Current Students

Mr. Sparling taught for five years in the MBA program at the Telfer School of Management (University of Ottawa) and two years in the management faculty at Durham College. Mike was the Dean of the Faculty of Business at Seneca College for 4 years, where he led 233 tenured faculty and 350 adjunct faculty delivering graduate and undergraduate education to 11,000 full-time business students from 137 countries.

Mike is a co-founder of the Durham College AI Hub, an applied research center committed to simplifying and accelerating the adoption of artificial intelligence techniques by small and medium enterprises. Mike has been the lead author in a series of research grants focused on AI adoption and implementation of AI-based business solutions, successfully raising over $4 million in research funding. He has been the principal investigator and supervisor of a dozen AI projects. Mike’s research interest is in the field of autonomous and semi-autonomous agents in business management systems.

Mike recently assumed the dual Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer role for Multi-Health Systems Ltd., where he leads strategy, business operations, technology adoption, and research into neuroscience applications of artificial intelligence, blockchain, trusted computing, and homomorphic encryption.

In program design he has delivered core and continuing education courses in health care, business and academia. In administration, he served as deputy registrar at the College of Dental Technologies of Ontario to provide insight in education management. In scholarly work, he focuses on health and Afrocentric issues and teaches health law and policy and global health.

Dwight holds a bachelor of health studies, York University, a masters of leadership and interdisciplinary studies, Royal Roads University, and is completing a masters of laws at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Melanie Lang is Principal at Melanie Lang Consulting and was the Founding Executive Director of The John F. Wood Centre for Business and Student Enterprise at the University of Guelph. She has more than 15 years’ experience as a strategic and collaborative academic and business leader while serving her community and creating economic development initiatives through diverse forms of scholarship, collaborative research projects, and community-engaged programs. She has developed educational programs, secured innovative sources of funding, and demonstrated community leadership.
Throughout her career, she has played a pivotal role in advancing an innovative and entrepreneurial culture, while creating authentic partnerships with individuals, community partners, government agencies, and industry. She is an engaged business professional and an academic sector advocate who has earned a reputation of being industry-oriented and socially progressive.
Melanie’s expertise comes from years of experience combined with an instinct that can't be taught. She’s an experienced facilitator, offers customized management consulting services, works with individuals and teams to help identify organizational pain points, and helps develop business and strategic plans. Melanie is able to identify the core problem and find the solution through customized curriculum and workshops with an emphasis on clarity, simplicity, and elegant problem-solving.
Within the Guelph-Wellington area, she has served on many boards and committees, including Give some Foundation, the Guelph Chamber of Commerce (including Board Chair); Center Wellington Community Foundation; Guelph Wellington Business Enterprise Centre; IMPACT! The Co-operators
Youth Program for Sustainability Leadership; 4H Ontario Board; and Centre Wellington Co-operative Preschool. Melanie was named one of the City of Guelph’s ‘Top 40 Under 40’ in 2012 for her role as an educator and community developer and was recognized as a 2015 and 2016 YMCA-YWCA Woman of
Distinction nominee for Education and Training and Business and Entrepreneurship.
Her innovative and entrepreneurial approach to program and economic development, along with her ability to seek outside-the-box solutions, has paved the road for creating a strong and active presence in the local community. Throughout her years of service, Melanie’s vision, passion, and initiative have
helped enhance experiential learning opportunities for students, while contributing to the healthy growth and development of businesses and organizations in the surrounding community.

She brings extensive experience in private post-secondary education industry and holds a Master's in Business Administration. Prior to IBU, she worked as the Campus Registrar with Yorkville University.

Swarna is passionate about supporting students focused on changing their lives and intends to play a significant role in changing the face of Canadian higher education industry while leveraging the full potential of IBU’s personalized and flexible education model.

Geoffrey has a bachelor of science in kinesiology from Dalhousie University, a masters in history from the University of Toronto and a PhD in international history from Western University. Before IBU he taught at the University of Toronto, Western University and Fulbright University Vietnam.

He has worked as a writing instructor at York University and University of Toronto and managed the writing centre at the University of Calgary for four years. He served as a full-time faculty member at the University of Saskatchewan and now is a specialist in the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Ryerson University.
Asher edited a volume of essays for Routledge, and is currently completing a monograph on the politics of anticolonial literary form. Asher has also published his poetry compilations.

Her personal experience includes extensive corporate strategic planning, financial management, human resources management, operational management, and leadership, all of which inform her teaching and scholarly work regarding upcoming trends in business.

Asiye has a bachelor’s degree in economics, a postgraduate diploma in human resources management from Seneca College, and a master of business administration in executive management from Royal Roads University. She also holds a teaching and training adults certificate from George Brown College.

A PhD candidate in leadership and policy at Niagara University, Peter studies agglomeration economies and how public policies influence location decisions. His education includes an MBA from St. John Fisher College in Rochester and a bachelor degree in business management from Cazenovia College. He has taught business classes at SUNY Brockport and Bryant and Stratton College, Buffalo.

In his career he has worked for leading firms such as Excellus Health Plan, HSBC, CitiBank and M&T Bank.

Alex Usher is the President of Higher Education Strategy Associates, a role he has held for over a decade. He is an internationally recognized consultant and expert in post-secondary strategic planning and counselling. He is regularly engaged by Canadian and international clients for projects on student financial aid and access to post-secondary education; rankings, benchmarking and quality measurement in higher education, and development of strategic plans.

Prior to founding Higher Education Strategy Associates, Mr. Usher served as the Director of Educational Policy Institute Canada and as the Director of Research and Program Development at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Usher served as a researcher and lobbyist for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and before that was the first national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. He holds degrees from McGill University and Carleton University. Mr. Usher is regularly consulted by the media for his expertise, making appearances and providing editorials to a range of publications including The Globe and Mail¸ Macleans, CBC, Radio-Canada, Inside Higher Education and others. He has also authored several scholarly publications, including pieces with Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press, and McGill-Queen’s University Press. He is a frequently requested conference speaker, and has presented at conferences in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, and elsewhere. His internationally read (and free) daily intelligence e-mail, One Thought to Start Your Day , has over 13,000 subscribers.

Andrew Heintzman is a Managing Partner and co-founder of InvestEco Capital. Andrew sits on a number of corporate boards, Acid League, Maple Hill Creamery and Mama Earth Organics. Andrew is the board chair of MakeWay, a director of CanadaHelps, and a Steering Committee member for the Smart Prosperity Institute. He is the author of The New Entrepreneurs: Building a Green Economy for the Future (House of Anansi Press). He has a BA and an MA from McGill University.

Ambassador Brodeur was born in Montréal in 1953. He joined the Department of External Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada) in 1982 after graduating from Université Laval in Québec City. Mr. Brodeur served abroad as Second Secretary and Vice-Consul in Ankara from 1983 to 1985; First Secretary at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris from 1989 to 1993; Counsellor (political) and Head of the Political Affairs Section at the Permanent Mission of Canada to the European Union in Brussels from 1996 to 2000; and Director of Communications and Spokesperson at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from 2001 to 2003. He served as Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey with accreditation to the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Georgia and the Republic of Turkmenistan from 2005 to 2007. Ambassador Brodeur was appointed Permanent Representative of Canada to the North Atlantic Council (NATO) in August 2011. In Ottawa, Mr. Brodeur served in the Media Relations Office from 1982 to 1983, as an analyst in the Political and Strategic Analysis Secretariat from 1985 to 1987, as well as in the South, South-East Asia Relations Division in 1987. From 1993 to 1995, he served at the Privy Council Office as Policy Advisor, Foreign Affairs and Defence. He was Chief of Staff to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1988 to 1989 and Departmental Spokesperson and Press Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1995 to 1996. He also served as Director of the Media Relations Office and from 2003 to 2005 was Director General of the Communications Bureau. He then served as Assistant Deputy Minister for the Afghanistan Task Force from October, 2007 to July 2009. Mr. Brodeur served as Assistant Deputy Minister of the International Security Branch and Political Director from August 2009 until his appointment to NATO in 2011. As such he coordinated the G8 political and security agenda during the 2010 Canadien Presidency of the G8. Ambassador Brodeur retired from the Canadian Foreign Service in October 2015. Ambassador Brodeur has been a regular speaker and participant to different forum including l’Université Laval, the Canadian Forces College, Forum Saint-Laurent, the Halifax Forum. He also, contributed to various media activities on Canadian national television as well as to various written media outlets. In 2018, Mr. Brodeur contributed as an international expert to the implementation of NATO’s functional review.

Mehmet Komurcu, has been at Gowling WLG’s Toronto office since 2014. He previously worked as the General Counsel and Group Corporate Secretary of Turk Telekom, Turkey’s incumbent telecom operator, and acting as a director in several companies’ Boards in Turkey. He worked in an international law firm in Istanbul and the Legal and Claims Department of Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), World Bank Group in Washington, DC. Mehmet has three master’s degrees from American and Canadian law schools and a PhD in public international law from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has been published in a number of publications and has spoken at several professional and academic conferences.