Olayinka Oni (IMPM’26), has been appointed non-executive director of Sterling Bank in Nigeria, effective June 2026.
Oni has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of technology, operations and financial services. His earlier career includes senior roles at Sterling Bank, Wema Bank, Microsoft and First City Monument Bank.
In the 2025 Major League Baseball playoffs, the Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff has often looked dominant, even against some of the best batters in the world. Sam Greene (BCom’20, MMA’21) has helped them do it. A former varsity baseball player at McGill, Greene started out in baseball research for the Blue Jays and became an Assistant Pitching Coach in 2024. “Sam Greene is a geek, but many of the pitchers on this team are too,” said Chris Bassitt, a Blue Jays pitcher who has excelled as a middle reliever in the playoffs.
At McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management, the DataSphere Lab is transforming how companies use data and how students learn.
Launched in 2023, the lab connects organizations eager to make smarter, data-driven decisions with McGill students who apply advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI to real-world challenges.
You can do an MBA in hundreds of cities around the world, but Montreal is among the best, according to Poets & Quants. But what makes the city such a good place to study? It’s Montreal’s unique energy, according to Kai Zhao (MBA’25). “Montreal blends history, culture and an incredible food scene with a vibrant student community,” says Zhao. “It also has a thriving business community that is home to both innovative start-ups and major companies like Bombardier, Desjardins and Ubisoft.”
On The Office, Steve Carrell plays Michael Scott, a boss at a small paper and office supply wholesaler who is frequently delusional, insensitive and annoying—sometimes all at once. Still, there are lessons to be learned from the misadventures. “The Office captures the realities of business operations in an exaggerated yet familiar way,” said Kai Zhao (MBA’15) in an interview with Poets & Quants. “It serves as a reminder that leadership isn’t just about strategy—it’s also about people, communication, and adapting to challenges--sometimes in the most unconventional ways.
The emergence of e-commerce has made for a revolution in retail. Whenever you make a purchase online, you generate data, and that data allows for a higher degree of personalization.
The Laidley Centre for Business Ethics and Equity and the McGill Desautels EDI Initiative recently hosted a panel for Women's History Month to honour the past, present, and future of women of the Faculty. The women featured included the granddaughter of the first McGill Commerce graduate (past), current BCom students (present) and accomplished Desautels alumnae (future).
On February 4, McGill Desautels launched its Black History Month activities with an event focusing on Black female entrepreneurship, hosted by the Laidley Centre for Business Ethics and Equity (LCBEE) and the McGill Black Alumni Association.
Emotional intelligence is the cornerstone of true leadership, says Thomas Lecordier (MBA’97), the President and Director General of A2C, an association of more than one hundred creative communications agencies. The ability to manage your own emotions and understand the emotions of others can make you a better coach and a better collaborator.
In baseball, data is of paramount importance. Since graduating from the Master of Management Analytics program, Sam Greene (MMA’21) has been applying the analytical skills he developed at McGill Desautels as a researcher with the Toronto Blue Jays Major League Baseball club. In 2025, Greene will be even closer to the action as he takes on a new position as Assistant Pitching Coach for the team.
Claudia Navarro (MBA’03) is Coca-Cola’s Chief of Marketing for Latin America, but her climb through the company’s ranks started out at their Toronto office. “We need to be part of the global conversation, but also be relevant locally,” Navarro told Forbes Espanol. One example is the brand’s famous Christmas branding. The Atlanta-headquartered soda company famously copyrighted the stereotypically ruddy and white-bearded Santa Claus, but in Latin America, that image is ‘tropicalized’ to better reflect local realities.
For nearly 20 years, Elliot Lifson, C.M., O.Q., has played an important role in uplifting the McGill Desautels community as a professor of practice and a member of both the Bensadoun School of Retail Management Advisory Board and the Desautels International Advisory and Advancement Board (DIAAB).
Each year the McGill Alumni Association (MAA) recognizes alumni, friends, students, faculty, and staff whose commitment has had a significant impact on alumni life, the University and/or the community. This year, three McGill Desautels alumni were among those honoured for their contributions to the McGill community.
Lesly Yao (BCom’18) isn’t your stereotypical small-town Quebec firefighter. Born in Tahiti, the Bachelor of Commerce grad was growing disillusioned with her work at a marketing firm when a Canadian Forces recruitment advertisement caught her eye—and her imagination. But because Yao was not a citizen at the time and a job with the Forces was not in the cards. “I’d always had it in the back of my mind to become a firefighter,” she says. “I watched shows about firefighting, and it appealed to me, but it also seemed unattainable.
In Canada, ice time is at a premium and the nearest rink might not be able to accommodate your beer league team. But in large cities, there’s often ice available somewhere, and Jonathan Azouri (BCom’16) spotted an opportunity. The co-founder and CEO of CatchCorner by Sports Illustrated, an app that allows users to book sports facilities, launched it in Toronto in 2019 and is now making it available in markets like New York, Los Angeles, and Boston.
