning experience
Taken over in 2006 by Professor Martine Spence after the retirement of Professor Hénault, this partnership has existed for two decades thanks to the vision of TFO Canada representatives, especially Lidia Karamaoun who has been involved since the very beginning as a project manager, and of professors who saw it as both as a unique learning opportunity and as a way for students to gain experience while at the same time contributing to the economic and social development of these countries. Although there has not always been systematic follow-up with the companies involved, some have clearly benefited from implementing the students’ recommendations.
Over the years, various goods and services from a number of Latin American, Asian and African countries have been studied. This year, marketing plans have focused on spicy sauces from Honduras, honey from Indonesia, handmade embroidered bead bags from Haiti and cut roses from Ecuador.
Photo: Mr. Alfonso Fonseka, Professor Martine Spence, Geneviève Boudreau, Her Excellency Sofia Cerrato Ambassador of Honduras, Judith Ferreira Cunha, André Breault, Esther Brice, Christian Beaulé, Mr. Hector Ramirez, Consul of Honduras.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Craig Kuziemsky is the recipient of the inaugural Telfer School of Management Young Researcher of the Year Award presented annually to a faculty member who has made exceptional contributions to research and the training of students within the first seven years as a full-time professor. The award comes with a research grant of $5,000; the winner becomes the Telfer School of Management’s nominee for the Young Researcher of the Year Award at the University of Ottawa.
A prolific researcher, Craig Kuziemsky is developing a novel methodological approach for integrating the diverse information flows and work processes of collaborative healthcare teams. This research will design information and communication technologies to integrate the different healthcare providers who make complex decisions based on different levels of knowledge while they work at different locations.
Associate Professor at the Telfer School, Craig is Director of the M.Sc. Health Systems Program. He teaches courses in the Master of Health Administration (MHA) and Master of Science Health Systems programs as well as at the undergraduate level. He joined the Telfer School of Management as Assistant Professor in June 2007 after completing his Ph.D. in Health Information Science from the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
- Category: Student Announcements
Call for Nominations!
2013 Enterprise $2,500
Female Entrepreneur and Leadership Award
Enterprise Rent-A-Car invites you to nominate an extraordinary female student to be considered for the 2013 Enterprise Female Entrepreneur and Leadership Award.
Nominees should have a personal record of entrepreneurial spirit, leadership skills and be a positive role model for past, current, and future students. The winner will receive a $2,500 prize to be applied to their tuition.
Nominations
Nominations for this award will be accepted from students, faculty, alumni, and members of the local business community. Self nominations are also permitted. Criteria for nominating and evaluating honorees include the following:
- Nominees should be full-time female students in their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year of the BCom program at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.
- Demonstrate exceptional entrepreneurial spirit through innovative approaches to business and show exemplary leadership skills in their work, social and academic lives.
- Entrepreneurial projects do not have to be associated with the Telfer School of Management.
Nominations can be made by completing the Nomination form and sending it via email to Susan Redmond at
Nominations for the 2013 Enterprise Female Entrepreneur and Leadership Award must be received no later than Friday January 17, 2014.
Selection
Committee Members will review all nominations and develop a list of finalists who best meet the above criteria. Members will select the award winner based on the submission and a short personal interview. This award will be presented at the 23rd Annual Entrepreneurs’ Club Toast to Success - Business Dinner on February 6, 2014.
- Category: Community Engagement
Are you interested in getting involved in the community but don't know where to start? Come to the Volunteer Fair!
The Centre for Global and Community Engagement invites you to a Volunteer Fair on Tuesday October 29 from 10am to 3pm at the Jock Turcot University Centre (UCU). This is a one of a kind opportunity to meet around 30 organizations looking for volunteers in the National Capital Region, or abroad!
If you would like more information, contact Vanessa at 613-562-5945 or by email at
- Category: Telfer Announcements
It’s not just business as usual for the Telfer BCom program this fall. Our first year students will be given the opportunity to get great practical insight from leaders, and to meet CEOs as part of their studies. The Telfer School is pleased to welcome the following 7 CEO’s in Residence:
Mark Farrell
CEO, The Futura Loyalty Group Inn
Pat McFadden
Director, Quelmec Loss Adjusters
Bernie Ashe
CEO, KOTT Group
Dwight Mihalic
President, Effective Managers Inc
Paul Vallée
Founder and Chairman, Pythian
François Bouchard
President, The Country Grocer
Jean-Pierre Kingsley
International Consultant
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Wojtek Michalowski was granted state professorship from the President of Poland upon the recommendation of the Polish Academy of Sciences and after a rigorous process. This is the highest academic title in Poland and it’s given for research accomplishments recognized internationally.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
- Early risers are often more successful: having a plan for your day will allow you to be productive. Know what your day has in store and make checklists.
- Focus: know what needs to be done and be ready to drop everything to focus on your business.
- Seize the opportunities: someone else may also have the same idea. When an opportunity presents itself, don’t be afraid to commit. It's important to think big, but start small.
- Learn when to say no: if you don’t have the time, say no. You can and will say yes the other 97% of the time.
- Be transparent: treat your clients with respect, be open with them and make sure that they know what they should know.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Paul Desmarais, a great friend of the University of Ottawa and one of our most illustrious alumni.
A true giant of Canadian business and Canadian society, Mr. Desmarais was deeply committed to giving back to his country and community. He will be missed.
Paul Desmarais maintained a strong personal relationship with his alma mater. He was honourary chair of the University’s first capital campaign and supported several professorships at the Telfer School of Management. His contribution to the Desmarais Building is a tribute to his generous and innovative spirit.
Mr. Desmarais always spoke proudly of the family’s strong ties to the university where his father, wife, siblings and grandchildren also studied. On behalf of the entire University of Ottawa community, I am joined by our Chancellor, the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, in expressing our most heartfelt condolences to the Desmarais family in this sad time.
Sincerely,
Allan Rock
President and Vice-Chancellor
The University’s flags are being flown at half-mast in honour of Mr. Desmarais.
- Category: Donations / Fundraising
Claude Des Rosiers, VP and General Manager of Boone Plumbing in Ottawa, while not a graduate of Telfer, has become one of our most recent very generous supporters.
In recent years, Claude worked with Telfer as the lead industry sponsor and partner for a new executive education program entitled Leadership for Growing Businesses which is geared to develop the next generation of executives in the construction and property management industry in Ottawa. Claude's son Sébastien completed the Leadership program and his brother Luc, also a Boone Plumbing executive, is a graduate of the Telfer Executive MBA program. With many colleagues and family using the Telfer facilities for training and development, it became evident to Claude that the chairs in the main classroom at the Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership needed to be replaced. With the generous financial support of Claude and the collaboration of Chris LeClair at Ottawa Business Interiors, we recently received 50 brand new Herman Miller chairs for this classroom. They are proving to be a very comfortable and attractive upgrade to our facilities.
The Telfer School and the Centre for Executive Leadership wish to extend our sincere thanks to Claude. As he said to us when we discussed this generous gift to the school, “you make a living by working hard, but you make a life by giving”.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The 2013-14 MHA class recently had is its first Bear Pit session with Deputy Minister Saäd Rafi. This presentation, from the perspective of the highest organizational level of our health system, provided students with insights into these foundation competencies through a better understanding of the vision of the Ontario Government for Health and the challenges it faces in implementation. It aimed not only to create a better understanding of our healthcare system and its future but also to allow students to refine their knowledge and better focus their own career plans and professional development activities in Health Leadership and Management.
About Deputy Minister Saäd Rafi
- Category: Telfer Announcements
On September 19th, Telfer’s Centre for Executive Leadership successfully hosted the launching event for the Ottawa Chapter of the Latin American MBA Alumni network (LAMBA).
The event congregated distinguished panelists such as: Sylvain Fabi, Director of North American Relations & Policy Division for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development; Alvaro Pombo, MBA (Telfer), CEO & Founder of Pronto Forms, Nadia Avila Lopez, Senior Associate, International Business Development Group, South America for Export Development Canada (EDC) and Sophia Leong, Director of the Telfer Executive MBA Program. The panel was moderated by the Telfer School's Executive in Residence and Professor, Marvin Hough, MBA.
The conference was organized by the MBA team leading the Ottawa Chapter of LAMBA: Angela Valdes, Ana Cerrato, David Serpa, Diego Aguirre Orué and Rodrigo Delgado. Besides that, two of LAMBA’s Vice Presidents were present at the event to supporting the launch of the first chapter of the association in Canada.
The occasion brought together approximately 70 guests from various educational, professional and cultural backgrounds with an interest in learning about Canada-Latin America commercial relations. The subsequent networking session allowed participants to meet each other and interchange perspectives on career success in Canada and potential trade opportunities in Latin America.
This event was kindly sponsored by Telfer’s Centre for Executive Leadership, Telfer’s EMBA program, CIBC, TD, KPMG, RBC, as well as Scotiabank.
About LAMBA: The Latin American MBA Alumni Network (LAMBA), based out of Toronto, is a professional association seeking to connect Latin American MBA graduates with one another and with corporations in Canada. Its focus is to integrate and provide networking opportunities among Latin American MBA graduates in Canada; to provide assistance to Latin American MBA graduates in their professional and career development; and to foster relationships between leading Canadian companies and Latin American MBA graduates.
About LAMBA Ottawa Chapter: The newly organized LAMBA Ottawa Chapter follows the mission of LAMBA while leveraging the resources and networks found in Canada’s capital. It is the goal of the Chapter to provide value to its members by supporting their career development efforts and by supporting the promotion of Latin American-Canada trade relationships.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Professor Umar Ruhi was the Keynote Speaker at the International Research Conference on E-Business Management (IRCEBM 2013) held in Dubai, UAE. Professor Ruhi is currently on an international research trip delivering keynote lectures and plenary talks at various conferences in the Middle East and Europe.
His talk in Dubai was titled “Unraveling the Next Generation Enterprise: Emergent Operating Models & Technology Architectures”.
Professor Ruhi’s talk focused on the current reality for Next-Generation Enterprises that comprise a sophisticated landscape of post-digital technologies such as social computing, mobile technologies, cloud infrastructures, and advanced analytics applications.
His presentation provided a synopsis of the evolution of these technologies and guiding principles for their effective implementation in organizations. During his talk, he also highlighted the strategic and tactical impact of these technologies on business models, workflow processes and technology architectures. Professor Ruhi highlighted his own perspectives on the subject matter and also talked about objectives and outcomes of related research initiatives currently in-progress. Industry examples and vignettes were used to demonstrate compelling benefits and results from various organizations and to underscore key takeaways for various business functions and management practices.
The presentation concluded with a proposed agenda for academic research. A preliminary list of key research questions pertaining to the purposeful prioritization, implementation and sustainability of new technologies were outlined.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Dean Francois Julien is pleased to announce the recent appointment of Dan Moorcroft as Chair of the Telfer Dean’s Advisory Board. Dan is a graduate of the EMBA program and the founder and CEO of QMR Consulting and Professional Staffing. Outgoing Chair Michael McFaul, a partner at Deloitte, ended his mandate in May 2013.
In addition, Warren Bell, a graduate of the School’s BCom program and Executive Vice-President and Chief Human Resources Officer at OMERS has been appointed Chair of the Toronto Regional Advisory Board. The Toronto Board welcomes new member Audrey Robinson, Chief Investment Officer, WaterStreet Family Capital Counsel Inc. In Montreal, Frederic Michel, MBA graduate and Director, Risk Assessment and Operational Audit, Yellow Media Inc. will be Chair of the Montreal Regional Advisory Board. In Montreal, we welcome three new members of the Board, Darcy Ferron, Vice-President, Trade Finance, BMO Capital Markets, Mathieu Cloutier, Vice-President & General Manager, TANK and Suzanne Benoit, President, Aéro Montréal.
Our recently created Hong Kong Advisory Board is comprised of three initial members, Chair Joe Attrux, CEO, Harris Fraser, Joseph Lau, Director, Rockhound Limited and William Chan, Managing Director, ScotWork.
- Category: Student Announcements
On April 23, 2014, Telfer Executive MBA candidates will be leaving for Guangzhou of the People’s Republic of China. After concluding a series of discussions in determining this destination for the International Business Consulting Project, the Class of 2014 will now focus their efforts on identifying and collaborating with potential client organizations during the month of October. This is a critical component of the comprehensive curriculum that has seen the Program representing the interests of many Canadian organizations in more than fifteen international destinations since the inception of the program in 1992.
Over the course of the next year, the Telfer Executive MBA, as a component of the global perspective of the curriculum, will be focusing on bringing compelling business value to seven Canadian organizations who are looking to increase their footprint in the Chinese Market.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Professor Richard Clayman is the host of a new TV series, that he designed himself, as part of the Rogers-TV 22 new Fall 2013 line-up community programming. The series, entitled “Unlocking the Leadership Door”, features interviews with some of Ottawa’s most respected leaders from all walks of life focusing on leadership success in medicine, education, family-owned business, sports & entertainment, governance and high-tech innovation. It was designed on the concept that effective leadership – regardless of whether the organization is private business, not-for-profit or other – is fueled by certain essential ingredients. Utilizing interviews with successful Ottawa leaders, the goal of the series to showcase a wide array of those leadership behaviors and attitudes, and present them in such a way as to make them transferable lessons for any viewer.
Professor Clayman first started to contemplate launching his TV show when he heard about Rogers’ MyShow project, which invited member of the audience to submit ideas for new shows. He understood this would enable him to go beyond his usual classroom setting and reach a wider audience. He decided to do some research on TV proposals and got in touch with Rogers to discuss his idea.
When asked about what he is hoping to achieve with this new initiative, he admits that “too often these days, we hear disparaging news about leaders of all types. Rogers-TV believed in a project that not only teaches, but showcases the many successful leadership stories that are right here in our community. Hopefully, it will inspire leaders of all stripes to recommit to what it takes to demonstrate effective, sustainable leadership”.
The series started on September 26 with guests from the Ottawa Heart Institute.
- Category: Rising Stars
A student blog was launched recently in connection with the C-Change, or Coastal Change project based at the Telfer School of Management, which is focused on managing adaptation to environmental change in eight coastal Communities in Canada and the Caribbean. Students here and at four partner universities provide updates about their work related to this project on the Coastal Change Student Blog. This initiative provides an opportunity for students to share their work with community members. The originator of the blog is M.Sc. Systems Sciences candidate Alex Chung, who is working under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Lane of the Telfer School. He will be conducting case studies for the partner communities of Charlottetown, PEI, and Isle Madame, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
C-Change links community members and university researchers from Canada with members of the Caribbean community in support of research on coastal adaptation to environmental change including the impacts of storm surge and sea-level rise on susceptible coastal communities. C-Change researchers have been working with the partner communities to profile local community vulnerabilities and risks and to build local capacity for managing adaptation to pending environmental change.
The C-Change project is led by co-directors Dr. Dan Lane and Dr. Patrick Watson, Director of SALISES at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, along with a team of over twenty co-applicants, collaborators, and community partners. C-Change is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Twenty-four year old Brennan Loh meets me at 9 a.m. in the reception area of Shopify’s new office space in the heart of the Byward Market. He walks me through the colourful hallways covered with floor-to-ceiling chalkboards, neon green paint, random drawings and a life-size cut-out of Chuck Norris. Shopify employees get an annual allowance to deck out their office space as they see fit, an expression of the company’s very creative and free-spirited corporate culture.
“This place is unbelievably supportive of creativity, experimentation, doing things and telling people,” says Brennan, who is Shopify’s head of business development. Based in Ottawa, Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows individuals and businesses to create custom online stores. It hosts over 60,000 active online retailers, small to medium sized retailers who have processed over 35 million orders and have generated $2 billion in online sales.
A Telfer alumnus, Brennan first joined the company in 2010 after having launched his own business called Avitu with two uOttawa engineering students. The three worked tirelessly on Avitu out of a hot apartment before being offered the opportunity by another uOttawa alumnus to use part of Shopify’s office space to run their company. That alumnus, Harley Finkelstein, a graduate of the combined law and MBA program, was the chief platform officer at Shopify. “Shopify always wanted to be involved in the community and foster that sense of growth in Ottawa,” says Brennan. “They had this openness and willingness to share, a very Silicon Valley approach.”
The exchange of business practices and strategies was something that Harley knew quite well even before he came to Shopify. A few weeks after he began his studies at uOttawa, he was introduced to a group of Ottawa entrepreneurs who would meet weekly at a local coffee shop to discuss business and share ideas. It was there that he met Tobias Lütke, a young German who was running a snowboard shop and was in the midst of transitioning into a software company — Shopify. Harley was in a similar situation; he hoped to take the licensed t-shirt printing company that he had founded as an undergrad online, making it more manageable for him to run his business while in school. “I became one of Shopify’s first customers,” he says.
But Harley felt that he could be part of something bigger. After completing his degree and joining a law firm in Toronto, he realized he was destined for a more creative career. “I felt that law was all about mitigating risk and frankly, I as an entrepreneur wanted to take risks. I felt like people had this work-life balance thing but to me, I don’t believe in separating my life into work and non-work. I want to spend my waking hours doing something I love and being an entrepreneur allows me to do that,” he says. Harley soon returned to Ottawa and joined Tobias as chief platform officer at Shopify.
As for Brennan, the time he spent working on Avitu — which initially started as a class project — was invaluable. He saw the material he was learning in class put into practice. His collaboration with two engineers was also an eye opener, as it allowed him to “see not only the business rationale but the product reasoning,” while enabling him to have educated conversations with his co-founders. He also took the opportunity of being in a shared space with Shopify to exchange best practices and discuss business strategies with Harley every week. “He was kind of mentoring me and would suggest different ways to look at technology,” says Brennan.
In 2010, Brennan and his partners decided to leave Avitu behind and join Shopify. “When we returned to school, we kept running into the inherent problem that Matt and Dan [Avitu’s co-founders] were in their final two years of engineering. That’s the worst possible year to try to run a full-time company on the side. I was going into my final six months of school and the time crunch was really just killing us. We felt that we had to take the next step but we just couldn’t. So when Shopify offered us a job, it just made sense,” he explains.
Both Harley and Brennan continue to create and to feed their inner entrepreneur. They are driven by their passion and love for what they do, something they believe all 265 Shopify employees share.
“This is a place where we really encourage people to act like owners,” says Harley. “We courage them to fail fast and fail gracefully. Find something you love doing every day. For me, it is running a business. For Brennan, it’s making business development deals. For our designers, it’s creating beautiful things and for our engineers, it’s about building incredible software.”
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Award-winning columnist and author Roy MacGregor shared his perspectives and stories on Canada and the multi-faceted Canadian identity as a special guest in the Father Edgar Thivierge Speaker Series on September 10. Mr. MacGregor provided an insightful and entertaining presentation on Canada based on his experiences of Canada, its contradictions and identity and his many years of visiting, reporting on and learning about Canada from coast to coast to coast. Mr. MacGregor focused on “resourcefulness” as a key aspect of Canadian identity, and also the notion that we are more Canadian – and united – when away from home.
The lecture was followed by a lively question-and-answer session with the audience. In response to a question, Mr. MacGregor, who is also an acclaimed sportswriter who has received many awards for his hockey books, gave his prediction on which countries would reach the medal podium in hockey at the Sochi Olympics: Russia, U.S.A, and Canada.
About the speaker:
Author of nearly 40 books, Mr. MacGregor was made an Officer in the Order of Canada in 2005. The Order of Canada citation called him “one of our most gifted storytellers… renowned for evoking the subtle nuances of our Canadian identity in his columns and books.” Mr. MacGregor’s many books include A Life in the Bush, winner of the U.S. Rutstrum Award for Best Wilderness Book and the CAA Award for Biography, and the best-seller, Canadians: A Portrait of A Country and Its People. His highly-praised political book, Chief, examines the James Bay Cree’s struggle against the James Bay hydro-electric project.
Mr. MacGregor has won numerous awards for his journalism. He is a regular columnist with the The Globe and Mail who has also worked for the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, Maclean’s, and the Toronto Star, including many years covering Parliament Hill.
About the Father Edgar Thivierge Speaker Series:
The series provides an opportunity to learn about the historic contexts that shape Canada with the support of the Father Edgar Thivierge Chair in Business History at the Telfer School of Management held by Professor Cheryl S. McWatters. Past speakers in the series were the Right Honourable Paul Martin, Dr. Dilfuza Kasimova of Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo and Dr. Frank Tough of the University of Alberta.
The Thivierge Chair was created in 2011 thanks to an anonymous donation to the Telfer School. The Chair has enabled Dr. McWatters to develop of new curricula for students to add historical context to their exploration of management and to lead a research program in Canadian business history as it applies to management in the private, public and non-profit sectors.
- Category: Student Announcements
Many students entering university already have a variety of experiences with teamwork, but it is here where students will truly begin to deepen their understanding of working collaboratively. François Chiocchio, an associate professor in human resource management and organizational behaviour, is focusing his research on the characteristics of successful teams. Chiocchio, who is a new faculty member at the Telfer School of Management, has developed a unique perspective on why we struggle with teamwork and how we can get better at it.
Why is it important for students to learn teamwork?
We live in a connected world and, whether we like it or not, we’re going to be connected more intensely and in more diverse ways. Students need to understand and be prepared for that. In order to better connect, students need to understand and develop the attributes, skills and behaviours required for successful teamwork.
What makes team projects particularly valuable?
Class projects are a great way for students to learn how to be good team players. A project mimics the ambiguity and complexity of the real world. The classroom setting controls certain unknowns in the project, but overall, it is ambiguous and complex, which is exactly how the real world is.
Why do group projects sometimes lead to conflict?
For students, there is so much to learn that when a conflict presents itself, it tends to escalate spectacularly. It’s fairly common to hear students ask to have a team member removed in the first two weeks of the project, even if that’s not really a viable solution in the “real world.” In our professional lives, we know we can’t choose who is on our team, so exclusion is not seen as a solution. But all teams – whether composed of students or professionals –lack conflict management skills.
Group projects can be incubators of creativity, pride, and commitment. Sometimes, focusing on the positive helps in managing conflicts when they occur.
Helping people collaborate better will result in less conflict. This is one of the takeaways from my studies on teamwork in health care settings and interprofessional environments.
What about conflicts over individual performance?
Social loafers, or those who tend to withhold effort towards team tasks, may not intentionally set out to ride on the team’s coattails. Oftentimes, they can be excluded by others for a variety of reasons. Those doing the exclusion prefer to blame social loafing, but they are in fact contributing to the problem.
It’s a complicated issue that most people, not only students, don’t know how to deal with.
What advice would you have for those working on a team?
Even if you don’t like group work and prefer doing things individually, you can develop your skills and get better at teamwork. Some of us like teamwork, but aren’t terrific at it. Either way, it’s important to not let our preferred way of dealing with things get in the way of what the situation requires. Good team players learn to adapt. Those who are good at teamwork and are perceived that way by teammates do two things consistently: first, they commit publicly to tasks and deliver. Second, when they realize they cannot deliver as promised, they are open and proactive about it.
Read the full article on the Gazette website [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School is proud to be the lead sponsor for the Best Ottawa Business Awards. The event is organised by the Ottawa Business Journal and the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce and will take place on November 21, 2013 at the Ottawa Convention Centre.
Each year, companies are nominated for their contributions to Ottawa’s success. Companies from all sectors are honoured. Recipients are linked by their innovation, drive, creativity and their passion for doing business in Ottawa. Over 500 awards have been presented so far, in the proud presence of peers and senior political leaders representing Ottawa
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professors Barbara Orser and Catherine Elliott of the Telfer School and Sandi Findlay-Thompson of Mount Saint Vincent University wrote a paper in 2012 that was recognized as a “Highly Commended” Award Winner at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence. Their study, “Women-focused small business programming: client motives and perspectives” was published in the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The IBM Centre for Business Analytics and Performance (CBAP) at the Telfer School of Management and IQAnalytics host an evening of discussion on the topic of analytics on September 11. This event offers a forum for anyone interested in applying analytics in organizations to discuss ideas, present solutions, and receive feedback and advice.
Professor Greg Richards, Director, IBM Centre for Business Analytics and Performance (CBAP) and Eduardo Rodriguez Taborda, Principal, IQAnalytics will lead off the evening with their introduction, “What Is Analytics? An Amorphous Monster.”
This will be followed by a presentation by Albert Simard, “Competitive Intelligence: An Island of Structure in an Unstructured Ocean.” Dr. Simard is Knowledge Manager for the Centre for Security Science in Defence Research & Development Canada. His previous roles have included Director - Modeling Framework at Canadian Food Inspection Agency; Director, Knowledge Strategies Natural Resources Canada; and Director, Knowledge Management and NRCan Science Advisor.
CBAP, a collaboration of the University of Ottawa and IBM, supports research and curriculum development in the domains of Business Analytics (BA), Business Intelligence (BI), and Performance Management (PM).
Time and location: Wednesday, September 11, 2013, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. | Telfer School of Management, Desmarais Building, DMS 7170. Please register online by September 9.
- Category: Rising Stars
Ajmal Sataar, Kathleen Kemp, Neil Gangal and alumnus Adam Tomaszewski are hoping to clean up, in more ways than one, as they take unwanted cigarette butts and turn them into profits.
The venture is still at the idea stage, but a six-minute pitch on the idea won top honours over the weekend at Launch Some Good, an entrepreneurial competition with a world-betterment twist.
The group plans to create specialized cigarette collection bins and sell a collection service. For extra world-improvement points, the collection jobs will be held by mentally ill people through transitional employment programs. Options for unloading the butts include turning them into insulation or giving them to a company in New Jersey that makes furniture from them.
The company also hopes to create a revenue stream from advertising on its butt containers. In order to stimulate public interest, those containers would automatically count the number of butts going in and would be operated on solar power, the group says.
Cigarettes might not seem like a growth industry, but Sataar says at the moment butts are still the world’s most common type of litter, so there should be plenty of business to do. There’s also the question of how big a priority such environmentalism will be for smokers, but they’re hoping smokers’ guilt will be a powerful force.
Read the full article on the Ottawa Citizen’s website. [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Student Announcements
For the fourth year running, the Telfer MBA class participated in the development of an "MBA Oath of Ethics". This year 22 graduating MBA students participated in the annual oath ceremony at the Telfer School facility in Ottawa. Although recognizing that an oath in itself does not create an ethical individual, the student who participated in the event also recognized that the very act of taking an oath keeps the concept of ethics and integrity in doing business foremost in the minds of MBA graduates. This year's oath, developed collaboratively by the whole MBA 2013 cohort, focused specifically on accountability, social and environmentally conscious decision-making, and managerial responsibility to the broader stakeholder group of the company for whom individual graduates work. The history of the oath can be online.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
- Category: Rising Stars
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation is an exciting and integrative learning opportunity for BCom students as part of their 4th year Strategic Management class.
From July 10 to 15, students participated in this simulation at the Telfer School of Management’s Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the members of the winning team:
- Éric Bélanger
- Curtis Chusroskie
- Joshua Girard
- Omar Husain
- Arianna Pontello
- Emilie Smail-Crevier
Individual awards were also presented to these three students:
- Best Negotiator: Éric Préfontaine (Team 14)
- Most Congenial: Donna From (Team 20)
- Most Valuable Player: Joshua Girard (Team 9)
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation has been a component of the 4th year strategy course for close to 20 years. It aims to teach students the concepts of strategic management in a simulated online world known as Intopia. The simulation allows students to practice their skills in a concentrated amount of time where they can get immediate feedback on their decisions.
This capstone activity has recently been renamed to recognize CGA Ontario’s comprehensive contribution of $370,000 to the Telfer School to support students, teaching and research.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
About the KPMG Award
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Five remarkable alumni were recognized for their outstanding contributions to the world of business, the community and their alma mater. The Trudeau Medals, the Young Achiever's Award and the Dean's Philos Award were presented at the 2013 Telfer School of Management Alumni Association Gala of Excellence, which was held at the Ottawa Convention Centre on October 26, 2013.
Trudeau Medals
Established in honour of Reverend Father Roland Trudeau, OMI, former director of the University's Commerce department from 1950 to 1965, the Trudeau Medal is the highest honour given by the Telfer School of Management to its alumni. It recognizes leadership, initiative and contributions to the business world, the community and their alma mater. This year's recipients are:
Cathy Lewis, EMBA 2007
Dennise Albrecht, MHA 1990
Michael McFaul, BAdm 1982
The Young Achiever's Award
The Young Achiever's award was created to honour the individuals (under 40) who have been able to achieve greatness in their lives within an exceptional period of time. This year's recipient is:
The Dean's Philos Award
The Dean’s Philos Award recognized individuals who have demonstrated outstanding philanthropic achievement and social commitment. This award was established in 2004 on the Telfer School of Management’s 35th Anniversary. This year's recipient is:
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
“I could have probably gone through 20 years of heartache in real-life jobs before learning what I did in the two years of the program.”
The 34-year-old founder and CEO of Valydate Inc. has ridden the ups and downs of the National Capital Region’s high tech sector since the heady days of the telecom boom and reinvented himself along the way.
He graduated with a Bachelor in Computer Systems from Carleton University in 2002 and worked in an engineering role with Nortel Networks. When the market tanked, he joined a new design analysis startup called CoreSim as a technical co-founder, where he found a valued life-long mentor in CEO Ken Bradley.
When that venture was sold to Celestica a few years later, Alam looked for a fresh opportunity with a company that was smaller and more entrepreneurial and made his way to electronic product development firm Fidus Systems.
While his Fidus experience allowed him “to grow tremendously” and work in international sales and business development, he hungered for more – a practical business education that would compliment his real-world experience.
A business education with real-world grit
He first checked out a number of MBA programs, but found that most attracted undergrads and their curriculums focused heavily on classroom delivery. What he needed was a program for experienced business professionals with the same career aspirations that would give him the management skills to do what he had always dreamed of – founding his own company as the CEO in the driver’s seat.
He ultimately chose the Executive MBA program offered by the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. Here he found a program with the right mix of experienced faculty members, a cohort of business professionals he could relate to, and a curriculum that focused on working in teams and managing the group dynamics inherent to the success of any business.
“About 50 per cent of the projects I completed for the Executive MBA were related to my daily work at Fidus,” he said.”I drastically grew as a person. The faculty takes you through the process to understand and know what you don’t know. And as Executive MBA candidates working in teams, we struggled the way we should have struggled, we fought and then we learned to work together.”
He also learned about the value of building relationships based on trust, openness and honesty, and in having a network of experienced mentors and advisors. The program equipped him with the tools he needed to launch Valydate, an electronic review and validation firm. In 2009, he was recognized for his achievements with a Forty Under 40 award from the Ottawa Business Journal. Last year, he was recognized by Invest Ottawa as one of its Rising Star CEOs.
3 successful years and counting
Now entering its fourth year, Valydate has been profitable since inception and has doubled its clients, staff and revenue in every year. It works with global multinationals in the telecom, defence and aerospace, photonics, industrial and medical sectors. Each step in its development has been a carefully calculated risk for Alam, who is not a fan of the all-or-nothing school of entrepreneurship where founders leverage their personal assets for startup capital and risk losing everything.
“Never cross that boundary where your job and the risks that you take in that job can result in somebody coming and taking away your furniture,” he tells the current class of Executive MBA candidates in the Telfer program. “Look for safer diving boards versus jumping in without knowing all of the risks.”
And he always emphasizes having that sounding board of trusted mentors with the experience and perspective you can rely on.
“No matter how well you think you know an industry, you don’t know everything,” he said
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Canadian companies were encouraged to route through Hong Kong to the vibrant and rapidly growing Chinese and Asian markets at the 2013 National Hong Kong Canada Business Forum held in Ottawa on June 14th.
About 300 people attended the “Think Asia, Think Hong Kong” business forum organized by the Hong Kong-Canada Business Association (HKCBA) and supported by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO). Participants included delegates from the eight sections of the HKCBA, from Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and Ottawa as well as visiting officials from Hong Kong and Mainland China.
The Telfer School was a prominent participant as one of the Forum’s sponsors and collaborators. Marvin Hough, Executive in Residence and HKCBA Ottawa’s Vice President spearheaded the Telfer School’s participation by assisting in organizing the Forum and moderating one of the Panels. Sophia Leong, Director of the Executive MBA program and Mike Miles, Director of the MBA program each played key roles as panelists at the Forum underscoring that the Telfer School is closely monitoring and engaging in the Hong Kong and Mainland China markets.
The Telfer School’s participation also included attendance by 18 of our first year Executive MBA class who will undertake their international business consulting projects in Guangzhou next spring. The Forum served as an excellent window into the opportunities and challenges in doing business in Hong Kong and the broader Pearl River Delta region encompassing Guangzhou As Marvin Hough noted “our key messages at the Telfer Executive MBA is that our program is global, practical and relevant. Hong Kong exemplifies all of these factors as we look ahead for our students, graduates and Canadian executives and therefore we are very excited about being engaged with Hong Kong”
At the Forum, Alain Doucet, Assistant Dean, External Relations also carried the message that Hong Kong represents an important destination for the Telfer School’s experiential learning initiatives and that growing opportunities for student placements and exchanges are materializing as the School continues to leverage key alumni and other relationships in Hong Kong.
Over the past two decades, the Hong Kong economy has more than doubled in size with the GDP growing at an average of 4.5 per cent for the past 10 years in real terms.
A key message at the Forum was that Hong Kong is the right platform to access the fast growing markets in Mainland China and other parts of Asia, as well as a gateway for Mainland enterprises to go global. There are now 737 Mainland companies listed on Hong Kong stock exchange, while more than 800 Mainland companies have set up regional operations or local offices in Hong Kong.
Marvin Hough emphasized that Hong Kong “is a world city in Asia and a hub for trading, logistics and financial services in the region. It is not just a trade middleman, but a multiplier for capital and services in the region.”
The Forum also highlighted the advantages of Hong Kong including – common law legal system, independent judiciary, financial system, clean government, independent anti-corruption authority, level playing field, simple and low tax regime, as well as strong protection of intellectual property rights.
Canadian businesses were urged not to miss the boat with the rapidly growing wealth in Asia. By 2025, it is projected that the Asian consuming class will increase to more than two billion people who will account for one third of global consumption.
The messages at the Forum were endorsed by Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai in his speech at the business forum. The Ambassador said that the Canadian Government has made Asia a “key priority” in its trade and economic diversification strategy. “Hong Kong has naturally attracted greater attention here as a financial, trade and shipping centre,” he said.
The Ambassador said Hong Kong is expected to play a bigger part in China-Canada Strategic Partnership. “The increasing market integration between Hong Kong and the Mainland has provided good opportunities for Canadian companies targeting the Mainland,” said Ambassador Zhang. “Canada can team up better with Hong Kong in participating in the economic transformation of Mainland China.”
The Telfer School was very pleased to play a prominent and multi-faceted role at the Forum and will continue to recognize and draw on the pivotal role that Hong Kong plays in the Asian region’s continued economic development.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Julia Koulik, student in the MHA program, was named among six of Canada’s top emerging health-care professionals and awarded the Robert Wood Johnson Award at the National Health Leadership Conference at a special ceremony hosted by the Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL) and the Canadian Healthcare Association (CHA). The award recognizes individual achievement and promising contributions in the field of health services management.
Since its inception in 1956, the award has been presented to more than 280 Canadian health-care professionals and is offered in partnership with six leading Canadian universities which offer a Masters program in Health Care Administration, including: the University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, Université de Montréal, and Dalhousie University.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Muriel Mignerat won a best paper award for a study titled, «Using Telecare for Diabetic Patients: A Mixed Systematic Review», presented during eTELEMED 2013, the Fifth International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine, held in Nice, France earlier this year. The study’s authors are Isabelle Vedel of the McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Muriel Mignerat of the Telfer School, and Anshuman Saksena and Liette Lapointe of McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management. The award was given by the Board of the International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA).
This systematic review examined the different telecare interventions implemented, the technologies used, as well as their associated outcomes. The results will be used to tailor policies with regards to the use of telecare interventions and the technologies implemented to care for patients with diabetes.
The full article is available online.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
On June 1, 2013 Brian Conheady was awarded 2nd Place in the Howard Teall Innovation in Accounting Education Award Competition by the Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA) at its Annual Conference. Brian's submission focused on three interactive web based learning activities that he developed to assist students and instructors dealing with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mixed attribute measurement model. The learning activities are hosted on a dedicated server at the Telfer School of Management.
Brian presented these award-winning learning activities to the Learning Strategies Exchange session at the conference.
Brian was also awarded 2nd place in this competition in 2008.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
It is with immense sadness that the Telfer School of Management announces that Professor Peter Koppel passed away on Sunday, June 9, 2013 leaving his wife Ann Koppel to honour his legacy.
The Telfer School hosted a Memorial Service on Monday, June 24. We would like to thank all those who attended the service and who shared their many fond memories of Professor Koppel.
About Peter Koppel
In 1984 Professor Koppel entered the teaching profession on a full-time basis after thirteen years in the financial services industry. Having taught on a part-time basis prior to 1984, he began to realize that his true passion in life was not sitting in an office, but rather in the academic community where he felt he could truly make a difference in peoples’ lives. He left his senior management role and entered academia. For twenty-seven years, Professor Koppel taught in the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. He has instructed over 60,000 students, consistently maintaining one of the highest evaluation rankings from students in the School and has, in fact, been named by McLean’s Magazine as one of the University’s best liked professors for eight consecutive years. In 2007, he was named one of the finalists in TV Ontario’s Lecturer of the Year Award Competition in the Province of Ontario.
In addition to his full-time teaching, Professor Koppel has served as the Director of the Undergraduate Program at the Telfer School of Management for thirteen years and also served as the School’s Assistant Dean of Student Services during the last eight years before his retirement. He is remembered for establishing the Telfer School’s Mentorship Program for first-year students, designed to ease the transition into university life, creating a Teaching Assistant Program to assist students in first and second year Management courses, being one of the founders of the local chapter of Beta Gamma Sigma, the honour society of AACSB accredited management schools, the Mindtrust Leadership Program held in partnership with Carleton University, and the National Leadership Challenge.
In addition to the above programs, he founded and was the visionary behind the Telfer School of Management’s student funded Career Centre, which has been actively assisting students in the development of their careers for more than a decade. This Centre now employs ten professionals and is recognized as one of the most successful and innovative University Career Centres in all of Canada.
Professor Koppel felt strongly about developing a well-rounded management graduate. He stressed the need for the manager to understand the dynamic environment within which he/she will do business. Ethics and social responsibility, honour, integrity, and trust are values he professed. While encouraging his students to be involved in community and social issues, he himself was actively involved both on the stage and behind the scenes while participating in the management students’ charitable organization, CASCO in its annual fund-raising show for CHEO. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Ottawa Youth Centre, has sat on the Province of Ontario’s Courts Management Board and was a member of the selection committee for Justices of the Peace. He was active in teaching senior police administrators from all over the world for fifteen years at the Canadian Police College.
Professor Koppel retired in 2011 after twenty-seven years of devoted service to the University of Ottawa.
- Category: Student Announcements
The International Consulting Project and Trip takes place at the end of the Program. It enables candidates to apply a global perspective. Here is what Harry Webster takes home from this experience.
As I look back over the past six months I am astonished at what an amazing, engaging, and life-changing experience the Vietnamese project was for all of us. I, along with my peers of Class 2013, have just returned from the Telfer Executive MBA International Consulting Trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Five teams spent one week within the South-East Asia region wrapping up our respective projects we have worked on around the clock in Canada since late 2012. Our intentions and expectations were high on delivering on objectives set forth in our various projects. The projects focused on delivering compelling business value for five client organizations.
Each of the five teams represented different sectors, which created unique barriers that each team needed to address before arriving in Vietnam. We also encountered common challenges. The most obvious one was trying to establish relationships on the other side of the world. Even though most major companies in Vietnam are English-speaking, most government institutions are non-English-speaking, especially cities away from Ho Chi Minh City. Additionally, the 12-hour time difference meant that we would be conducting phone interviews between Ottawa sunset and sunrise. I remember setting my alarm for 2AM on more than one occasion. In the end, the best solution was using LinkedIn. A thorough and well-targeted search of LinkedIn helped identify critical figures in Vietnam. We had remarkable success connecting to them by presenting ourselves as keen students from Canada, who were heading to Vietnam in April. While we expected to face large cultural differences in this phase, it seemed that those who were part of the ‘LinkedIn revolution’ were generally very warm and welcoming to our unsolicited introductions. In a short time, we managed to build a rich network of professionals across various industries in Vietnam.
The barriers were often larger for our specific client. When ‘Vietnam’ is mentioned in a conversation, the first thoughts likely would not be theme and water parks, or even experiential retail and hospitality. Our task as a team was to make it a topic. We were tasked with research to identify opportunities with the Vietnamese tourism and hospitality sectors for a client who is a world-leader in the development of entertainment projects. Given that our project focused on assessing Vietnam’s market relevance by region, we identified significant stakeholders who happened to be outside of Ho Chi Minh City. We learned quickly through research that much of development in Vietnam is driven by government policy. The team’s goal was to meet with the central government, which is based in Hanoi instead of the class’ destination, Ho Chi Minh City. With support from the program, we were able to travel to Hanoi to meet our objectives. We were pleased with the support we received from the program, which recognized the objectives of the project could be compromised if we were not able to meet the policy-makers in Hanoi.
Our team, comprised of Joanne, Johnny, Joseph, Casey and I, quickly realized the value of networks and relationships. After securing full engagement of our client, the team began the process of building a network within a wide range of industries in Vietnam - from banking, legal, accounting, hospitality to tourism. The team also focused on identifying contacts that could bridge the team to Vietnam's central government. With the market experiences of our Telfer project mentors and our relationships with AIESEC members, we were able to build a useful network and a significant amount of work before landing in Vietnam. In the month leading up to our arrival in Vietnam, the team was focused on refining project hypothesis based on the knowledge gained through secondary findings and by building a tight logistics plan. The plan would see us meeting with on-the-ground experts who could provide invaluable insight to shape and validate the project findings.
On April 20, after a 32- hour travel time, the class arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, a city with a population of just over 7 million residents. The coach ride from the airport to the hotel set our adrenaline pumping as we got our first glimpse of the hustling and bustling streets which were filled with more than 6 million motor scooters, some of which were carrying up to four passengers each. All of the reading and preparation I had completed did not prepare me for what I saw; Ho Chi Minh City is truly a modern city
The week was a marathon and all of us had to cross the finish line together. This dictated us to have a well-organized plan of action. After a day of rest, Johnny and I caught a flight to Hanoi early Monday morning while the other three members of our team had a roster of meetings in Ho Chi Minh City with major financial institutions such as KPMG and Sumitomo Capital. The team was able to cover a lot of ground in a short period by working in two sub-groups. We took good notes of each meeting so we could effectively brief one another when we reconvened upon our return from Hanoi.
The meetings in Hanoi proved to be of incredible value. Johnny and I met with the Vice Chairman of the Administration and his Executive Team in an hour-long meeting conducted by a translator. The Vice Chairman emphasized the government's pleasure in having representatives from Canada demonstrating strong interest in the development of tourism in Vietnam. We were able to profile our client organization to the government officials, who offered to co-author a press-release featuring an emerging partnership with us.
The rest of the week the team continue the tag-team approach for generating relationships with major local/multi-national institutions and consultants. A representative of our client organization joined us several times throughout the week. He observed the dedication and commitment of the team to the project as well as embraced the relationships we had established for his organization. His attendance proved conducive as the team easily transitioned the project back to the client organization at the end of the week. With a smooth transition, the organization could continue to engage the various relationships we had established in Vietnam for them.
With only 24 hours left before submitting our final report, we met late Thursday to feverishly formulate the final conclusion and our recommendations of the project. Our action plan saw us integrating learnings from respective meetings into the final report. Therefore, the last 24-hours were allocated to putting final touches and to formatting the report.
While we worked hard during the weekday, Telfer leadership made sure that we had time to let our hair down. One of the absolute highlights of the trip was an evening social excursion to the award-winning Chill Skybar atop the 27th floor roof of the AB Building. Under a full-moon, complete with a cool breeze, the entire class sipped cocktails while taking in the views of the night skyline. We, collectively, shared a poignant experience that marked one of our final evenings together as a class.
The week culminated in the delivery of our final report to our project mentor at six o’clock on Friday evening. With the click of the 'Send' button, we had submitted the product of almost six months of preparation and execution. This also marked the completion of all of the Telfer Executive MBA Program requirements. Clicked and it was official. We officially completed the intensive 21-month graduate program.
Our final hours in Vietnam were spent at the stunning and chic rooftop Shri restaurant to celebrate our achievements together. The tone of the evening was surprisingly somber. I think the finality was visible and we realized that this evening marked the conclusion of something greater than we had all imagined when we enrolled in the program two years ago. It wasn’t just about celebrating the action-packed International Consulting Project. It was the celebration of the entire program itself. The Class of 2013 had become a family. We had spent 10 to 20 hours weekly with one another for 21-months. We had been through so many enlightening moments. We learned, grown, suffered, laughed, fought celebrated, and lived together. All of those experiences created an affinity and a bond that is difficult to describe. But we can definitely feel it.
Today as I write this, I am still adapting to life after Vietnam. Personally, the experience of the International Consulting Project has totally changed the way I view everything I have learned within the program. It has definitely changed the way I view my own future in business. There were so many highlights for me; having created and executed such an amazing project with four of my best friends, working within a country I might have never otherwise had the chance to discover, meeting with such high-ranking and influential figures, delivering tangible results to an international organization and achieving excellence all at once - this has been a Game-Changer for me. This is what makes the Telfer Executive MBA program truly unique from any other professional or academic pursuit.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Walid Ben Amar received an Emerald Literati award for research published in the International Journal of Managerial Finance. The paper investigated the link between ownership structure, earnings management preceding a merger and acquisition and the acquiring firm’s subsequent long-term market performance. It was named as one of three “highly commended” papers published in 2012. The study was co-authored with Claude Francoeur and Philémon Rakoto, Department of Accounting Studies, HEC Montréal.
The team took a closer look at dominant shareholders’ motivations to manage earnings in stock-financed M&A. From the abstract: “Large shareholders have strong incentives to manage earnings upward prior to stock-financed transactions to limit the dilution of their controlling position. Regulators can play an important role in preventing dominant shareholders from engaging in opportunistic earnings management in stock-financed M&A.”
Read more about Professor Ben Amar or about the study online.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Jonathan Linton was a panellist at the Mitacs Policy Forum 2013 held May 28 in Ottawa on how to effectively translate R&D into business innovation. The theme of the panel was the role of the academic community in producing skilled R&D managers. More information is available online.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
About EARN:
About United Way:
About 0ntario Trillium Foundation:
Read the full press release [This link is no longer available] from United Way for more details.
- Category: Student Announcements
This series of articles focuses on the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management Executive MBA class trip to the Silicon Valley. The trip is part of the EMBA curriculum on "Innovation and Entrepreneurship," which includes a consulting project and holding meetings with Valley firms on behalf of client organizations, as well as special events and discussions at key Valley innovation centres, such as the US Market Access Centre, Cisco, IBM Almaden Research Center, Younoodle, Google, Singularity University and Stanford University.
Day one: The Internet of Everything… and Anything
Tuesday, May 14, 2013, by Nisha Cairo
Day two: The impact of disruptive technology [This link is no longer available]
Wedesday, May 15, 2013, by Annu Vaidya
Day three: Telfer Executive MBA Students Explore the Benefits of Silicon Valley [This link is no longer available]
Thursday, May 16, 2013, by Marc Pandi
Day four: Google Impresses and Inspires [This link is no longer available]
Friday, May 17, 2013, by Melissa Olegario
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Professor Frank Tough delivered the May 2013 Father Edgar Thivierge Speaker Series Lecture to a packed audience of students and professors from the University of Ottawa — the Telfer School of Management, the Department of History, the School of Political Studies, and the Faculty of Law — and guests from the Federal Government. Professor of Native Studies and adjunct professor with the Department of Rural Economy at the University of Alberta, Professor Tough provided a fascinating historical perspective on the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark ruling in Manitoba Metis Federation Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013. Tough discussed how the historical background can be examined to assess the “honour of the Crown” in reconciling the assertion of Canadian sovereignty/the settlement of the prairie west with Métis entitlements. The lecture was followed by a lively question-and-answer session with the audience.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Once a year, the Ottawa Business Journal nominates professionals for their business achievements to be in their forty under 40 list.
Among this years’ nominees, eight are University of Ottawa’s alumni from which four studied at the Telfer School of Management. For this achievement, the Telfer School would like to congratulate:
Luc Richard, MBA 1999
Anil Dilawri, BCom 1997
Lynda Joann Carter, BCom 2000
Charla O'Connor, MBA 2005
The Telfer School would also like to congratulate Tara Lapointe, Marie-Andrée Pelletier, Peter Paciorek and Hugues Boisvert, who all graduated from the University of Ottawa.
This year's Forty Under 40 awards gala will take place at the Hilton Lac-Leamy Hotel on June 20, 2013. The event will feature cocktails, fine food, music and dancing and is in part sponsored by the Telfer Executive MBA.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
- Category: Student Announcements
The Telfer MBA program strongly values the international dimension of our program experience. Each year, we sponsor an elective course to Europe to explore high-performance in a European context [This link is no longer available]. The goal is to highlight the dynamics of doing business in an international business arena and to explore the complications of culture and politico-social elements that underlie effective business practice. Last year several of our non-Canadian international students suggested that coming to Canada was their version of an international experience. They asked: "Why don't we set up an ‘in-Canada international trip’ to help them explore business sectors in which Canada has strengths?" The same focus – high-performance organizations – could underlie the trip but the focus would be on examining the differences between doing business in their home countries and the Canadian context.
This year we brought this course alive. We have set up visits with exceptional companies in the "golden triangle" (Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal) that represent noteworthy Canadian business sectors. These include the entrepreneurial high-tech sector (Wesley Clover), retail (Costco), banking (TD Financial and National Bank), not-for-profit (Me to We), aerospace (Aero-Montreal and Bombardier), and international engineering products and services (Future Electronics). As we conducted the structured site visits, students were challenged to blog about their experiences. The following notes represent summaries of their experiences – what caught their attention and what learnings they walked away with.
April 29 to May 3, 2013
- Category: Student Announcements
On May 13, 2013, uOttawa student email is going Google. This means every student will now have 25GB of inbox storage, a simple way to sync their mobile devices, chat tools, calendars, enhanced spam filtering and access to easy-to-use collaborative tools like Google Docs.
- Category: Latest News
The Telfer School of Management Alumni Association is accepting nominations for its alumni awards: the Trudeau Medal and the Young Achiever's award. The deadline is June 15, 2013.
These awards are given to alumni in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the world of business, their communities and their alma mater. These recognitions will be awarded at the Gala of Excellence in October.
The Trudeau Medal was established in honour of Reverend Father Roland Trudeau, OMI, former director of the University's commerce department from 1950 to 1965. This award is the highest honour given by the Telfer School of Management to its alumni.
The Young Achiever's Award honours young Telfer School of Management alumni (under the age of 40) who have been able to achieve greatness in their lives within an exceptional period of time.
To nominate an alumnus for this year's Trudeau Medal or for the Young Achiever's Award, please complete the submission form below. You can also send a supporting letter and the candidate's resume to
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
A Samuel-Genest high school graduate, Phill Cote (BCom 2003) began his Gee-Gee football career in 1996 and had an outstanding four years from 1996 to 2000. A three-time All-Canadian quarterback (1998-2000) and three-time nominee for the Hec Crighton Trophy as Canada's most outstanding university player, Phill took home the prestigious award in 2000. Phill is the only player in the Gee Gees history to be a Hec Crighton winner and member of a national champion Vanier Cup team (2000).
Aside from leading his team to a national championship and being named the Vanier Cup's most valuable player, Phill accomplished much during his four years as the starting quarterback,
including a 77 per cent touchdown to interception ratio, a 28-4 record and uOttawa records for touchdowns scored in a season (16) and in a career (32). Both of his team records still stand today. The four year co-captain was also selected Ottawa's amateur athlete of the year in 2000 by the Associated Canadian Travelers Association.
A promising pro career was cut short by an injury, which led Phill to redirect his energy and focus on his wife and three children and on the pursuit of a career in the federal government.
The self-proclaimed family man continues to exemplify his strong yet humble leadership style which served him so well as a Gee-Gee, where he mentored and encouraged teammates to reach maximum potential. Phill commands respect among his peers by leading by example.
Phill looks forward to teaching his son all about football, just like his father had done for him.
Photo: Normand Fortier, Phillippe Côté, Clinton Archibald
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Mayor Jim Watson and Alta Vista Ward Councillor Peter Hume have honoured Gilles LeVasseur with the Mayor’s City Builder Award, recognizing his many philanthropic contributions to the City of Ottawa including the work he has done for Ontario’s francophone community through his writings and volunteer work.
Gilles LeVasseur grew up in Ottawa’s Alta Vista area, a community with a significant number of francophone residents. As a francophone himself, he recognized the importance of defending, maintaining, and ensuring the quality of French language within our city.
Through his various professional and volunteer endeavours, LeVasseur has accumulated an impressive list of accomplishments. As a lawyer and university professor of law, management and economics, LeVasseur is actively involved in files related to constitutional language rights in Canada. He is a member of both the Ontario and Quebec Bar Associations and has numerous university degrees. He is president of the Conseil de la coopération de l’Ontario and of the Regroupement des organismes du patrimoine franco-ontarien. He has published eight books, of which three directly address the situation of francophones in Ontario and Canada. For over 25 years, he has been an active member of key organizations working to promote the French language in Ontario and Canada. He received the Lieutenant-Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for his contributions to the preservation of Franco-Ontarian heritage and the Queen’s Jubilee medal for his contributions to the Canadian Francophonie. He was also awarded the Séraphin Marion award for his outstanding contribution to the development of francophones outside Quebec.
Through his passion and dedication, Gilles LeVasseur has been instrumental, not only for the recognition of French language rights locally, but for his role provincially in safeguarding our Franco-Ontarian heritage.
The Mayor’s City Builder Award is a civic honour created by Mayor Watson to recognize an individual, group or organization that has, through outstanding volunteerism or exemplary action, demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to making our city a better place today and for the future. This may include lifelong service, outstanding acts of kindness, inspiring charitable work, community building or other exemplary achievements. Individuals, groups or organizations may be nominated by members of City Council or the public.
Read the complete article on the Ottawa Citizen's website. [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Student Announcements
The Telfer MBA program focuses particular attention on high performance organizations. The trip to Europe is designed to provide MBA students with a perspective on what high performance organizations look like in a European environment. With this in mind, the Telfer School has arranged for the MBA students to travel to Brussels, Antwerp, Leuven and Paris to meet with executives from Nike, Accenture, l’Oréal, Sodexo, Deloitte, Alcatel-Lucent, Louis Vuitton, and Viadeo. Students from the Telfer MBA program will be blogging about their experience on this trip.
April 20-27, 2013
[These articles are no longer available.]
Just do it
By Jennifer Ewin, Tania Ravenda and Fraser Somers, Telfer MBA candidates
Alcatel-Lucent – Innovation at the Speed of New Ideas
By Beverly Ebegbuzie, Miguel Alvarez and Vipin Bansal, Telfer MBA candidates
By Adam Lamoureux, Jennifer Prouse, and Laura Venasse
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Linda Eagen has had a distinguished association with the University of Ottawa and the Telfer School of Management. One of Canada's most respected and successful fundraising professionals, she served as director of development for the University of Ottawa for three years. In this role, she led programs that raised more than $10 million as part of the University's capital campaign. She then moved on to serve as manager of development for the Telfer School of Management, where she played a pivotal role in making the school a national leader in business education and research.
- Category: Student Announcements
May 9
Back to Telfer – Come Back. Give Back.
May 10
Anniversary reunions
May 11
Is "Dr. Google" the Right Physician for You? Technologies and Healthcare Delivery
Destination 2013
These events are part of the uOttawa Alumni Week 2013. Other events are also organized during this week.
- Category: Rising Stars
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation is an exciting and integrative learning opportunity for BCom students as part of their 4th year Strategic Management class.
From March 15 to 17, more than 225 students in 51 teams participated in this simulation at the Telfer School of Management’s Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the members of the winning team:
- Carly Shier
- Briant Won
- Thatcha Kumarakuladervan
- Cathy Chiu
- Michelle Fong
Individual awards were also presented to these three students:
- Best Negotiator: Nitin Chowdury (Team 46)
- Most Congenial: Paul Tripp (Team 49)
- Most Valuable Player: Alyssa Lafleur (Team 41)
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation has been a component of the 4th year strategy course for close to 20 years. It aims to teach students the concepts of strategic management in a simulated online world known as Intopia. The simulation allows students to practice their skills in a concentrated amount of time where they can get immediate feedback on their decisions.
This capstone activity has recently been renamed to recognize CGA Ontario’s comprehensive contribution of $370,000 to the Telfer School to support students, teaching and research.
- Category: Student Announcements
Sir Terry Matthews made a guest appearance in the Leadership Lecture Series and provided great insight into his life as an empowering leader and mentor.
About the Leadership Lecture Series:
This unique lecture series draws senior leaders within the Ottawa community into the Telfer Executive MBA classroom. This six session course within the curriculum goes well beyond a traditional case study method. It will give you the opportunity to actively participate in a ‘live’ business case where you can discuss, question and critic the business leader who was responsible for making key critical and strategic decisions within his or her organization during the case. The comparison of the various speakers will allow you to consider, compare and evaluate each speaker’s leadership style and strategy for managing current issues within their organizations.
- Category: Rising Stars
Sinan Nasir studying in the M.Eng program offered through the Faculty of Engineering and the Telfer School of Management, won the first price at the national Focus 2040 competition held at DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Hamilton on March 28. The aim of the competition was to study various trends to predict the workplace of 2040 and propose a work system that leading companies would have adapted to deal with implications of those trends.
- Category: Student Announcements
The University of Ottawa Marketing Association and the Telfer School of Management held the Michel Cloutier Marketing Competition on April 4, 2013 at the Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the winning team, Team 1 (Anastasiya Shulyarenko, Branden Goodman, Sean Carter, Adam Tomaszewski, Sarah Rizvi, Raechel Allen), who provided the best insight into how the Alumni Association might grow the number of their members buying auto insurance from Johnson Inc.
The winning team received a cash prize of $1,000. The Marc Roy Fund and Johnson Inc. awarded $500 to the two students with the best presentations, Branden Goodman and Ariane Lafond.
- Category: Student Announcements
Nominations are invited for students who deserve to be recognized for outstanding Social Responsibility Leadership. This award is open to BCom students who will be returning to complete their 4th year of study as a full-time student. The prize consists of $2,000 towards the recipient’s 4th year tuition fees.
Nominations can be made by completing the Nomination form and sending it via email to
Susan Redmond at
Social responsibility projects undertaken by nominees do not have to be associated with the Telfer School of Management and can be pursued at large in the community.
Nominations can come from staff, faculty, alumni and members of the business and local community.
Nominations are due May 10, 2013. The selection committee will make a decision by May 23. The award will be presented at the Telfer School of Management Post-Convocation Awards Luncheon Reception on June 10, 2013.
- Category: Rising Stars
Samantha Harris is currently a 4th year student pursuing a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a Specialization in Accounting in both the Co-op and French Immersion Programs.
Within the University of Ottawa community, she has been involved with the Telfer School of Management Peer Mentoring Program as a student mentor for the 2011 - 2012 academic year as a mentor to 30 students. Mentoring involves answering students’ questions by e-mail, arranging face-to-face meetings at the request of students, holding weekly office hours, participating in monthly meetings with the other mentors, and organizing and participating in events ranging from study skills workshops to social activities with mentors and mentees.
In her local community, she is an active volunteer at her church, Emmanuel United. She has been a member of the youth band, has participated in services in a variety of ways, has volunteered at a number of fundraising events, and also sits on the Worship Committee as the Secretary and Youth Representative.
Photo: Samantha Harris and Dean François Julien
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Telfer’s Centre for Executive Leadership is pleased to announce that it is now accepting registrations for its third cohort of “Improving Quality and Patient Safety: The Physician Leadership Program”. The Centre will be celebrating the second cohort of graduates in May of 2013 and is very pleased with the success of the program and the feedback received from past graduates. The program is the result of a partnership between the Telfer School of Management and The Ottawa Hospital.
- Category: Rising Stars
Congratulations to our MBA students who won 2nd place at the 2013 annual Whitman Case Competition in Syracuse, NY on March 22. The team of four Telfer School students went to the finals againts eight other teams.
Photo: Jason Solomon, Ridhima Sharma, Associate Dean of Whitman School, Fraser Somers, Claire-Marine Soury
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa has maintained its business accreditation by AACSB International – The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
Founded in 1916, AACSB International is the longest serving global accrediting body for business schools that offer undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in business and accounting. AACSB Accreditation is the hallmark of excellence in business education, and has been earned by less than five percent of the world's business programs. Today, there are 650 business schools in 50 countries and territories that maintain AACSB Accreditation.
"This is absolutely fantastic news and I and thrilled and very proud! On behalf of the Telfer School of Management, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the AACSB re-accreditation process and to this success." said François Julien, Dean of the Telfer School. "Maintaining our AACSB accreditation confirms that the Telfer School of Management meets the highest international standards of excellence and continuous improvement. Successfully maintaining our triple crown of international business school accreditations – AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA – is also a clear demonstration of our passion for excellence and of the commitment of all the members of the Telfer community."
"It takes a great deal of commitment and determination to earn and maintain AACSB Accreditation," said Robert D. Reid, executive vice president and chief accreditation officer of AACSB International. "Business schools must not only meet specific standards of excellence, but their deans, faculty, and professional staff must make a commitment to ongoing continuous improvement to ensure that the institution will continue to deliver the highest quality of education to students."
Having also successfully maintained the EQUIS accreditation last December 2012, the Telfer School remains one of only two business school in Canada to have achieved the triple crown of business school accreditations. There are only 50 schools worldwide that have obtained this prestigious recognition.
The Telfer School of Management was initially awarded AACSB accreditation in 2003.
To learn more about AACSB International accreditation, visit the accreditation section of the AACSB International Web site and see our other accreditations and rankings.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer Career Centre was created in 2003. It is dedicated to providing career development support to students and alumni at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The career development programs are tailored to each group as well as the additional services offered to enhance their personal and professional growth.
On Tuesday, March 19, 2013, the Telfer Career Centre celebrated its 10th year anniversary with 196 employers, alumni, faculty and staff and current students of the Telfer School of Management that participated in several programs of the Career Centre.
During this event, Dean Julien highlighted the hard work and enthusiasm of a dedicated Career Centre team, including the founder of the Career Centre, Peter Koppel, who retired two years ago.
The Career Centre Commitment Award were also presented to six alumni who have made a meaningful contribution over the last 10 years by participating in a combination of activities such as the Career Centre Advisory Board, Telfer conventions, mock interviews, résumé critiques, workshops, as well as mentoring students and contributing to the development of unique initiatives like the Capital Markets Mentorship program
The Career Centre Commitment Award recipients were:
- Sébastien Dignard, Xerox Canada
- Tuan Nguyen, Health Genie Group
- Greg Tarasco, Blue Print Energy
- Angela Vanikiotis, Pêches et Océans Canada/ Fisheries and Oceans Canada
- Gene Villeneuve, IBM
- François Villeneuve, Exportation et développement Canada/Export Development Canada
A special thank you was given to all employers that actively participate every year in various activities as part of the Career Development Program such as information sessions, workshops, career conventions, mentoring, and other recruiting activities.
The twenty-five dynamic and motivated students that volunteer at the Career Centre, the students who have successfully completed the Career Development Program, the Connexions Program, the Internship Program and Capital Market Mentor Program were also highlighted.
The presentations ended by blowing the candles of a three-tier Anniversary cake and presenting Sylvie Séguin-Jak, the Director of the Student Services Centre/Career Centre with a bouquet of flowers and a commemorative frame.
The rest of the evening was reserved for networking among guests.
- Category: Rising Stars
Congratulations to the delegation of 36 students from the Telfer School of Management that represented us at the 2013 Happening Marketing competition. This event was hosted by HEC in Montreal from March 22-24, 2013.
Congratulations to students for winning the following:
Surprise case (3rd place): Aymeric Beard, Branden Goodman and Jennifer Viscosi
Integrated Communication Marketing (3rd place): Branden Goodman, Samantha Buch and Shawna O’Brien (Most Valuable Player)
Coach: Professor Michael Guolla
- Category: Community Engagement
From March 10-15, four Telfer BCom students, Ashley Rosa, Angelika Athanasoulias, Daniel Gauthier and Pierce Colley will sleep outside to create awareness and raise funds for the homeless in communities across Canada. In 2011, the campaign was held at 22 campuses across the country and broke records by raising over $220,000 nationwide and raised awareness for the issue of homelessness and youth at risk like never before.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management is happy to announce a new partnership for its International Exchange Program with the:
The University of South Australia (UniSA) is the largest university in South Australia with over 34,000 students. Approximately a third of these students are from international locations. UniSA offers the most diverse educational menu in South Australia. The City West campus on North Terrace is located at the western edge of Adelaide’s central business district, an area famous for its hip cafes, eclectic live music venues, alternative fashion, and bookstores.
The Division of Business offers programs across business and management disciplines and houses five schools: Commerce, Law, Management, Marketing and the International Graduate School of Business.
It is also one of only eight business schools in Australia accredited by the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) and is home to UniSA’s prestigious five-star ranked MBA program.
For more information, please visit www.unisa.edu.au/Business and the Student Services Centre, DMS 1100.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management is happy to announce a new partnership for its International Exchange Program with:
Auckland University of Technology (AUT) is the third-largest university in New Zealand and the fastest growing located in Auckland, considered one of the best cities in the world to live in. AUT is a contemporary university, with a distinctive approach to teaching and learning, focused on providing student-centred, innovative and responsive learning experiences.
The Bachelor of Business is designed to turn today’s students into tomorrow’s sought-after business professionals, and prepares graduates well for further study. Students can spend a semester studying one of 14 majors, including: Advertising, Design, Economics, International Business and Employment Relations, Retailing, Sales and Tourism.
The AUT Business School is placed in the top 5% of business schools globally for having received the AACSB (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accreditation.
For more information, please visit www.aut.ac.nz and the Student Services Centre, DMS 1100.
- Category: Student Announcements
BCom students in the Management Information Systems option were chosen with 12 other teams out of 30 to take part in CaseIT, an annual international undergraduate business case competition. The case competition is held from February 6 to 9, 2013 at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
Photo : Benoit Tramontini, Natalie Bogatirev and Jan Kasprzycki.
- Category: Rising Stars
On Thursday, January 31, 2013, $4,500 CIBC Mentoring Scholarships was awarded to Leah Wright, a Coop BCom student in Accounting, and Jennifer Viscosi, BCom in International Management.
About the Mentorship Program
About the CIBC Mentoring Scholarship
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
TMX Group Limited today announced the appointment of Jean Desgagné (BAdm 1985, BCom 1986) as President and Chief Executive Officer of The Canadian Depository for Securities Limited (CDS). Mr. Desgagne, whose appointment will take effect on February 19, 2013, will join TMX Group's executive management committee and will be an Officer of TMX Group Limited. He replaces Ian Gilhooley, who retired on December 31, 2012.
Click here to read the complete press release.
- Category: Student Announcements
We are looking for students from any faculties that have an interesting business model idea they would like to develop.
Cash prizes will be offered to the best presentations:
-
1st place: $5,000
-
2nd place: $2,000
- 3rd place: $1,000
The winning project will be automatically entered in the National Nicol Entrepreneurship Award Competition.
For further information or to register, get in touch with
About The Nicol Entrepreneurial Award is a national program
The competition is designed to generate and reward interest in entrepreneurship on the part of undergraduate students in any faculty or field of study at participating universities across Canada. Launched in 1997, this program now awards over $100,000 in prize money each year to individual students or student teams who submit winning plans for their entrepreneurial business ideas.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Professor Umar Ruhi of the Telfer School and Sabbir Ahmed, a graduate student in the M.Sc. E-Business Technologies Program have been awarded Mitacs Accelerate funding which they will use to study BI (business intelligence) mashups.
BI mashups help knowledge workers – i.e., analysts, developers, and project managers – respond better to unpredictable events which create a need for just-in-time data management. These tools are a new kind of web based applications providing self-service and real-time BI. They unify disparate data and services to respond more effectively to analytical needs at the level of the individual and the business. In addition, they complement traditional BI tools, which often have a poor utilisation rate. Many industry experts believe that BI mashups can help reverse that trend in part because they encourage the engagement of end-users.
The researchers will review the current landscape of BI and market-vendor interactions. They will also formulate a utility framework that can help organizations understand the business process requirements that can be satisfied through the use of BI mashups.
Professor Ruhi and Mr. Ahmed have been awarded $15,000 for their research investigation from the Mitacs Accelerate Program. The program provides applied research internship opportunities to graduate student researchers. Mitacs is providing one-half of the funding towards Mr. Ahmed’s internship, with the balance being contributed from the project’s industry partner IBM Canada Ltd.
To learn more, visit the IBM Centre for Business Analytics and Performance online.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management has received EQUIS re-accreditation from the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). The Telfer School remains one of only two business school in Canada to achieve the triple crown of business school accreditations. There are only 50 schools worldwide that have obtained this prestigious recognition.
The Telfer School of Management was initially awarded the accreditation in November 2009 and it was renewed in December 2012 for a period of 3 years.
“Obtaining an international accreditation confirms that the Telfer School of Management meets the highest international standards of excellence and continuous improvement. This achievement contributes to strengthening the School’s reputation as a world-class institution. I am particularly proud of this accomplishment and of this recognition”, said François Julien, Dean of the Telfer School. “Successfully maintaining our triple crown of international business school accreditations is also a clear demonstration of our passion for excellence and of the commitment of all the members of the Telfer community. On behalf of the Telfer School of Management, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the EQUIS re-accreditation process and to this success!”
EQUIS is the leading international system of quality assessment, improvement and accreditation of higher education institutions in management and business administration. EQUIS is run by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and its fundamental objective, linked to the mission of the EFMD, is to raise the standard of management education worldwide.
Institutions that are accredited by EQUIS must demonstrate not only high general quality in all dimensions of their activities, but also a high degree of internationalisation. With companies recruiting worldwide, with students choosing to get their education outside their home countries, and with schools building alliances across borders and continents, there is a rapidly growing need for them to be able to identify those institutions in other countries that deliver high quality education in international management.
- Category: Student Announcements
Jeux du commerce
The 25th Jeux du commerce took place January 4 to 6, 2013, at HEC Montréal in Montréal, Québec. A delegation of 82 students represented the Telfer School of Management.
Congratulations to students for winning the following:
Operations Management Case (3rd place): Jayme Fallen, Branden Goodman and Andrej Rajic
Coach: Professor Jean Couillard
Taxation Case (3rd place): David Levell, Thea Temple, Meagan Thompson
Coaches: Professor Kathryn Pedwell and Simon Couvrette
International Business Case (3rd place): Aymeric Beard, Marc-Andre Bigras and Jennifer Viscosi
Coach: Professor Tyler Chamberlin
Volleyball (3rd place): Michel Bedard, Danika Chilibeck, Bryan Ip, Thomas Le, Catherine Nadeau, Pascale Nadeau, Dan Packer, Eric Prefontaine, Vincent Trottier
Coach: Jacob Legault
MBA Games
The 25th MBA games took place at the University of McMaster’s DeGroote School of Business in Hamilton/Burlington, Ontario. For the first time, the Telfer School was represented by a full delegation composed of 40 students.
Inter-Collegiate Business Competition
Andrea kuntz and Jennifer Proulx competed in the HR case at the 35th annual ICBC (Inter-Collegial Business Competition) last weekend at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
- Category: Student Announcements
From January 6 to 11 2013, the Telfer School of Management of the University of Ottawa will join 35 schools from around the world in Montreal, Canada at the John Molson MBA International Case Competition. The competition, the oldest and largest of its kind in the world.
This year’s event will have the greatest number of international competitors in the competition’s history. In addition to the seven American and twelve Canadian universities participating, will be seventeen International schools from fourteen countries and five continents. Australia, Egypt and South Africa will be represented for the first time.
The Telfer School of Management will be sending their four best case cracking MBA candidates (Alex Bota, Tina Huang, Yi Liu and John Hastings) who will, over six days, tackle seven business case studies, including one “live” case study. The live case will see a surprise company present a problem they are currently facing to the teams, who will then present their solutions. The teams will compete to take home the Concordia Cup and up to $10,000 in prize money.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Kanika Gupta (BCom 2008) has received one of the Telus Future Leaders Award and thus secured a place in Canada’s Most Powerful Women’s Top 100.
Kanika was inspired to start SoJo, a social enterprise technology company, after more than a decade of building and growing other social ventures. The company builds e-learning tools that guide individuals who want to put their ideas for social change into action. Prior to founding SoJo, Kanika worked for the United Nations Development Programme, Canadian International Development Agency, Canadian House of Commons and grassroots organizations in West Africa and India. In 2007, she founded Nukoko, a non-profit organization that sends more than 600 girls to school in West Africa every year. Kanika is actively engaged as a youth advisor with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO and the Canadian Digital Media Network.
Anne-Marie has received a WXN Hall of Fame Award for winning a spot as a Top 100 most powerful woman three times. She was named Managing Partner of Ernst & Young’s Advisory practice in 2009. She joined the firm in 1985, obtained her CA in 1987, and became a partner in 1998. Prior to leading our Advisory practice, she led their Technology and Security Risk Services group. In 2004, she was named a Fellow of the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec (OCAQ).
Anne-Marie is a board member of the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec and Public Policy Forum, and she also serves on the public affairs committees of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and the OCAQ. Anne-Marie has led her firm’s gender equity initiatives in Canada, and received Ernst & Young’s Rosemarie Meschi Award in recognition of her contributions to the advancement of women in business.
- Category: Community Engagement
A little over seven years ago, students of Telfer’s Executive MBA (EMBA) program approached professor Guy Laflamme with the suggestion of working with charity organizations as part of their final team assignment. Since then, more than 50 charity and not-for-profit organizations have benefitted from the talent and dedication of uOttawa’s EMBA students. The success of this project has been a source of great pride for professor Laflamme, who has been working hard to educate students on the importance of corporate social responsibility in his Strategic Marketing Management course.
“I am trying to sensitize future business leaders about the importance of giving back to the community—making it part of business practices that are respectful of society and that recognize the role they play in the community,” says professor Laflamme. “An organization needs not only to achieve a maximum net profit, but should also be able to have a contribution towards sustainability and its people.”
Teams of students are asked to develop a marketing business plan for an organization of their choice. By working closely with the selected organizations, students are exposed to the challenges that charity and not-for-profit organizations face in terms of funding, awareness and resources. “It was the ideal way to learn about marketing—we learned the theoretical aspects in class and applied them in real-life practical situations,” says EMBA student Dr. Mamta Gautam, who worked with the organization ICAfrica. This local, not-for-profit non-governmental agency aims to provide microcredit loans and business coaching to entrepreneurs in Africa.
“The marketing plan that was provided to us by uOttawa highlighted areas of improvement that our organization should carry out, and one by one, we are working on improving those areas,” says Eugene Nzeribe, executive director of ICAfrica. “Our whole infrastructure has been re-organized in a more structured fashion. We have a strong board of directors whose individual talents are matched with tasks which are showing results in the quality of our fundraising activities and in terms of engagement response. It brought us in the direction that we needed to move forward.”
According to professor Laflamme, determining the value proposition is far more challenging in not-for-profit organizations than for, say … McDonald’s. Students are required to learn the do’s and don’ts of a consulting process while developing the courage to tell clients things they don’t always want to hear. “Students are at times faced with a dilemma of maintaining their intellectual integrity versus competing pressures from their clients. They need to be able to go in with a high degree of integrity and present what they feel is the right approach,” explains professor Laflamme.
However, despite challenges, the emotional connection students make with their organizations has them caring about the outcome. They truly want to see the organizations succeed. EMBA graduate Karen Kavanagh speaks of her experience working with the organization Operation Come Home: “I learned that it doesn’t take a lot of time or money to help others. It started as a project in school but ended up as a long-term friendship and dedication to be more connected with my community.”
Professor Laflamme’s EMBA students have helped several organizations across the nation’s capital including the Eastern Ontario Parkinson Society, the Ottawa Mission, the Canadian Film Institute and the Canadian Council for the Arts. “I am proud to nourish not only the brains but the heart and soul of our students and future business leaders,” says professor Laflamme.
Click here to read the original article in the Gazatte. [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Community Engagement
For their Consumer Behaviour class, around 50 students from the Telfer School of Management put together marketing strategies for the Festival franco-ontarien (FFO).
The students had to suggest a marketing communication strategy that would enable the festival to attract more people aged between 15-25 while retaining its current clientele.
Among the 11 student teams, three were selected to present their ideas in front of Sébastien Lorquet, President of FFO's board, Josée Vaillancourt, Secretary of the FFO board, Daniel Simoncic, FFO’s General Director and Nathalie Brunette, Communications Director of the FFO.
Congratulations to the winning team composed of:
Team 8 : Antoine Bégin, Julie Boucher, Vincent Labbé, Gabrielle Belhumeur et Alexandre Joubert.
The two finalist teams were composed of:
Team 7: Aymeric Anne Beard, Laurence Guimond, Laurent Rioux, Joëlle Thériault et Jade Thérien.
Team 4: Jennifer Nadia Capogreco, Isabelle Gagnon, Oubah Meraneh, Sonia Munezero, Gaël Narame.
The 38th edition of the Festival franco-ontarien will take place June 13, 14 and 15, 2013 at Major Park in Ottawa.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
On November 28th 2012, the MHA Alumni Association held its annual AGM, which includes a presentation of its annual report and a keynote presentation from healthcare leaders. This year, the topic for discussion was: New Leadership, New Opportunity: Your Career Path.
- Category: Student Announcements
The University of Ottawa Marketing Association and the Telfer School of Management held the Michel Cloutier Marketing Competition on December 4, 2012 at the Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the winning team, Team 3 (Brandon Chow, Shaheed Mohamed, Alannah Saikaley, Cristina Germano, Adrian Mulligan, Elisa Garcia), who presented the best marketing campaign for The Drink as mandated by the event sponsor: York Entertainment.
The winning team received a cash prize of $1,000. The Marc Roy Fund awarded $500 to the student with the best presentation, Noah Hayes.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
We are pleased to announce that the Telfer School of Management has agreed to be a business school partner with the Latin American MBA Alumni Network (LAMBA). LAMBA is a professional association seeking to connect Latin American MBA graduates with one another and with corporations in Canada.
The network was born in response to the need of corporations, business schools, students and graduates to connect with a growing community of MBA professionals with a Latin American background living in Canada. What started in late 2009 as networking events among Spanish speakers who share culture, MBA degrees and successful careers, became a platform for multiple organizations to connect with business professionals with Latin American roots. Since its launch in 2010, LAMBA has welcomed more than 400 members.
The Telfer School has chosen to partner with LAMBA in support of our MBA’s, past, present and future. This professional network has already proven to be beneficial in connecting our recent MBA graduates with other business professionals. As it continues to build, it will no doubt serve as a great business network.
We invite you to visit LAMBA’s website to learn more about this organization and how to take advantage of this partnership.
- Category: Community Engagement
On December 4, 2012, CASCO students took to the stage at the Delta Ottawa City Centre to raise a record breaking $45,080.61 for the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). The theme of this year’s event was “Time Warp”, where all performances were focused around the 6 last decades.
In preparation for this event, CASCO students spend countless hours auditioning, choreographing, and organizing this annual gala show that focuses on the talents of Telfer School students, and raises money for CHEO as well as a CHEO family in need.
For the past 13 years, CASCO has been a major event for the Telfer School of Management that is entirely choreographed, organised and executed by like-minded Telfer School students. It is a spectacular show of talent and philanthropy that brings together over 500 people including prominent community leaders and ambassadors for CHEO. Among the attendees this year were Mayor Jim Watson, CHEO Foundation COO Kevin Keohane, CHEO Foundation President and CEO Fred Bartlett, Dean François Julien, Ottawa City Councillor Mathieu Fleury, Max Keeping and CASCO co-founders Alexandre St-Jean and Tuan Nguyen. This event is also an excellent networking opportunity for Telfer School students who will be graduating in the near future.
The Telfer School remains very proud of its CASCO students for the time and energy that they focus on this event ever year and the positive impact that they leave on our community.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Invest Ottawa is working with nearly 20 community organizations to organize Global Entrepreneurship Week Ottawa. They were asked to submit nominations for the 100 Rising Stars among leaders who operate a business, social enterprise or charitable organization. To be chosen as a Rising Star, the key criteria included creativity, growth of the operation, and overall impact in the community.
Ten Telfer School of Management students or alumni appear on that list:
Eric Dormer, MBA 1993
Jen Butson, BCom 2011
Lori Keith, EMBA 2010
Mark Edwards, EMBA 2000
Michael Alam, EMBA 2009
Mohammad Al Azzouni, Student in Economics with a Minor in Business Administration
Richard Bergman, BCom 1988
Robert Poole, BCom 1987
Sarah Wise, BCom 2000
Rouzbeh Zadeh, EMBA candidate
Click here [This link is no longer available] to see the full list.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management is pleased to announce that it has partnered with Kaplan to provide candidates with discounted GMAT prep classes and free GMAT practice tests. Telfer candidates are now eligible to receive 10% off the price of a Kaplan prep class and are provided with the full GMAT test day experience.
Each prep class includes 13 sessions with Kaplan GMAT’s top faculty featuring Flex Sessions, revised GMAT materials prepared for each exam and free make-up sessions—in person and through their video-based Lessons-on-Demand. It offers the most Integrated Reasoning preparation of any major GMAT prep provider, with a dedicated teaching session, a Lesson-on-Demand, and full-length, scored Integrated Reasoning sections in all 9 CATs. On top of this, you will receive over 160 hours of instruction and practice, including over 5,000 practice items and 9 full-length computer adaptive tests (CATs) in the format of the GMAT.
Kaplan encompasses three pillars in which it was founded on:
- Proven Leader in GMAT prep: More people get into business schools after taking a Kaplan prep class than any other prep course.
- Personalized Learning: Kaplan uses Smart Reports and Flex-Sessions to provide students with customized recommendations and added convenience.
-
High Score Guarantee: Kaplan has the most comprehensive guarantee in the industry. – Satisfaction, Readiness, or your money back!
The following GMAT Classes are starting soon at University of Ottawa:
GMOT13002 - January 12 – March 9, 2012 – Saturdays 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. (Desmarais Building)
GMOT13001A – February 9 – April 6, 2012 – Saturdays 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
For more information or to register for the prep classes, please contact Suzanne Wiseman by e-mail at
- Category: Rising Stars
MSc Health Systems candidates Vicki Sabourin and Javier Fiallos today presented highlights from their internships at the Canadian Primary Health Care Research & Innovation Network (CPHCRIN) and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). The three-month internship component of this program promotes linkages between research and practice and prepares students to be meaningful contributors to health systems delivery after graduation.
Fiallos contributed to a decision support project in the emergency department of CHEO, analyzing patient visits data and developing quantitative models. His aim was to identify improvements to the department’s triage system and explore modifications to surgery block scheduling and nurse staffing for day surgery. “I learned that health systems generate an immense amount of data which does not necessarily contribute to process improvements unless appropriate research questions are proposed at the outset,” Fiallos explained; “I deepened my understanding of how data can be put to effective use by employing the right research tools and knowledge.”
For her internship, Sabourin joined CPHCRIN, where she contributed towards building a strategic plan under the supervision of Dr. William Hogg, the executive director, and Hannah Irving and Michelle Prentice, the network’s coordinators. “I gained tremendous knowledge of the research development process through opportunities to review the literature and to synthesize findings that emerged from meetings with members of the Network,” says Sabourin, who holds a BSc. in Nursing from the University of Ottawa. “I also learned about the importance of coordinating CBPHC research efforts through a pan-Canadian network.”
- Category: Community Engagement
Jean-François Vincent-Rocan who is studying at the Telfer School of Management for the completion of his Graduate Diploma for Scientific Management and Leadership, as part of his PhD in Chemistry, entered the Walmart Green Student Challenge with another uOttawa student. Their innovative eco-friendly idea has enabled them to gain incredible support from the community and reach 3rd place in the contest.
However, the contest is not over and it is still possible to show support to the team by voting [This link is no longer available].
- Category: Student Announcements
What is the purpose of the teaching and course evaluations?
- The evaluations improve the quality of the learning experience.
- Professors have said they find this feedback to be a valuable means of improving their teaching skills. What’s more, some key aspects of the evaluation are part of the University’s collective agreement with professors.
- The main purpose is to obtain student feedback on a course and an instructor’s teaching. This information can also help professors gauge their abilities and help other students learn about how a course was taught.
How do I participate?
Classroom courses
- Fill out the questionnaire and comment sheet during the evaluation period.
- Your professors may have asked that a customized evaluation related to specific aspects of their course be completed as well.
Web based courses
- Via the uoZone portal, under the "InfoWeb" tool, and complete the official evaluation questionnaire.
Evaluation results (S-Report)
The evaluation results are available on uoZone. See what other students think!
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The name of the University of Ottawa is synonymous with that of Father Roger Guindon. A man of commitment and vision, Father Guindon gave a new meaning to altruism. But altruism doesn’t just happen; it is born of love. Love of people. Love of the challenge of opening up new horizons.
- Category: Rising Stars
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation is an exciting and integrative learning opportunity for BCom students as part of their 4th year Strategic Management class.
From November 9 to 11, more than 200 students in 38 teams participated in this simulation at the Telfer School of Management’s Desmarais Building.
Congratulations to the members of the winning team:
- Jessica Cole
- Lea Lacoste
- Michelle Roberts
- Marc Roessler
- Mateusz Stachura
- Charles-André Therrien
Individual awards were also presented to these three students:
- MVP – Most Valuable Player: Pat Chiarello (Team 23)
- Best Negotiator: Jessica James (Team 33)
- Most Congenial Player: Ian McCarter (Team 15)
Top teams were also recognized for having the best strategy in their respective categories:
- Component Producers: Angel Beath, Nolan Kargesm, Scott Lough, Joshua Mantil, Laura Veitch (Team 38)
- Finished Goods Producers: Jessica Cole, Lea Lacoste, Michelle Roberts, Marc Roessler, Mateusz Stachura, Charles-André Therrien (Team 24)
- Integrated Firms: Katie Baxter, Elanor Boyle-Stanley, Azra Meghji, Sidrah Ramzan, Matthew Smith (Team 12)
- Wholesalers: Shawn Gagnon, Claude Gilbert, Corey Lamarche (Team 37)
The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation has been a component of the 4th year strategy course for close to 20 years. It aims to teach students the concepts of strategic management in a simulated online world known as Intopia. The simulation allows students to practice their skills in a concentrated amount of time where they can get immediate feedback on their decisions.
This capstone activity has recently been renamed to recognize CGA Ontario’s comprehensive contribution of $370,000 to the Telfer School to support students, teaching and research.
Photo: Michelle Roberts, Mateusz Stachura, Lea Lacoste, Charles-André Therrien, Jessica Nicole, Marc Roessler.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Click here [This link is no longer available] to read more on Mr. LeVasseur’s contribution to the Franco-Ontarian society (available in French only).
- Category: Student Announcements
The Telfer School of Management Career Centre is seeking internship positions located outside of Canada for the Ontario Global Edge international mobility scholarship program. Global Edge offers exceptional Ontario students a $4,000 scholarship to pursue opportunities to learn about entrepreneurship and the role of small and medium-sized businesses in a global economy.
Eligible internships:
- Can be offered at any time of year, with a high demand for summer positions;
- Take place in a small or medium-sized enterprise;
- Are located outside of Canada in a location(s) considered “safe” according to DFAIT;
- Create entrepreneurial opportunities for the student;
- Provide learning about local, national and international business in the world economy;
- Create links to Ontario and Ontario’s small business community; and
- Last from 8 to 24 weeks, full-time hours.
For more information, please contact Kimberley Barclay, Relationship Manager,
Career Centre, by email at
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
The FCMA designation is a prestigious, national honorary designation awarded to Certified Management Accountants (CMA) who, through their outstanding achievements including community leadership, bring distinction to the management accounting profession and serve as a role model to others.
Ms. Unitt is the Chief Financial Officer and General Manager for Erskine Dredge and Associates Architect Inc., one of Ottawa’s leading architecture firms. She has more than 30 years of professional experience in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. In her current role, she successfully introduced strategic management practices into the organization through her work overseeing Finance, Administration, Human Resources and IT, and was nominated for a Creative Leadership Award at the firm.
Born and raised in Ottawa, Ms. Unitt received her Honours Bachelor of Commerce degree from the Telfer School of Management in 1996. She is considered a role model through her career achievements, enthusiasm of the CMA designation and volunteer work within the community.
Since achieving her CMA designation in 1998, Ms. Unitt has been a strong promoter of CMA Ontario. She currently serves on CMA Ontario’s Review Committee and acts as a mentor in the CMA Mentorship Program. She previously served as a Board member and Chair at the Chapter level in Ottawa for five years.
Ms. Unitt currently serves her community as a Board Member and Strategic Planning Committee member for the Causeway Work Centre, an award winning community economic development organization. She served as Treasurer of the Rehabilitation Centre Volunteer Association Board from 2009 to 2012.
Experienced in the "three pillars" of the profession – accounting, management and strategy – CMAs are strategic and financial management professionals who contribute to the bottom line success of organizations by understanding all areas of business.
The FCMA designation demonstrates excellence in management accounting, commitment and pride to CMA Ontario, and active involvement in improving the well-being of their respective communities that brings respect to the member and the management accounting profession. FCMAs are nominated by their peers, who recognize their exemplary qualities and contributions.
Earlier this year, CMA Ontario was granted status by the Public Accountants Council of Ontario (PAC) as an Authorized Designated Body to license and govern Certified Management Accountants to practise public accounting.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
On October 27 and 28, Enactus uOttawa welcomed Enactus teams from all across Eastern Ontario and Quebec to the organization’s annual leadership retreat. In close partnership with the Telfer Student Council, the University of Ottawa was granted the chance to host this weekend event because of the rapid increase in the team’s growth and success within the past year. This was an unprecedented opportunity to showcase the Telfer School of Management to students from all over Ontario and our neighboring province Quebec.
As a result, ACE (Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurs) and over 60 participants were brought to our campus and city. This allowed ACE to teach and provide Enactus members with tools, knowledge, and training to better create and run effective projects that help improve the quality of life for the less fortunate in the community. Erin Sheel, from College Pro, was also present to do a seminar about leadership and how to manage a team successfully.
The retreat allowed for attendees to network, share ideas, and socialize with the other Enactus teams. Most importantly, it was an opportunity for participants to receive useful training that would allow them to enhance their local program and thoroughly incorporate the triple bottom line: create projects that have an economic, social, and environmental impact on our local community.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Queen’s University Archives is pleased to announce that Dr. Cheryl McWatters will be presenting the 30th Annual Queen’s University Archives Lecture, entitled, “The news of our failure is almost in every child’s mouth: Accounts, tales, and travels through the archives.”
This year’s lecture will take place:
When: Wednesday, November 7, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Room 202, Robert Sutherland Hall (formerly known as the Policy Studies Building), located on Union Street, Kingston, ON.
Parking is available, above ground, off of Union Street, next to the playing field.
Dr. McWatters, who is currently the Father Edgar Thivierge Chair in Business History (with cross appointment with the Department of History), at the University of Ottawa, will be basing her lecture largely on her doctoral research, which was carried out in the Reading Room of Queen’s University Archives, and which involved the records of the Calvin Company, located on Garden Island though the 19th and early 20th centuries.
All are welcome, and refreshments will be served at the conclusion of the Lecture.
More information: http://archives.queensu.ca/news/30thlecture.html [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Community Engagement
Thank you to the following sponsors that made iSkate4CHEO possible: The Telfer School of Management, Aficionado, DocU Centre, Metro, GSAED, Long & McQuade, and Tannis. A special thank you to DJ Kee and our very own photographers: Michael Kim and Emily Direnzo.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Sophia Leong recently joined key members of Canada’s business and enterprise sectors in Startup Canada’s leadership team as it prepares to launch its national strategy to support entrepreneurship in Canada.
Click here to read Startup Canada’s complete press release.
- Category: Latest News
The Telfer School welcomes Jennifer Ferris, who is studying here on a prestigious Fulbright scholarship. The Canada-U.S. Fulbright scholarships provide a unique opportunity for outstanding students to examine issues that are relevant to Canada, to the U.S., and to the relationship between the two countries. Ferris is one of just 18 American students in the 2013-2014 cohort, and she chose the University of Ottawa!
She's taking courses towards a Master’s in Economics, and researching entrepreneurship with Professor David Doloreux. University Research Chair in Canadian Francophonie, Dr. Doloreux is a prolific researcher on innovation, knowledge transfer and regional development as they relate to a knowledge-based economy. Ferris will be studying how Canada’s entrepreneurship has changed over the past 30 years with respect to globalization as well as its variation among regions. She will also examine how best to encourage entrepreneurship among youth and linguistic minorities (particularly francophone).
An undergrad course piqued Ferris’s interest in entrepreneurship and she went on to pursue a double major in business economics and French, at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Ferris explains that she decided to study entrepreneurship in Canada for several different reasons, but mainly because of its important trade relationship with the United States and because of previous trips to Canada that she enjoyed.
Her initial reaction to living in Canada? “How different everything is from the United States, from education to politics to temperatures in Celsius to unfamiliar brands at the Rideau Centre,” says Ferris, a native of Vermont. “Although I didn’t realize to what extent it would be different here, I really enjoy learning about new things and my experience so far has been terrific!”
Read Jennifer's interview [This link is no longer available] in the Gazette.
Read more about Entrepreneurship at the Telfer School.
A note on the Fulbright student scholarships. The 2013-14 competition is open for Canadian students and the deadline is November 15. Follow these links for more information:
http://www.international.uottawa.ca/en/index.html
http://www.fulbright.ca/programs/canadian-scholars/traditional-awards-2.html
- Category: Telfer Announcements
On October 23 2012, Enactus uOttawa hosted its second annual Dragons’ Den competition for 75 high school business students. This event gave high school students in the National Capital Region the opportunity to compete in an academic university-level competition, where they pitched business ideas to a panel of judges. In addition to the competition, students enjoyed hearing from guest speakers including Angella Goran from Jokwear and Brennan Loh from Shopify. The students were also able to network with Telfer students and professionals from the community.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
“Project practitioners in any industry can draw valuable lessons from other sectors and also learn a great deal from failure. All too frequently, projects fail because of mismanagement,” says Professor Ika, who taught project management for twelve years at the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Gatineau before joining the faculty at Telfer last August. “International development projects in particular can be instructive, given their complexity as multisectorial, social, technical, and political undertakings.”
IPMA presented Dr. Ika with a 2012 Young Researcher Award for his outstanding doctoral work and related scholarly output. Among his research contributions, Ika recently published “Critical success factors for World Bank projects: An empirical investigation,” in the International Journal of Project Management, and he is the guest editor of a special issue at the Journal of African Business entitled: “Why do projects fail in Africa?”
Professor Ika received his award, presented his findings, and contributed to a panel of award winners on the practice insights emerging from the research at the 26th IPMA World Congress, October 29-31 on the Greek island of Crete.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Prof. Rhaman keeps his entire class fully engaged by fostering a true discussion of ideas and by injecting a good sense of humour. He is held in high esteem by all of his students as shown by his being named the best teacher by the MBA Student association for over 10 years. Dr. Rahman further develops his students’ appreciation of the subject matter he teaches by organizing a professional development day each year. This professional development day includes a series of lectures from Dr. Rahman and industry experts relating to economics and finance.
Click here [This link is no longer available] to vote for Prof. Rahman.
Click here [This link is no longer available] to read his complete biography.
- Category: Latest News
The Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa is pleased to announce that CGA Ontario has contributed a total of $370,000 to support students, teaching and research.
CGA Ontario’s $332,500 gift and $37,500 in-kind contribution will provide funding to create the new CGA Ontario Professor of Accounting position and the new CGA Ontario Accounting Capstone course. The organization will also sponsor the CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation and the CGA Ontario More than Numbers Awards. In addition, the donation will enable the Telfer School to provide professional development bursaries to staff and faculty members.
The CGA Ontario Professor of Accounting will facilitate the Telfer School's ability to attract an exceptional professor, researcher and leader who will provide academic and program leadership to maintain a thriving accounting program and contribute to the highest standards of accounting education and research.
The CGA Ontario Accounting Capstone course will be a differentiator for the Telfer School, enhancing the student experience and offering key applied and real-world experiential learning. The CGA Ontario Intopia Strategy Simulation is an exciting and integrative learning opportunity for BCom students as part of their 4th year Strategic Management Course.
“The positive impacts this funding will create for students, academics and financial professionals are tremendous,” said Doug Brooks, FCGA, CEO, CGA Ontario. “We’re very pleased to have the opportunity to establish and expand this important funding partnership with the Telfer School of Management.”
“The Telfer School is very thankful to CGA Ontario for their contribution. We truly appreciate their desire to invest in deserving students and in research and teaching” said François Julien, Dean at the Telfer School.“We look forward to continuing our long standing mutually beneficial relationship in the years ahead.”
The Telfer School will celebrate CGA Ontario’s support at its upcoming Alumni Breakfast Speaker Series event on October 30, 2012, which will feature keynote speaker Vince Commisso, CGA, Co-founding Partner, President and CEO of 9 Story Entertainment. CGA Ontario CEO Doug Brooks and other members of the leadership team will be on hand for this event.
About CGA Ontario
- Category: Appointments and Honours
In accordance with its “Linked with Leadership” statement, the Telfer School is welcoming five CEO in residence for the Fall 2012 semester. Each CEO is scheduled to share their experiences and interact with first year students.
Dan Moorcroft
CEO / Founder, QMR Consulting & Professional Staffing
Chairman of the Board, Ottawa Chamber of Commerce (2009)
Bernie Ashe
CEO, Kott group
Jean-Pierre Kingsley
Past President and CEO, The International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Jean Laurin
President and CEO, The Schinnerer Group
Pat McFadden
Principal, Quelmec Loss Adjusters
Click here, to see a list of CEO in residence from previous years.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Deakin University joins the Yale School of Management, Nanyang Polytechnic University in Singapore and the Telfer School of Management as the fourth university in an academic alliance to establish a global Centre of Excellence. Professor Richards and Professor Yeoh (Deakin University) have been collaborating for the past two years on business analytics research projects and they are working on building joint cases where Australian and Canadian students would collaborate.
You can read IBM’s news release to find out more.
- Category: Appointments and Honours
Mark Freel has recently been appointed as the Telfer School’s RBC Financial Group Professor in the Commercialization of Innovation for a 5-year period.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Ms. Robinson has been an active member of the Canadian investment industry for over twenty‐five years. She has unparalleled experience in investment management due diligence and monitoring, and building comprehensive multi‐manager investment platforms geared to the unique needs of private clients. Her experience has also included managing the portfolios and relationships of both private clients and institutions including not‐for‐profit corporations and foundations. Ms. Robinson began working exclusively with families and individuals at RBC Private Counsel in Ottawa where she was a Regional Vice President, Investment Counselor and Partner. She continued her journey with the unique investment needs of private clients when she joined CC&L Private Capital as Vice President. Her work with families and individuals has focused on the development and implementation of customized investment manager strategies, portfolios and investment policies.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
The Telfer School of Management has been recognized as an outstanding business school by The Princeton Review. In fact, the organization featured 296 leading business schools out of which only 16 are located outside of the United States. As a result, this recognition highlights the Telfer School international outreach and its strong world-wide reputation. Read more about the Telfer School’s accreditations and its position in the latest rankings.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
We recently celebrated some of our outstanding alumni by awarding them Trudeau medals, the Young Achiever's Award and the Dean's Philos Award who made a difference in their community. The 2012 Gala of Excellence was held at the Ottawa Convention Centre on September 29, 2012. This was also an opportunity to collectively celebrate our alma mater and highlight the graduation anniversary of the classes of 1962, 1972, 1987 and 2002.
Trudeau Medals
The Trudeau Medal is the highest honour given by the Telfer School of Management to its alumni. It recognizes leadership, initiative and contributions to the business world, the community and their alma mater.
John King, MHA 1979 [This link is no longer available]
Janet LeBlanc, MBA 1990 [This link is no longer available]
Charles-Antoine St-Jean, BAdm 1975, BCom 1976 [This link is no longer available]
The Young Achiever's Award
The Young Achiever's award was created to honour the individuals (under 40) who have been able to achieve greatness in their lives within an exceptional period of time.
Frédéric Michel, MBA 2004 [This link is no longer available]
The Dean's Philos Award
The Dean’s Philos Award recognized individuals who have demonstrated outstanding philanthropic achievement and social commitment.
Brian Radburn, BAdm 1981, BCom 1982 [This link is no longer available]
Photo: Brian Radburn, Charles-Antoine St-Jean, Janet LeBlanc, Dean François Julien, John King and Frédéric Michel
- Category: Rising Stars
Born and raised in Sudbury (Ontario), Benoit chose to pursue his studies at the Telfer School of Management following the advice he received from friends and family. “By the time I had completed my first year, I knew I had made the right decision and I have never looked back”, says Benoit. He is currently in his fourth year of the BCom program, specializing in Management Information Systems (MIS) with the COOP option. He chose this specialization because of his interest for development and the growing demand for employees with information management skills.
This past summer, Benoit had the opportunity to undertake his last COOP placement at Deloitte as a Technology Management Analyst. While he was at Deloitte, he was part of a team of talented consultants that were working on a multi-million dollars information management project. “The experience I had as an analyst on that particular project was priceless and I would recommend consultation work to any student interested in this field” said Benoit.
In addition to his academic and extracurricular work, Benoit made sure to make the most out of his experience and got involved in the Telfer School’s activities. He was a representative for the Telfer Marketing Association (TMA), a guide and captain for the 101 week, the Academic Vice-President for the Telfer Student Council and a musician for CASCO. His most significant contributions were undoubtedly is role in the 2011 Jeux du Commerce [This link is no longer available] in his debate team who won first place and his time as President of MISA. “Getting involved at Telfer enabled me to meet extraordinary people and to develop essential skills, while having fun. I strongly recommend to all students that would want to enhance their student experience and network with professionals to get involved at Telfer”. To conclude, Benoit has decided to get involved one last time by taking part in the international academic competition ICBC [This link is no longer available], organized each year by Queen’s University.
- Category: Donations / Fundraising
The Telfer School of Management held its 18th Annual Golf Tournament on September 14, 2012 at the Meadows Golf and Country Club. Since the Telfer School launched its first golf tournament in 1995 to stimulate networking and raise money for scholarship funds, over $700,000 has been raised.
You can see the pictures from this event via Flickr or Facebook.
It is with great enthusiasm that we announce that our next tournament will take place on September 13, 2013.
Photo: Tony Trentadue, Mike Brown, Rob Mariani, Vince Arlotta
| Sponsors | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
||||
| Partners | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
||||||
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Rob Mariani, is Vice President and Group Leader, Public Engagement at Hill + Knowlton Strategies in Ottawa.
Ten years ago Rob co-founded Ascentum with his business partner and fellow Telfer MBA Alumnus Joseph Peters. From a small office in Ottawa's Somerset Village, the firm set out to change the way organizations engage their publics. They developed tools and approaches, both online and in-person that enabled informed participation. Informed participation can be described as what happens when issues meet context. It is an enriched knowledge gathering process that produces meaningful dialogue and supports different degrees of involvement in the decision-making life cycle.
In the market place, this offering represented a shift from the traditional 'top of mind' approach to gathering citizen and stakeholder feedback. Informed participation makes a difference because of the complexity of issues facing today’s organizations. With context, facts and background, participants are better equipped to provide their diverse perspectives helping organizations make more robust and sustainable decisions.
Over the ten year span Rob led a number of initiatives across the government, not-for-profit and business sectors. He participated in public policy development, strategic business planning, program and service delivery, and business transformation. As project lead Rob often called upon this background in Quality and Process management from his time spent at Mitel to help deliver projects on time, within budget, and most importantly of the highest quality.
Today, Rob looks forward to a new horizon. In August of this year Hill + Knowlton Strategies announced the acquisition of Ascentum. H+K is the top-rated strategic communications firm in Canada, a leader in both public relations (PR) and public affairs (PA). As Vice President and Group Leader of the newly formed Public Engagement group, Rob's goal is to support the evolution of PR and PA from an industry that has been traditionally more about telling a story, to one that is involved in the creation of the story by engaging stakeholders and citizens in that process.
For H+K CEO Mike Coates the integration of public engagement into the current service mix represents an opportunity to redefine how the agency uses their relationships to help clients achieve their goals. For Rob and the Public Engagement group, it provides a spring board to continue to grow and expand what started as an Ottawa grown business by two MBA alumni over a decade ago.
Rob volunteers his time with the Telfer School of Management as a mentor in its Executive Mentoring Program.
- Category: Student Announcements
2012 Enterprise
$2,500 Female Entrepreneur and Leadership Award
Enterprise Rent-A-Car invites you to nominate an extraordinary female student to be considered for the 2012 Female Enterprise Entrepreneur and Leadership Award. Nominees should have a personal record of entrepreneurial spirit, leadership skills and be a positive role model for past, current, and future students. The winner will receive a $2,500 prize to be applied to their tuition.
Nominations
Nominations for this award will be accepted from students, faculty, alumni, and members of the local business community. Self nominations are also permitted. Criteria for nominating and evaluating honorees include the following:
- Nominees should be full-time female students in their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year of their BCom program at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.
- Demonstrate exceptional entrepreneurial spirit through innovative approaches to business and show exemplary leadership skills in their work, social and academic lives.
- Entrepreneurial projects do not have to be associated with the Telfer School of Management.
Nominations can be made by completing the Nomination form and sending it via email to Susan Redmond at
Nominations for the 2012 Female Enterprise Entrepreneur and Leadership Award must be received no later than Monday January 14, 2013. Download a nomination form.
Selection
Committee Members will review all nominations and develop a list of finalists who best meet the above criteria. Members will select the award winner based on the submission and a short personal interview. This award will be presented at the 22nd Annual Entrepreneurs’ Club Toast to Success - Business Dinner on January 31, 2013.
- Category: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Telfer School professors shared their perspectives on innovation management with a South African delegation led by Dr. Phil Mjwara, Director-General of South Africa’s Science & Technology Department on September 13.
Following an introduction by Dean François Julien, Tom Brzustowski, RBC Financial Group Professor in the Commercialization of Innovation, provided an overview of innovation in Canada and the role of the universities.
Tyler Chamberlin highlighted the local dimension of commercialization and the ability of regions to adapt to changes in the international marketplace.
Margaret Dalziel examined how best to measure the impacts of government investments in innovation.
Joe Irvine, Director of the Technology Transfer and Business Enterprise (TTBE) office at the University of Ottawa, discussed the work of his team in advancing strategic partnerships that create value.
The South African delegation was in Ottawa as part of a study tour examining technology commercialization, innovation management and intellectual property management in Canada.
Photo: Viviana Fernandez, Research Facilitator, Phil Mjwara, Director-General of South Africa’s Science & Technology Department (DST), Professor Tom Brzustowski, Mmapitso Mokotedi of DST and Dean François Julien.
- Category: Rising Stars
Brittany Rockwell (BCom, Finance) excels in many areas and the numerous student competitions and awards she won are a proof of her everyday commitment to deliver superior results. She is currently working at the Telfer School as a Research Assistant in addition to her studies.
She still finds time to play a vital part in her community and has recently been rewarded by receiving the Alterna Savings Social Responsibility and leadership Award 2012. She acts as Vice-President Fundraising and Swimming Instructor for Making Waves Ottawa, a not-for-profit organization. It provides affordable and accessible one-on-one swimming instruction to children with special needs, which are likelier to suffer from a submersion injury than the general population. Because of their special needs, the children helped by Making Waves Ottawa would not be able to attend normal group lessons which are less expensive than private lessons. As a result, many families depend on the organization to make sure their children know what to do if they fall into water.
The organization is currently looking for 30 dedicated student volunteers to teach children with special needs to swim. If you are interesting in joining their team and helping your community, click here (link is no longer available).
- Category: Latest News
Myron Gomes learned about “the real-life challenges of running a small business” by working part-time at his family’s restaurant. It is what inspired the 23-year-old Telfer BCom graduate to devise a digital rewards punch card to encourage customer loyalty at restaurants and small retail outlets. The result is Spoonity, a company that Gomes and Max Bailey, a Queen’s University mechanical engineering grad, pitched to a panel of four seasoned business professionals in a recent competition marking the close of this year’s Startup Garage, an initiative of the The Ottawa Technology Transfer Network.
Gomes and Bailey won the competition — reminiscent of CBC TV’s Dragons’ Den, albeit a gentler version— which pitted them against seven other student start-ups from the University of Ottawa, Carleton University and Algonquin College. The pitches ranged from an office management tool to a campus computer repair service and a solid shaving bar.
So far, more than 70 merchants in Ottawa, Halifax and Toronto have signed on with Spoonity. “We’re generating a lot of traction and positive feedback,” says Gomes, who hopes to run pilot projects in Europe and India.
The graduation day pitch session “demonstrates how far these students have developed their businesses, from concepts to customer engagement,” says Joe Irvine, director of the University of Ottawa's Technology Transfer and Business Enterprise, which has operated Startup Garage with the Ottawa Technology Transfer Network for the past three years.
This year, eight start-ups involving 21 students were granted $20,000 each, mentorship and space at Invest Ottawa’s offices to further develop their businesses over three months during the summer. The final competition was the culmination of a year of intensive work in which students learned all aspects of running a business — from developing winning pitches to marketing and accounting — under the guidance of the Startup Garage team and successful local entrepreneurs who volunteered their time.
An information session for budding entrepreneurs interested in presenting their business ideas to Startup Garage 2013 will be held at the Agora in the University Centre on September 27 at 4:30 p.m.
You can read the original article written by Monique Roy-Sole by clicking here [This link is no longer available].
- Category: Appointments and Honours
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Mark is co-owner and President of Inspire Developments – a private corporation that owns and manages 94 rental units in the Ottawa area as well as develops unique infill real estate projects. Currently the company is developing a 31 unit condominium project near the Ottawa Train Yards as well as a 3 unit townhouse project in Centertown.
Until the spring of 2012, Mark lived in Toronto for 10 years where he was President and CEO of The Futura Loyalty Group, a strategic services and technology provider to the leading rewards program operators in North America including Aeroplan, Delta Sky Miles, American Advantage Miles and US Airways Miles.
Key experiences in this role included:
- Raised $34 million in venture capital financing through both equity and debt instruments.
- Recruiting, structuring and implementing numerous strategic partnerships with large, public entities.
- Day to day oversight and management of a team of as many as 50 staff.
Mark is a down to earth, transparent, results oriented manager who enjoys interacting with all stakeholders in a business environment.
Mark is also a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Telfer School.
- Category: Health Systems Management
Craig Kuziemsky tackled the unintended benefits of introducing health information systems (HIS) at the European Medical Informatics Conference in Pisa, Italy on Aug. 27. Professor Kuziemsky and a team of researchers from Canada, Denmark, and Australia used several case studies of HIS implementation to develop a model of unintended benefits of HIS usage with three categories of benefits: patient, service delivery and administrative. They also examined the implications of these benefits on the design and evaluation of HISs. The benefits were not visible until after these systems were used in real clinical situations and settings. This was in contrast to studies of negative consequences of HIS implementation, which are often easier to identify because they raise issues which tend to draw immediate attention.
- Category: Telfer Announcements
MSc Health Systems candidates Emmanuel Kabura and Seyed Izadshenas on Friday gave presentations describing the valuable hands-on experience they gained as research interns at the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Accreditation Canada, respectively. The three-month internship component of the MSc enables students to apply their knowledge of innovative research methodologies and tools while working with experts on leading-edge research projects. This prepares students to be meaningful contributors to health systems delivery after graduation while promoting linkages between research and practice.
Emmanuel developed a geostatistical tool at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) capable of converting health data into geo-spatial intelligence for use in specific projects. Seyed delved into Accreditation Canada data to analyse possible relationships between governance in healthcare organizations and specific patient safety outcomes.
- Category: Rising Stars
Originally from New Jersey, Alexei fell in love with Canada's capital city. He chose to pursue his post-secondary education at the Telfer School of Management because it is one of only two North American business schools to hold AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA, the three most prestigious accreditations in the world. He was also drawn to the University of Ottawa because it is the largest bilingual university in North America and therefore a fantastic opportunity for him to deepen his passion for the French language.
Over the past few years, Alexei has embraced student life. "I've gained incredible experiences and knowledge through being active, and I urge every student to get involved with the Telfer School of Management." Alexei is a member of SIFE [This link is no longer available] and the Finance Society, as well as one of the seven mentorees of the Capital Markets Mentorship Program. His most significant contribution is undoubtedly his role as president of the Accounting Club for the 2012-2013 academic year.
In the coming years, Alexei plans to remain active in Telfer's various clubs and associations. He would also like to increase his involvement in the Telfer School by becoming a teaching assistant. In addition, he intends to continue building relationships with students, professors and professionals across Canada and further motivate students to help establish the Telfer School of Management's reputation for its excellence in leadership. Upon receiving his accounting degree, Alexei plans to obtain the CA and CFA designations to prepare for his entry into the job market.
- Category: Community Engagement
Three teams of students in Professor Garrick Apollon's ADM 3718 - Commerce international course worked on a term project aiming to convince Canadian companies to invest and to buy Haiti's fair-trade cocoa products to make chocolate and chocolate products. The students' challenge was organized according to the format of the television show, "The Apprentice." The students had to submit a written report and make an oral presentation to an evaluation committee. The committee members (on the picture) were Carlo Sévère, Minister-Counsellor at the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti; Carl Apollon, President of the Groupe Intercal; Frantz Liautaud, Haiti's Ambassador to Canada; Ms. Carré, Minister-Counsellor at the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti; Jennifer Williams, CEO, Camino; and Professor Garrick Apollon. Congratulations to the members of the challenge-winning team, which included students Asmaâ Alaoui, Soufiane Bakas, Julie Bédard, Chris Daccache, Reda Laalaj and Mehdi Rais!
As Professor Apollon explained, it is not common for students to be required to make a presentation before an ambassador and the CEO of a Canadian coop like Camino. "I was nervous for them and I am proud of their accomplishments and their work. I also want to express my deep appreciation to the judges, who generously gave more than half a workday to this Telfer School project," said Professor Apollon.
Inspired by his experience with Professor Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Professor Apollon decided to have his students work on a real project of a "social nature." Because the United States government recently announced that it will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Haiti through USAID for the development of Haiti's cocoa industry, it is realistic to think that the Telfer School students' project might have convinced Canadian businesses to invest in Haiti. The project also aimed to make Telfer School students aware of their power to change the world because all too often, people think that only charitable donations and humanitarian projects create lasting changes in developing countries like Haiti. However, the response is also in the promotion of responsible foreign investments and fair trade, and Telfer School students have the training to fulfil this mission.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Five remarkable alumni will be recognized by receiving Trudeau medals, the Young Achiever's Award and the Dean's Philos Award for their outstanding contributions to the world of business, the community and their alma mater at the 2012 Telfer School of Management Alumni Association Gala of Excellence. The Gala will be held at the Ottawa Convention Centre on September 29, 2012, during the University of Ottawa’s Homecoming celebrations.
Trudeau Medals
John King, MHA 1979
Janet LeBlanc, MBA 1990
Charles-Antoine St-Jean, BAdm 1975, BCom 1976 [This link is no longer available]
The Young Achiever's Award
Frédéric Michel, MBA 2004
The Dean's Philos Award
Brian Radburn, BAdm 1981, BCom 1982 [This link is no longer available]
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
In 1992, Michael was selected among 5300 candidates to be one of Canada's next generation of astronauts. Michael retired from the military in 2001, and seeking ever-greater challenges, began to work with PixeLINK in 2002. As president, Michael provided strategic direction to the company and ensured that PixeLINK provided the best products to customers as well as the most value to shareholders.
Michael left the company in 2008 to become an independent consultant and CEO of the Ottawa Flight College/Ottawa Flying Club. He helped the organization to transition from a club to an operating business with the development and formulation of policies and procedures and the creation of corporate learning processes that have enabled the organization grow and adapt to changing business conditions. In addition, he revamped the IT system, implementing an open-source Enterprise Resource Planning system that automated business processes and improved reporting and control, while replacing several other software systems and eliminating redundant manual data entry. He has also been instrumental in maintaining strong stakeholder relationships with key partners and suppliers of the company.
In 2012, Michael became the CEO of Scouts Canada.
Mike holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada and an Executive MBA from the Telfer School of Management.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Three remarkable alumni will be recognized by receiving Trudeau medals for their outstanding contributions to the world of business, the community and their alma mater at the 2012 Telfer School of Management Alumni Association Gala of Excellence. The Gala will be held at the Ottawa Convention Centre on September 29, 2012, during the University of Ottawa’s Homecoming celebrations.
John King, MHA 1979
Janet LeBlanc, MBA 1990
Charles-Antoine St-Jean, BAdm 1975, BCom 1976 [This link is no longer available]
The recipients of the Dean's Philos Award and of the Young Achiever's Award will be announced shortly.
- Category: Alumni in the Lead
Weiwei (Vivi) Wu will present her research on innovation-enabling organizations at the Academy of Management’s annual meeting, August 3-7 in Boston.
- Category: Rising Stars
- Category: Rising Stars
Congratulations to undergraduate students Andrei Huranchyk, Tarik Aeta, Will Zhao and James Killoran who recently won 2nd place, representing the Telfer School, at the PRMIA Financial Risk Management Competition. They had to compete with 13 other teams at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Subcategories
Student Voices
The following article was written by a member of our student community. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Telfer School of Management. For more information or to flag inappropriate content, please
