A recent piece at Appsforpcdaily.com delves into The Birth of the Brand: 4000 Years of Branding History, a study by Desautels professor Karl Moore and Susan E. Reid that contends that brands are as old as civilization.
From the stamps that ancient Roman bakers identified their bread with or the symbols on medieval merchants’ signs right up to today’s logos, the role has changed from simple identification into a stylized representation of a given company’s image.
Desautels professor Karl Moore writes in The Globe and Mail that, though most business leadership writing is aimed at extroverts, introverted leaders are becoming more evident every day. He goes on to describe ways in which introverted leaders can effectively manage extroverts.
In a piece for SFGate, Drs. Deepak Chopra and Anoop Kumar (MMGMT’15, International Practicing Health) write that, though the times we live in are worrying at best, taking on a new worldview can really help restore some hope.
The starting point should be to remember that we are conditioned to view nature and human nature through a skewed collective worldview, but that we have the power to escape it. As the product of a technology-driven age, we believe that the concrete is the real, and that humans are uniquely gifted with consciousness.
Canadian Jewish News profiles William Shatner (BCom’52, DLitt’11) as part of its series on prominent Jewish Canadians. The Shakespearian actor’s career was catapulted into the stratosphere when he was hired to skipper the USS Enterprise on Star Trek. The profile traces his history from a McGill BCom student through his early stage work at the Stratford Festival and Broadway before the role that changed his life forever. Mr. Shatner built on Captain Kirk to work in many TV shows, including his equally seminal T.J.
A recent piece at AdvocateDaily.com looks at the career of Toronto-area labour lawyer Stefan Rosenbaum (BCom’10). While Mr. Rosenbaum’s Desautels education equipped him well for boardroom work, his professional development left him with a major interest in social-justice. He learned the value of unions and worker’s rights early, and continues to love working on labour-related cases.
According to a piece at BarrieToday.com, Dr. Mark Kotowycz (MBA’01, MDCM’04) is moving from the Windsor Regional Hospital to the new Advanced Cardiac Centre at the Royal Victoria Health Centre as Director of Advanced Cardiac Care / Catheterization Labs. He brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the role, having worked at Toronto’s University Health Network and Northumberland Hills Hospital.
Executive Coach Robert Mandeya writes for the Zimbabwe Independent that organisations live and die by the strategic decisions that their top executives make, and that strategic management is not necessarily the same as strategy. Using Apple’s iPad2 as an example, he delves into the formal tools that help us get a handle on the relationship among factors like executive decision-makers, their companies, and their industries.
The board of media and entertainment producer Frima has appointed Martin Carrier (EMBA'16) to the post of President and CEO. Mr. Carrier replaces outgoing chief Christian Daigle, and comes to the job with years of experience at other media production houses and organisations, including the New Media Business Network, consulting firm O&O, Ubisoft Montreal, and Warner Brothers Games.
With their revolutionary earplugs, Kristina Pearkes (BEng’17) and Sean Kaiser (BEng’17) aim to end insomnia without medication. The duo is the brains behind Orbityl, the company that just received Next Canada’s Outstanding Next 36 Venture Award. The Next 36 is a young-entrepreneur accelerator run by Next Canada, which offers seed capital as well as mentorship opportunities.
Yalmaz Siddiqui is Vice President of Corporate Sustainability at MGM Resorts International. He started this role in May 2016 and is responsible for leading a range of environmental sustainability initiatives for the company, including green conventions, food waste reduction, waste management, sustainable purchasing and communications.
Since starting up in July, the second cohort of the Masters of Management in Finance program is in full swing.
The diverse class of 42 students represents 11 countries and is joining the program with an array of academic backgrounds.
The participants also have a full slate of social engagement activities and sports achievements under their belts, and will build upon their existing work experience as they delve further into the world of finance.
Aldo Bensadoun (BCom’64) founded Aldo Shoes as a Le Château exclusive in 1972, then opened the first standalone ALDO store in 1987. Today, the ALDO Group is a major player in the shoe field, with locations in 95 countries. Throughout, Mr. Bensadoun has maintained an interest in corporate culture as an engine for doing good.
A piece in Forbes co-authored by Desautels professor Karl Moore and Sandoz executive Vincenzo Ciampi (BCom’94) says that it takes a sense of purpose to realise one’s career potential.
The article makes the case that spending your early career chasing bigger job titles and paycheques is all well and good, but at some point it’s not enough. The authors point to their own experiences of changing vectors mid-career, and how friends who never made the jump often show the signs of burnout.
When Aspire Food Group started operations in 2013 under co-founder Mohammed Ashour (MSc’11, MDCM’15), the field it was playing on was wide open. Insects are a viable food source across much of the world, but to farm them on the industrial scale that Aspire needed in order to make crickets an affordable, scalable food-production option was going to take some doing. The answer comes in the form of a well-designed automated cricket farm.
A news release at canadianinsider.com reveals that Montreal-based footwear giant ALDO is set to buy the shoes and accessories side of the Camuto Group. The deal plays nicely into ALDO’s expansion efforts and frees up Camuto to concentrate on its apparel unit. The ALDO Group’s ties to Desautels and McGill run deep: founder Aldo Bensadoun (BCom’64, LLD’04) is a McGill alumnus and a lifetime member of the Desautels International Advisory Board.
