Session Leaders
Session leaders include senior professors from Smith School of Business and knowledgeable experts from industry. These outstanding teachers are constantly in touch with today's business world through real-world business experience, Board memberships and their own consulting practices.
Working as a licensed public accountant and audit partner, my professional interests were always broad and encompassed the provision of auditing, accounting and taxation services. I have frequently acted as an advisor on issues relating to governance, strategy development and mergers & acquisitions. Having worked in several KPMG offices, I served clients drawn from a range of industries including wholesale and retail, manufacturing and processing, distribution and transportation, tourism and hospitality, life sciences and software. In the Not-for-Profit sector, I worked with municipalities, public utilities, housing corporations, children’s aid societies and small charitable organizations in the social services field.
In addition to my client service responsibilities, I proudly served as chair of the firm’s KPMG Enterprise Learning Council, a group of KPMG partners tasked with the development and delivery of a learning program for the firm’s staff advising private company clients.
Having served as the Managing Partner of KPMG’s Kingston office, I retired from the firm in 2014. I now teach part-time at Queen’s (Smith School of Business FT MBA, Graduate Diploma in Business and Executive Education) and serve on the Board of Directors of a large private company. I also act as a consultant to a couple of private companies and serve on the investment committee of a private foundation.
CvB & Associates was founded by Christopher von Baeyer, who began his research and professional practice over 35 years ago as an undergraduate at Harvard University. He has since developed an international reputation as a thought leader and expert practitioner in the field of Leadership Presence. Currently based in Toronto, he has designed and delivered arts-based programming in leadership and professional communication for hundreds of clients across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including BASF, Dolby, Duke Corporate Education, Rogers Communication, Enbridge, Société Générale, Deloitte & Touche, Boston Consulting Group, the Canadian government and the Hearst Corporation. He has served as a consultant and contributing partner to the Queen's/Smith Professional Development faculty for over 15 years.
Over the course of his career, he has coached thousands of men and women in the art of leadership presence, emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, Shakespeare, and voice. As a founding principal at The Ariel Group, the industry-leading international corporate training skills firm from Boston, he served as VP of Client Solutions where he managed the company’s highest revenue-generating clients for over 10 years. He has taught at the Harvard Business School, Emerson College, Boston College, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago and the Columbia University Senior Executive Program in New York. He has served on the faculty and Advisory Board for Leadership Development at the Banff Centre in Alberta, as well as the board of the Centre for Playback Theatre in New York. In 2014 he returned from a two-year work sabbatical travelling and living between Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bangkok, Bali Province, Indonesia and Berlin, Germany.
Chris is deeply committed to employing the arts as a creative tool for promoting dialogue on issues of social and civic concern. He recently completed an intensive training with Al Gore to become certified as a member of the Climate Reality Leaderships Corps. For 10 years he served as the Artistic Director for Toronto Playback Theatre, which he founded with the mission of providing improvisational and audience-interactive theatre for diverse communities in the Toronto area. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the Dharma Centre of Canada, one of the oldest meditation centres in North America. He holds a BA in English and American literature from Harvard University and an M.A. in Theatre Arts and Vocal Communication from Lesley University Graduate School. He currently resides in Toronto and is the proud father of a university-aged son.
An authority on social and economic policy issues, Keith Banting is the author of Poverty, Politics and Policy and The Welfare State and Canadian Federalism. He is an editor and co-author of another dozen books dealing with public policy, including most recently Federalism and Health Policy: A Comparative Perspective on Multi-Level Governance. He currently holds the Queen’s Research Chair in Public Policy. Professor Banting served as Director of the School of Policy Studies from 1993 to 2003. Prior to that appointment, he served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Queen’s University. In 1983-85, he was a Research Coordinator for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada. In 1986-92, he was a member of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and in 1990 was elected vice-president of the Council. In 2005, Dr. Banting was invested as a member of the Order of Canada.
Julian is the author of The Science of Leadership: Lessons From Research for Organizational Leaders, which was published by Oxford University Press (New York) in January, 2014. His research interests focus on the nature and development of transformational leadership and employee well-being, and he is also the author of well over 200 research articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of several books, including Employment, Stress and Family Functioning (1990, Wiley & Sons); The Union and Its Members: A Psychological Approach (1992, Oxford University Press); Changing Employment Relations: Behavioral and Social Perspectives (1995, American Psychological Association); Young Workers (1999, American Psychological Association); and The Psychology of Workplace Safety (2004, American Psychological Association). He is also co-editor of the Handbook of Workplace Violence (2006, SAGE Publications), and senior editor of both the Handbook of Work Stress (2005), Handbook of Organizational Behaviour (2008), all published by SAGE, The Psychology of Green Organizations (2015) and Work and Sleep: Research Insights for the Workplace (2016), both published by Oxford University Press).
Julian was formerly the editor of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, served as the chair of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Workplace Violence in 2001-2, and was the chairperson of the Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety to the Ontario Minister of Labour from 1989-1991.
Julian is a Fellow for the Royal Society of Canada, the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Canadian Psychological Association. Julian was the recipient in 2016 of the Distinguished Contributions to Industrial and Organizational Psychology by the C-SIOP Division of the Canadian Psychological Association.
Julian was named one of the 2020 recipients of the Distinguished University Professor designation, Queen’s University’s highest research-related honour. MacLean's magazine named Julian as one of Queen's University's most popular professors in 1996. Julian received the National Post's "Leaders in Business Education" award in 2001 and Queen's University's Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision in 2008.
Julian received his Ph.D in 1979 from the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he subsequently taught in the Psychology Department. He joined Queen's University in 1984, initially teaching in the Department of Psychology. Julian moved to the School of Business in 1994; and served as the Associate Dean with responsibility for the Ph.D, M.Sc and Research programs in the School of Business from 1997-2011.
Cara Barrineau has an extensive background in communications, business, and the arts. She brings over 15 years of coaching experience, 11 years of virtual experience and 23 years of professional acting experience to her role as a trainer and coach. She is passionate about creating a supportive and challenging environment to help each participant build awareness and take risks.
Cara has worked extensively with a wide range of business segments, including technology, entertainment, government, and the financial industry. Select clients include Executive Education Programs of Harvard & Columbia, Federal Reserve Bank, CIA, American Express, Citibank, IBM, Oliver Wyman, Johnson & Johnson, Hearst, Proctor & Gamble, Disney, Time Warner.
Peggy has dedicated her life to training excellence. Her passion for developing people, proven expertise, vast training experience, and engaging style make her the perfect trainer to deliver programs to demanding, senior-level audiences. With more than 20 years of corporate training experience, Peggy has delivered hundreds of programs to leading corporations across numerous industries and she consistently receives outstanding reviews by inspiring deep commitment in those she coaches.
A world in which technology enables businesses to prosper, employees to thrive, and a culture for driving results to flourish is the vision behind Kathryn Brohman’s thought leadership in sustainable execution.
An Associate professor at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Kathryn has co-authored several books that focus on how today’s organizations can navigate business practices to drive short-term results without compromising long-term success. Her most recent book entitled SHIFT: A New Mindset for Sustainable Execution presents results from her work with over 750+ organizations that helped translate strategy into action. The book provides a pragmatic approach to identifying salient execution barriers, filling gaps to stabilize an execution backbone, and removing distractions to seamlessly adapt to change.
Since arriving at Queen’s University in 2003, Kathryn has pioneered programs in Strategy Execution and Digital Transformation across MBA and executive programs. She has worked with hundreds of organizations in North America to translate strategy into action. Kathryn has received multiple funding grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as well as the Ontario Research Foundation and published her work in premier journals including MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Harvard Business Review, MIS Quarterly Executive, and Communications of the ACM.
Dr. Sean Cleary is a Professor of Finance at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University. He is the founder and Academic Director of the Master of Finance program. He holds a PhD in finance from the University of Toronto and is a CFA charter holder. He is a current member of the CFA Society Toronto Advisory Council, and is a former member of the Board of Directors for the Toronto CFA Society and the Atlantic Canada CFA Society (where he served as President).
Dr. Cleary has authored 14 finance textbooks and has published more than 30 research articles, including several in top tier finance journals. His publications have been cited over 4,400 times and he has received several major research grants. His most recent research and educational interests focus on the field of sustainable finance. He is an Associate Editor for two finance journals and frequently serves as a reviewer for many of the top finance journals. Dr. Cleary regularly serves as an expert witness on cost of capital and capital markets.
Barry Cross is an expert and thought leader in innovation, execution and operations strategy. He joined Smith School of Business after nearly 20 years in the automotive and manufacturing sectors with Magna Autosystems and DuPont, where he led many key strategic initiatives, including nearly 30 program launches in North America, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Barry speaks and consults widely in the areas of Lean Innovation, Strategy, Projects and Execution, enabling organizations to create sustainable value for their customers. He is the bestselling author of three books, including Simple: Killing Complexity for a Lean and Agile Organization, and several Most Read articles.
Shai Dubey teaches courses in negotiations, cross-cultural management, ethics, domestic and international business law and entrepreneurship.
Shai earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Toronto and his Law Degree from Queen's University. Shai is also a graduate of the aviation Flight Technology Program at Seneca College.
After graduating from Seneca College in 1984, he began his working career as a commercial pilot. In 1985 he founded and ran both an executive aircraft charter company and a flight training school based in Toronto. After selling this company, Shai worked as an aviation consultant providing strategic and regulatory advice to Canadian and foreign clients. He practiced law on Bay Street and then ran a global company prior to joining Queen’s.
Chantal Hébert is a national affairs columnist with The Toronto Star and a guest columnist for Le Devoir. She is also a regular contributor to the weekly “At Issue” panel on the CBC’s National News. Ms. Hébert served as parliamentary bureau chief for La Presse and Le Devoir in Ottawa, and as a political reporter for Radio-Canada. She is a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, the 2005 recipient of APEX’s Public Service Award, and the 2006 recipient of the Hyman Solomon award for excellence in journalism and public policy.
Peter Jensen is the author of The Inside Edge, Ignite The Third Factor and Thriving in a 24/7 World, the founder of Third Factor, and a longstanding instructor at Smith School of Business at Queen's University. A dynamic speaker with a Ph.D. in Sport Psychology, Peter has attended 9 Olympic Games as a member of the Canadian team and helped over 70 athletes medal. With the world of Olympic sport as a laboratory, he has developed a deep understanding of what it takes to be a successful leader of high performers. Peter is a renowned innovator—bringing coaching and personal high performance to corporations worldwide. As a teacher, Peter has the power to invigorate audiences through his compelling use of humour, personal experiences and concrete, actionable content.
Sarah conducts climate change materiality assessments and climate change scenario analysis, works with her clients to set ambitious and achievable climate change goals and targets, and develops implementation roadmaps. She regularly presents to boards of directors on climate change and ESG factors and implications for corporate governance and oversight, and the link with financial and operational performance and long-term value.
Prior to joining ESG Global Advisors, Sarah was a Principal at CPA Canada where she produced research, thought leadership and guidance for companies to integrate climate change considerations into business strategy, risk management, governance, and reporting. Prior to CPA Canada, Sarah held senior roles at PwC and MNP working with the energy and mining sectors.
She is a member of the Institute for Corporate Directors Climate Strategy Advisory Board for the Canadian Chapter of the WEF Climate Governance Initiative. Sarah sits on the Board of Directors of Leading Change and Sustainable Buildings Canada. She has a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University, ISO 14064-3 Certification for Greenhouse Gas Verifications, and received the 2018 Emerging Leader Award from CPA Ontario.
Elspeth Murray has served as the Associate Dean - MBA and Master’s Programs from 2012-2022 and has been a professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Smith School of Business since 1996. She also holds the CIBC Fellowship in Entrepreneurship, and founded Smith's Centre for Business Venturing. She is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Social Impact. Prior to joining Smith, she worked in industry for 7 years for several firms including IBM, and Canadian Tire. As an integral part of her work in the strategy and new venture fields, Dr. Murray specializes in the management of change. In 2002, she co-authored a best-selling book, Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, Oxford University Press, with Dr. Peter Richardson. She has recently co-developed (with Dr. David Saunders) the Analytics Climate Assessment Tool (ACAT), which is used to assess organizations technological capacity, skill sets, and analytics culture. Current research is focused on best practices in leading and managing change to create an analytics culture.
Dr. Murray teaches on many MBA and Executive Education programs, and consults widely with a diversity of firms including BMW, Detour Gold, Wawanesa Insurance, Versacold Logistics and the Auditor General for Canada. She serves as a Director for several firms and is an advisor to several start-ups and CEO's. Dr. Murray received an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics, and an MBA, both from Queen's University. Her doctorate in Strategy and Management Information Systems was completed at the Richard Ivey School of Business.
Nik Nanos is a Canadian public opinion pollster and an expert on image research and crisis communications management. In 1987 Nanos founded SES Research while he was a student at Queen's University. The company is now known as Nanos Research, a market and public opinion research firm with clients across North America. In the 2006 federal election, Nanos predicted the results to within one tenth of one percentage point for the four major parties - a record in Canadian polling history. His company is the official pollster for CTV News. In 2008, Nanos was appointed an associate professor in the Canadian studies program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is a graduate of the Queen’s Executive MBA program.
Dr. Raver is an Associate Professor and E. Marie Shantz Faculty Fellow in Organizational Behaviour at Smith School of Business, and is also cross-appointed to the Department of Psychology. She is an authority on interpersonal relations and group processes at work, with a specific emphasis upon the ways in which employees support each other and build high-performance environments (e.g., helping, promoting learning) versus engage in counterproductive actions that undermine each other (e.g., harassment, bullying, relationship conflicts).
Professor Raver's scholarship in this area has been internationally recognized through best paper awards from the Academy of Management and from the International Association of Conflict Management (IACM), and her work on these topics has been published in prestigious outlets including the Academy of Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review. A second area of Professor Raver's expertise pertains to workplace diversity and cultural differences, where her current focus is on the integration of diverse or dissimilar employees into work groups and organizations. Her work has also included cross-cultural investigations of conflict processes and societal control systems. Her scholarship in this domain has also earned awards, including the Outstanding Article Award from IACM, and has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Resource Management Review, and in several book chapters. Professor Raver has worked with a number of organizations from both the private and public sectors in the U.S. and Canada. She is also regularly invited to speak about building positive organizational cultures, teams, workplace harassment, conflict, and diversity to associations of academics, policy makers, and employees. Her work has been profiled in media outlets including The Globe & Mail, the National Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Professor Raver teaches courses in human resource management, organizational behaviour, and group processes that span academic programs (Commerce, MBA, MSc, PhD). She is also actively involved in professional service, including serving on the Editorial Board of Negotiation and Conflict Management Journal and acting as an ad-hoc reviewer for numerous top-tier journals.
Matt Reesor is Director, Smith MBA at Queen’s University. He has held numerous administrative leadership positions since joining the School in 2011.
He has also been an Adjunct Lecturer since 2013 and has designed and taught a variety of communication-themed graduate courses and Executive Education programs.
Earlier in his career, Matt was a Lecturer at Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (NUCB) where he was recipient of the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award in 2003.
He is the author of a best-selling communications textbook published by Macmillan Japan (2004).
Douglas Reid is an authority on corporate strategy, and has been widely quoted in the media. As a researcher, he specializes in inter-company alliance dynamics and large alliance evolution. Prior to joining Smith School of Business, he was vice president at Burson-Marsteller, an international consulting firm. He recently concluded six years of service as a director of Candela Energy, and is an active advisor to several companies including Bell Canada, Ontario Securities Commission, Canada Post, Shoppers Drug Mart and Royal and Sun Alliance.
Richard Richards is originally from the UK and currently lives in Spain. He has lived and worked outside the UK (Germany, Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Nicaragua) for most of the last 45 years of which 23 were in the USA (Chicago and Boston). He carries both UK and US passports and his rich, overseas experiences have given him a deep appreciation for the world and its many peoples. While almost all his paid work is with people at the top of the world’s pyramid, his spirit gravitates to those at the foundation, or to those who actively include them. He coaches and facilitates in English and in Spanish.
Richard has worked in all four roles of the typical client/training provider relationship: client, consultant, designer, and facilitator. As a client, he spent almost 20 years working for Hyatt International, in Human Resources and Learning and Development. He subsequently had his own training and consulting practice. That experience, and his graduate work at DePaul University, led to him to work as Vice President of Learning Design for an experiential training company, before branching out again in his own consulting practice.
Along the way, he studied improvisation at Second City in Chicago, spent two years teaching at a leadership institute on the border of Honduras in Nicaragua, and has worked as a professional actor in the US on stage, in voice-over and in film. The latter was the inspiration for his MA in Applied Learning and still informs much of his approach in working experientially with clients.
As a coach and facilitator, he focuses on those aspects of leadership that can sometimes be overlooked in the tactical demands of meeting targets, solving problems, and delivering strategic outcomes in an ever more rapidly moving world. That is, an executive’s personal and leadership presence, essential to inspiring and motivating their colleagues, shareholders, employees and other key stakeholders.
He is equally at home working with clients and participants in-person or virtually. He brings the same passion, energy and integrity to virtual instructor-led trainings (or VILTs) as he does to an in-person classroom, creating valuable, co-created learning experiences.
He has facilitated and designed leadership and communication workshops for clients all over the world and across many industries. This has included financial services companies (Citi, American Express, The Acumen Fund, Wellington Management), pharmaceuticals (Abbott, Bayer, IDEXX), technology (Accenture, Cognizant, Nos, Stripe), universities (Duke, Harvard, Bath, IHEID, Darden) and consulting firms (Boston Consulting, Oliver Wyman), among others.
Peter Richardson has been a faculty member of the School of Business for 37 years. He teaches both introductory and advanced strategy courses in the School of Business on the Executive MBA programs and on a number of the School’s one and three week Continuing Education programs.
Together with Elspeth Murray, Peter has authored a book, entitled Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, published by the Oxford University Press in 2002. An accompanying Guide was published early in 2003. Through his research and associated consulting activities, he has developed a unique concept of Strategy as Action, and has written several papers on this topic. During his 30-plus years at Queen’s University, Peter has authored over 90 papers and case studies on strategic management. In his previous book, Cost Containment: The Ultimate Strategic Advantage, one of the few books written on cost improvement, Peter described a novel strategic approach to cost improvement that has been adopted in many organizations in both the public and private sectors. At present, Peter is exploring the impact of the increasing demand for speed in business, which he believes has profound implications for organization change, strategy implementation, risk management and organization processes.
Peter consults widely with both public and private sector organizations, working closely for extended periods with senior executives on strategy development and deployment. Corporate clients have included Codelco, Vale, Anglo-American Corporation, Alcoa, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Bell Canada, CIBC, CIBC-Mellon, De Beers Canada, Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanplats, Redpath Mining, Quadra Chemicals, Gibson Energy, and Xerox. In the Public Sector, clients have included the Supreme Court of Canada, The Office of the Auditor General for Canada, The Surveyor General of Canada, Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Health Canada. He has also been retained as a consultant on more than 20 major international mining projects including the successful development and construction of the Collahuasi copper mine in Chile which is to-date the world’s largest and highest single mining project, and the Victor Diamond Mine in Canada – designated globally as the ‘Mine of the Year in 2009’.
Peter has also carried out strategic planning assignments for a number of Associations including the Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, The Consejo Minero de Chile, the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada, the Zinc Association, and the Mining Association of Canada.
A former Canadian diplomat, Mr. Robertson is Vice President and Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and hosts its regular Global Exchange podcast. He is an Executive Fellow at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. Mr. Robertson sits on the advisory councils of the Johnson Shoyama School of Public Policy, Conference of Defence Associations Institute, North American Research Partnership, and the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. He is an Honorary Captain (Royal Canadian Navy) assigned to the Strategic Communications Directorate. He is a member of the Deputy Minister of International Trade's NAFTA Advisory Council and the North American Forum. He writes on foreign affairs for The Globe and Mail and he is a frequent contributor to other media.
Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and the Director of the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the co-author, with Eugene Lang, of the prize-winning The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. She was the Massey Lecturer in 2001 and a Trudeau Fellow. She was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate. She is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. Dr. Stein currently serves as Co-Chair of the International Programs Committee on the Board of Care Canada.
Mr. Van Ness has over 25 years of experience as a consultant, leadership/executive coach and master facilitator. He is a certified Psychosynthesis Life Coach.
With a unique background in the use of theatre, storytelling and action methods for organizational change and leadership development, Tim has designed and delivered distinctive programs for clients across diverse industries including consumer products, financial services, health care, higher education, manufacturing, energy and technology. His work has helped such valued organizations as IBM, Cisco Systems, Domtar, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Liberty Mutual, Merrill Lynch, and numerous other innovative corporations, health care institutions, organizations of higher learning, non-profits and family businesses.
Tim is a 35-year veteran of Playback Theatre, an original form of improvisational theatre based on the enactment of personal story. An accredited trainer for the Centre for Playback Theatre (CPT), Tim has performed with, founded, consulted to and coached Playback companies in 5 countries, and has served as a strategic advisor to the board of the CPT.
He has travelled the globe coaching and teaching leadership, communication and executive
presence at NASA, KKR, P&G, BCG, the CIA, Google, The US Federal Reserve, American Express, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and many others.
Tim has been a visiting professor at Antioch (Keene, NH), New York University and the Stockholm School of Economics, and has taught for Executive Education programs at Harvard, Columbia & Duke Universities, UVA’s Darden School of Business and Queen’s College’s Smith School of Business. He has also served on the boards of several non-profits.
Once a music teacher in the Boston Public Schools, Mr. Van Ness weaves his experience as an actor, director, improvisor, educator, storyteller, business leader, and classically trained musician to provide each client a unique experience specifically suited to their goals.