Canadian Center for Advanced Leadership in Business: 2018 – 2019 Report to Community

Our success at the Canadian Center for Advanced Leadership (CCAL) is because of the great interactions and working relationships we have with our community, faculty and students.  Here are some of the great examples of our work together in the 2018-2019 academic year.

We kicked off the 2019 Academic Year in September with a $1.5 million gift from BMO Financial Group toward our Mentoring Program and scholarships to support its further evolution.

In November, we had the highest attendance to date at a Jarislowsky Fellowship Dinner & Discussion.  Our co-fellows John Brussa and Catherine Bell gave their time and expertise to our MBA and EMBA students this year with events and experiences like Art & Leadership at the Glenbow Museum, Sport & Leadership at the Sports Hall of Fame and through participating in our Lunch with Leaders program.

This year we hosted 40 Lunch with Leaders over a 26 week period.  This is significant because the program started with a modest goal of hosting two lunches per academic year.  Both students and industry have indicated to us that this type of interaction is a key part of their leadership experience.

Thanks to our ATB gift over 600 BComm students engaged with their peers on leadership development related topics such as goal setting.

In collaboration with Haskayne faculty members, we introduced a voluntary CCAL Ethics Case Competition available to all BComm students.  This competition offered every student the chance to compete where usually case competitions are only open to a few select students.  There was standing room only on a Saturday morning and a rigorous competition ensued.

Alongside Dr. Nick Turner, the Distinguished Research Chair in Leadership, CCAL introduced Research Roundtables.  These roundtables are early morning breakfasts downtown where researchers and industry discuss and unpack the myths of leadership, the evidence of leadership and the way forward with leadership practices.

Under the umbrella of the Haskayne Adventure Leadership Program, the Haskayne Wilderness Retreat led by Dr. Julian Norris and Dr. David Lertzman reached its fifteenth year of providing students with exceptional learning in our backyard, the Rocky Mountains.  CCAL thanks Hal Kvisle for ensuring this program continues through his generous donation in 2016.

We concluded the 2019 academic year with our Annual Year-End Celebration bringing Andrew Fastow, former CFO of Enron via webcast in as our keynote speaker.  Research tells us that studying both the successes and failures of leadership is instrumental in developing leaders.  In addition, research tells us that the learning impact of studying a case, such as the Enron case that all BComm students do in the context of their ethics course work, significantly increases by hearing directly from those involved in the case.  The opportunity to hear from them directly, ask questions and hear discussion helps students consider the scenario from a variety of perspectives.  A variety of perspectives followed Mr. Fastow’s presentation through a panel discussion with Dr. David Dick (Associate Profession of Philosophy at the University of Calgary and CCAL Fellow), Gina Campbell (Partner at Deloitte), Chris Cox (SVP, Equity Research at Raymond James) and Dr. Nick Turner, (Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Haskayne School of Business and Distinguished Research Chair at CCAL).

As we move into the summer months, in addition to preparing for the upcoming academic year, we are delighted to be involved in the Haskayne School of Business’ newest graduate-level program:  The Masters of Management.  We are also pleased to be involved with the combined BComm and BSc Engineering program.

In leadership, there is a process of mutual social influence that occurs and when we look at the ways we have positively influenced each other this year – faculty and students, industry and students, students and students, faculty and industry – we see leadership in action.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible.  Thank you for being part of our Canadian Center for Advanced Leadership community.