MBA NEXT 50: Beyond Business As Usual

The Future of Management

Montreal, May 22-23, 2015

Celebrate 50 years of global impact with your former MBA classmates and other MBA alumni from around the world. Join us for a fun-filled and informative weekend of networking, leading-edge speakers, engaging workshop topics, and ultra-cool entertainment! The conference will be centered on cutting-edge ideas and idea generation--what the next 50 years could or should look like for management, organizations and the global economy.

Downtown Hotels

A limited block of rooms have been reserved by the Desautels Faculty of Management at the Sofitel Hotel. When booking, please mention the "Desautels MBA 50th Celebration” for a preferred rate of $220.   

A list of other Montreal hotels in the area can be found here.

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Day 1 – Friday, May 22, 2015

Location: 3rd Floor, McGill Bookstore, 3420 McTavish Street

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM - NEXT 50 Registration, Welcome Session & Networking Cocktail

Liam Sobey, MBA Candidate 2015
Prof. Morty Yalovsky, Interim Dean, Desautels Faculty of Management
Prof. Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, next dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management

Thompson House is reserved Friday night for all our MBA alumni. Feel free to organize your own class reunion at Thompson House and/or your own dinners afterward! If you would like us to provide you with venue suggestions don’t hesitate to contact us.

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Day 2 – Saturday, May 23, 2015

Location: Desautels Faculty of Management, 1001 Sherbrooke St. West

8:00 AM - 9:15 AM - Networking Breakfast - Lobby

9:15 AM - 10:30 AM - Plenary Discussion - Room 151

Our Future: Convergence or Collision Course?

Are we as a society and planet headed toward a bright or dark future? What might successful organizations of the future look like? What consumer trends and economic variables will be at play? What types of skills are needed for individuals to lead these organizations and our communities?

Welcome: Prof. Demetrios Vakratsas, Associate Dean, Master's Programs, Desautels Faculty of Management

Presentation & Discussion: Bertrand Cesvet, MBA’88 (Executive Chairman and Senior Partner, Sid Lee), Inez Jabalpurwala, MBA’01 (President & CEO Brain Canada Foundation), Hubert T. Lacroix, MBA'81 (President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada), Moderator: Julie Savaria, MBA Candidate, Class of 2015

Audience Q&A

Bertrand is Chairman & Chief Strategist, Sid Lee. He has extensive experience and expertise in strategic and creative marketing which has benefited such top-tier brands as Adidas, Red Bull, Cirque du Soleil, Dom Perignon, Carlsberg Brewery, Volkswagen and Dell. He has played a key role in Sid Lee acquiring world-class mandates and has been fundamental in forging a strong and lasting relationship between Sid Lee and Cirque du Soleil.

Find out more about Bertrand and Sid Lee

 

Inez is the President and CEO of the Brain Canada Foundation (formerly Brain Canada Foundation and NeuroScience Canada Partnership), a position she has held since 2001. Brain Canada is a national non-profit organization that supports brain research. In 2006, NeuroScience Canada received The Conference Board of Canada/Spencer Stuart National Awards in Governance award. In 2011, the Government of Canada committed $100 million in matched funding to establish a public-private partnership, the Canada Brain Research Fund. From 2007 to 2012, Inez was also the Executive Director of the Graham Boeckh Foundation, a private family foundation that supports research and programs in the area of mental health; and Senior Investment Analyst with Boeckh Investments Inc. Inez is currently on the board of Equitas—International Centre for Human Rights Education. She is also on the board of the McGill University Alumni Association, serving as Treasurer and member of the Executive, and Nominating and Governance committees. She is a mentor for the McGill MBA program. In 2007, Inez was named one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 by the Women’s Executive Network, in the “Trailblazers and Trendsetters Category”.

Read more about the Brain Canada Foundation

 

Hubert is President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada. He is responsible for overseeing the management of CBC/Radio-Canada in order to ensure that Canada’s national public broadcaster can deliver on the various aspects of its mandate and continue to offer Canadians a broad spectrum of high quality programming that informs, enlightens and entertains, and that is created by, for and about Canadians. Prior to this, Mr. Lacroix held the position of Senior Advisor with the Montréal office of Stikeman Elliott, a law firm recognized nationally and internationally for its business law practice. From 2000 to 2005, he acted as Executive Chairman of Telemedia Corporation and of the other boards of directors of the various companies in the Telemedia corporate structure. Before joining Telemedia Corporation, Mr. Lacroix was a Senior Partner at McCarthy Tétrault, another major Canadian law firm, for 20 years.

 

Julie worked as a Clinical Research Coordinator for 5 years at Sainte-Justine Hospital and the MUHC. Last summer, she interned for Emzingo Group, consulting for a community-based organization in the township of Soweto in South Africa, whose mandate is to provide integrated services to children infected by HIV/AIDS. Julie is aspiring towards a career in the social innovation, not-for-profit and international development sectors and is also strongly interested in social enterprises and start-ups.

 

10:30 AM -11:00 AM - Networking Coffee Break

11:00 AM -12:15 PM - Interactive Sessions (Congruent)

Led by top Desautels professors and featuring leading industry experts, these interactive sessions will focus on what you need to know in order to succeed, and lead teams and organizations of the future.

12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Lunch & Laughs Hosted by Renowned Montreal Comedian Sugar Sammy!

One of the hottest comedians on the international circuit, Sugar Sammy is enjoying great success both at home and around the world. In less than three years he has sold more than 300,000 tickets to his shows in Canada and India, including over 115,000 to his ground-breaking English-French bilingual show. His tour dates have won him the ranking of one of the 30th highest-biggest grossing tours in North America according to Pollstar magazine and Billboard Magazine named him the top-selling Canadian tour for the 12 months ending April 2014. Critics and fans alike have lauded him for finding a way to make everyone laugh at each other, and themselves, at the same time, in the same room.

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM - Interactive Sessions (Congruent)

Led by top Desautels professors and featuring leading industry experts, these sessions will focus on what you need to know in order to succeed, and lead teams and organizations of the future.

3:00 PM – 3:30 PM - Networking Coffee Break

3:30 PM – 4:45 PM - Afternoon Plenary Discussion

The Power Shift: From Companies to Communities

From sustainability to social business, individuals and organizations are changing how they look at the world and shape their future. How do we shift the balance of power so that our societies, the economy and ecosystems continue to thrive? How can we build a society around trust between public, private and plural sectors? What type of management graduates do we need to help us get there?

Opening: Prof. Demetrios Vakratsas

John Clinton, CEO Canada, Edelman Public Relations
Prof. Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn Chair of Management Studies, Desautels Faculty of Management

Moderator: Shobhita Soor (LLB-MBA’15, CMO, Aspire Group, 2013 Hult Prize Recipient)

John is Chair & CEO, Canada / North American Head of Creative & Content of Edelman PR. He was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Publications at TC Media, Inc. since 2008. Mr. Clinton served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Grey Worldwide Canada of Grey Advertising Ltd. since 1999.  Edelman is the world’s largest public relations firm, with more than 5,000 employees in 65 cities, as well as affiliates in more than 35 cities. Edelman was named one of Advertising Age’s “A-List Agencies” in both 2010 and 2011, and an “Agency to Watch” in 2014, among many other awards and honours. The 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer is the firm’s 14th annual exploration of trust. Edelman surveyed 33,000 people (27,000 General Public and 6,000 Informed Public respondents) in 27 markets around the world on their trust in institutions, credible sources/channels and specific issues and perceptions impacting trust in business and government. Trust is an asset that enterprises must understand and properly manage in order to be successful in today’s complex operating environment. Unlike reputation, which is based on an aggregate of past experiences with a company or brand, trust is a forward facing metric of stakeholder expectation.

Find out more about the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer

Prof. Henry Mintzberg is an internationally renowned academic and author on business and management, and Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management, where he has been teaching since 1968. He writes prolifically on the topics of management and business strategy, with more than 150 articles and fifteen books to his name. His seminal book, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, criticizes some of the practices of strategic planning today. In 2004 he published Managers Not MBAs, which outlines what he believes to be wrong with management education today, claiming that the most prestigious graduate management schools are obsessed with numbers and that their overzealous attempts to make management a science are damaging the discipline of management. In his most recent book, “Rebalancing Society”, Prof. Mintzberg outlines a society that is imbalanced, destroying ourselves, our democracies and our planet, with too much emphasis or control given to either the public or the private sector. He argues that the plural sector (you, and me, and we, acting together), need to engage in social movements and social initiatives that challenge destructive practices and replace them with constructive ones. We need not be passive human resources, in the service of imbalance, but can be resourceful human beings, in the service of our progeny and our planet.

Watch Henry’s talk on rebalancing society

As the CMO of Aspire, Shobhita uses her marketing experiences to find creative marketing strategies for Aspire Food Group (2013 $1 Million MBA Hult Prize recipients) and develop insect-based food products. During her time at Dundee Wealth, she developed and executed a marketing campaign for investment in developing markets. As the co-coordinator of an annual blood drive, with Hema-Qc, she helped increase the blood units donated by 40% over 3 years for ethnic groups with a targeted marketing strategy. Shobhita also worked in mental health with autistic children and developed solutions that aligned with all the stakeholder’s interests (the child, the parents, the caretaker). Shobhita is currently pursuing a joint BCL-LLB-MBA at McGill University. She is able to bring a legal framework to the team as she is completing her Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) and Bachelor of Laws (LLB, equivalent to a JD) and a Masters of Business Administration with a concentration in finance. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Psychology, also from McGill University.

Find out more about Aspire Group and the Hult Prize

Closing: Prof. Demetrios Vakratsas

Audience Q&A

 

4:45 PM – 6:00 PM - Free Time

6:00 PM – 10:00 PM - Gala Cocktail & Dinner

Location: Sofitel Montreal

Special Announcement, Presentation and Entertainment

Host: Liam Sobey, MBA Class of 2015 student

Liam has a professional background in grocery retail. He has lived and worked in Canada, the UK and France, to expand his professional and life experiences.  During his time as an MBA student Liam has participated in multiple case competitions, while sitting as the Co-Chair on McGill Desautels Integrated Management Competition (the organizing committee that brought the first ever MBA level case competition to McGill this past March) and was the 2014-2015 host of the monthly CEO Speaker Series Following graduation, Liam has accepted a role as a Category Director within the grocery retail sector.

Professor Suzanne Fortier, McGill Principal & Vice Chancellor

Special Announcement: Bill Webb, MBA’93, MBA Next 50 Campaign Committee Member and Executive Vice President & Chief Investment Officer, Gluskin Sheff

 

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Day 3 – Sunday, May 24, 2015 (optional, not included in conference price)

There are no scheduled commitments on Sunday – it is your day to explore the city, reconnect with old friends or visit a local attraction.

The end of May is one of the most beautiful times of the year in Montreal! Here are some activity suggestions:

• Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal
• Montreal Botanical Gardens
• Old Montreal & Old Port walking Tour
• Montreal City Bus Tour of Key Montreal Attractions
• Picnic Lunch on Mont Royal
• La Ronde Six Flags Amusement Park
• Chez Cora Brunch
• Mile-End Food Tour
• Schulich School of Music Concert
• Grevin Museum visit
• McGill Conservatory: Suzuki Violin Concert
• Montreal Biodome

Please visit the Montreal Infotouriste Centre for more information or contact lauren.houghton [at] mcgill.ca (subject: MBA%20Next%2050%20-%20Fun%20Day%2C%20Sunday.) for assistance.