Faculty & Instructors

Julian is the author of The Science of Leadership: Lessons From Research for Organizational Leaders, which was published by Oxford University Press (New York) in January, 2014. His research interests focus on the nature and development of transformational leadership and employee well-being, and he is also the author of well over 200 research articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of several books, including Employment, Stress and Family Functioning (1990, Wiley & Sons); The Union and Its Members: A Psychological Approach (1992, Oxford University Press); Changing Employment Relations: Behavioral and Social Perspectives (1995, American Psychological Association); Young Workers (1999, American Psychological Association); and The Psychology of Workplace Safety (2004, American Psychological Association). He is also co-editor of the Handbook of Workplace Violence (2006, SAGE Publications), and senior editor of both the Handbook of Work Stress (2005), Handbook of Organizational Behaviour (2008), all published by SAGE, The Psychology of Green Organizations (2015) and Work and Sleep: Research Insights for the Workplace (2016), both published by Oxford University Press).

Julian was formerly the editor of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, served as the chair of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Workplace Violence in 2001-2, and was the chairperson of the Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety to the Ontario Minister of Labour from 1989-1991.

Julian is a Fellow for the Royal Society of Canada, the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Canadian Psychological Association. Julian was the recipient in 2016 of the Distinguished Contributions to Industrial and Organizational Psychology by the C-SIOP Division of the Canadian Psychological Association.

Julian was named one of the 2020 recipients of the Distinguished University Professor designation, Queen’s University’s highest research-related honour. MacLean's magazine named Julian as one of Queen's University's most popular professors in 1996. Julian received the National Post's "Leaders in Business Education" award in 2001 and Queen's University's Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision in 2008.

Julian received his Ph.D in 1979 from the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he subsequently taught in the Psychology Department. He joined Queen's University in 1984, initially teaching in the Department of Psychology. Julian moved to the School of Business in 1994; and served as the Associate Dean with responsibility for the Ph.D, M.Sc and Research programs in the School of Business from 1997-2011.

Karine Benzacar has been teaching for the Smith School of Business at Queens university since 2010. She is also Managing Director of Knowledge Plus Corp., an organization which specializes both in business training and in providing financial, accounting, and management information services. As a professional accountant, certified both in Canada and in the U.S., Karine’s practice has involved organizations all across North America. Her clients include many companies - large companies, such as the Bank of Nova Scotia, Magna, and IBM, start-up firms and the public sector, such as various departments of the Government of Canada.

Karine is a seasoned industry professional with over 25 years of solid industry experience. After beginning her career in the finance departments of Kraft Foods and Avon Products, she held senior financial management positions at three major Canadian Banks – Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, and Bank of Montreal. Her career has spanned many areas including budgeting, accounting, finance, project management, re-engineering, and strategic management. She is fluently bilingual in English and French.

Karine obtained an MBA from McGill University in Montreal. In addition to her industry experience, Karine has been teaching undergraduate, MBA, and Masters of Finance courses at several leading universities which include University of Toronto, Queens University, Concordia University, and Ryerson University. She is a highly acclaimed industry expert, has presented at national and international industry conferences, and has been facilitating professional development courses for CPAs for over 10 years. She helped develop and marked professional accounting exams. She has also trained hundreds of bankers in Canada, the U.S., and the Caribbean on credit analysis. She has published numerous articles in leading journals such as the National Post, Financial Post, CMA Management Magazine, HR Reporter, HRPA Magazine, Bottom Line and the RMA Journal and has been quoted as an industry expert in industry publications. She was awarded the FCPA designation an honorary designation where she was selected by her industry peers for her outstanding contributions to the industry, profession, and the community; this designation is held by less than 1% of CPAs in Canada. She was also instrumental in training accountants throughout Canada on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

Dr. Chakrabarti studies corporate strategy dynamics, exploring how firms scan and search for resources, select among alternatives, integrate across business units, overcome institutional constraints, and respond to environmental shocks. He studies these dynamics in the context of business reconfiguration, where firms reorganize using strategies of mergers and acquisitions, internal development, and asset divestiture. His work has appeared in Global Strategy Journal, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal, and has achieved awards from the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada and the Strategic Management Society.

Dr. Chakrabarti’s courses align closely with his research. In the Queen’s Commerce Program, he teaches courses on organizational intelligence and on policy responses to economic shocks and recessions. For PhD students, he conducts seminars on corporate strategy dynamics and on research methodology, examining the application of econometrics to problems of strategy. For executive MBA participants, he has conducted sessions on organization growth and acquisitions strategy. While at McGill, Dr Chakrabarti co-directed the Analytic Mindset Module along with Henry Mintzberg during the initial years of the McGill-HEC Montreal EMBA program.

Dr. Chakrabarti serves as an editorial board member for IIMB Management Review and Strategic Management Journal, and as an Honorary Research Associate at the Center for Economic Research of Korea (CERK). He is active at the Academy of Management and Strategic Management Society conferences, and has served as 2015 editor and 2016 chair of the Strategy Division of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada.

Prior to joining Queen’s, he was Assistant Professor at McGill University. He has previously taught at Duke University and at the National University of Singapore.

Barry Cross is an expert and thought leader in innovation, execution and operations strategy. He joined Smith School of Business after nearly 20 years in the automotive and manufacturing sectors with Magna Autosystems and DuPont, where he led many key strategic initiatives, including nearly 30 program launches in North America, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Barry speaks and consults widely in the areas of Lean Innovation, Strategy, Projects and Execution, enabling organizations to create sustainable value for their customers. He is the bestselling author of three books, including Simple: Killing Complexity for a Lean and Agile Organization, and several Most Read articles.

Shai Dubey teaches courses in negotiations, cross-cultural management, ethics, domestic and international business law and entrepreneurship.

Shai earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Toronto and his Law Degree from Queen's University. Shai is also a graduate of the aviation Flight Technology Program at Seneca College. 

After graduating from Seneca College in 1984, he began his working career as a commercial pilot. In 1985 he founded and ran both an executive aircraft charter company and a flight training school based in Toronto. After selling this company, Shai worked as an aviation consultant providing strategic and regulatory advice to Canadian and foreign clients. He practiced law on Bay Street and then ran a global company prior to joining Queen’s.

Ricard Gil received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2004 and a BA in economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, in 1999. His training also includes a post-doc in organizational economics at Harvard Business School, and visiting positions at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the management department of the London School of Economics.

He has held other visiting and teaching positions at other universities such as Universidad de Navarra and IESE in Spain, the University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi University in Japan, or Yonsei University in South Korea. Prior to joining Smith in 2018, Ricard was an economics professor at the Department of Economics of the University of California in Santa Cruz from 2004 to 2011, and a professor of economics and strategy at the Carey Business School of the Johns Hopkins University from 2011 to 2018.

Ricard’s research specializes in organizational economics with a focus on industrial organization, strategy and applied microeconomics. Some of his research interests are the effect of competition on outcomes and firm boundaries as well as the impact firm organization on transaction performance, in various contexts such as media industries, online markets, and transportation. Ricard's research has appeared in top economics and business journals such as American Economic Journal, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Marketing Science and Management Science, among others.

Jim Hamilton is a proven sales and marketing executive with over 19 years of experience in forming and growing start-up companies, as well as, leading sales and marketing teams in mid-sized and larger companies. Currently, Mr. Hamilton spends most of his time as an instructor. He is a lecturer at Smith School of Business where he teaches courses in marketing strategy, sales and sales management at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Mr. Hamilton owns an advisory firm that provides reputation management, sales, marketing, and CRM strategy services to individual professionals and corporations. Some of his clients have included Bayer, Altana, IBM, and MDS Sciex.

Mr. Hamilton obtained an Honours Degree in Actuarial Science (BSc.) from the University of Western Ontario (Canada) in 1990. He then earned an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business (Canada) in 1995.

Jay is an Associate Professor & Distinguished Teaching Fellow of Marketing at Smith School of Business. He was the founding Director of Smith School of Business Centre for Social Impact (formerly the Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility). Jay has also served as the Associate Dean, Research and Associate Dean, Faculty at Smith School of Business. His teaching and consulting work are focused on the interplay between customer value and the alignment of an organization’s culture, structure, and metrics that maximizes the delivery of value to achieve customer loyalty. It is this achievement of customer loyalty that leads to superior brand equity for the organization. At the core of this perspective is the understanding that everyone in the organization has an important role to play in fostering the brand of the organization. Jay has extensive experience working with organizational members across a variety of industries in both the profit and not-for-profit sectors helping them to understand their contribution to customer value and the organization’s brand equity. This work has been in the form of teaching in professional Masters and Executive Education programs, as well as consulting. Jay has been voted by students as Teacher of the Year in both the Executive MBA and Accelerated MBA programs. Jay holds an MBA from McGill University and a PhD in Marketing from Queen’s University. 

Elspeth Murray has served as the Associate Dean - MBA and Master’s Programs from 2012-2022 and has been a professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Smith School of Business since 1996. She also holds the CIBC Fellowship in Entrepreneurship, and founded Smith's Centre for Business Venturing. She is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Social Impact. Prior to joining Smith, she worked in industry for 7 years for several firms including IBM, and Canadian Tire. As an integral part of her work in the strategy and new venture fields, Dr. Murray specializes in the management of change. In 2002, she co-authored a best-selling book, Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, Oxford University Press, with Dr. Peter Richardson. She has recently co-developed (with Dr. David Saunders) the Analytics Climate Assessment Tool (ACAT), which is used to assess organizations technological capacity, skill sets, and analytics culture. Current research is focused on best practices in leading and managing change to create an analytics culture.

Dr. Murray teaches on many MBA and Executive Education programs, and consults widely with a diversity of firms including BMW, Detour Gold, Wawanesa Insurance, Versacold Logistics and the Auditor General for Canada. She serves as a Director for several firms and is an advisor to several start-ups and CEO's. Dr. Murray received an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics, and an MBA, both from Queen's University. Her doctorate in Strategy and Management Information Systems was completed at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

Peter Richardson has been a faculty member of the School of Business for 37 years. He teaches both introductory and advanced strategy courses in the School of Business on the Executive MBA programs and on a number of the School’s one and three week Continuing Education programs.

Together with Elspeth Murray, Peter has authored a book, entitled Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, published by the Oxford University Press in 2002. An accompanying Guide was published early in 2003. Through his research and associated consulting activities, he has developed a unique concept of Strategy as Action, and has written several papers on this topic. During his 30-plus years at Queen’s University, Peter has authored over 90 papers and case studies on strategic management. In his previous book, Cost Containment: The Ultimate Strategic Advantage, one of the few books written on cost improvement, Peter described a novel strategic approach to cost improvement that has been adopted in many organizations in both the public and private sectors. At present, Peter is exploring the impact of the increasing demand for speed in business, which he believes has profound implications for organization change, strategy implementation, risk management and organization processes.  

Peter consults widely with both public and private sector organizations, working closely for extended periods with senior executives on strategy development and deployment. Corporate clients have included Codelco, Vale, Anglo-American Corporation, Alcoa, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Bell Canada, CIBC, CIBC-Mellon, De Beers Canada, Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanplats, Redpath Mining, Quadra Chemicals, Gibson Energy, and Xerox. In the Public Sector, clients have included the Supreme Court of Canada, The Office of the Auditor General for Canada, The Surveyor General of Canada, Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Health Canada. He has also been retained as a consultant on more than 20 major international mining projects including the successful development and construction of the Collahuasi copper mine in Chile which is to-date the world’s largest and highest single mining project, and the Victor Diamond Mine in Canada – designated globally as the ‘Mine of the Year in 2009’.    

Peter has also carried out strategic planning assignments for a number of Associations including the Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, The Consejo Minero de Chile, the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada, the Zinc Association, and the Mining Association of Canada.

Michael is an Associate Professor at Smith School of Business. His research focuses on the strategies and performance of firms that expand into foreign markets, and he teaches courses in Global Business Strategy and Strategic International Entrepreneurship. He has been working in the classroom with business executives for more than a decade in Smith’s dual Executive MBA (EMBA) Programs. Michael has taught executive audiences in diverse overseas markets from Cuba to China. He is a multi-time recipient of the Executive MBA Americas Professor of the Year Award and has been recognized internationally by Poets and Quants for Executives as one of the Favourite Professors of Executive MBAs.

Michael received PhD and MBA degrees from the Ivey Business School in London, Canada, and a JD (Juris Doctor) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, Canada. He has ten years of experience working variously in executive and corporate legal counsel capacities for publicly-traded and privately-held enterprises in the telecom and consumer packaged goods industries. Having been employed as an executive in the foreign subsidiary operations of a NASDAQ-listed company, he is intimately familiar with the opportunities and challenges that firms encounter in foreign markets. Michael consults and advises owners, executives and managers in firms that range in scale from new ventures to multinational corporations.

Erin is based in Kingston, Ontario where she is a CPA, CA and holds a Master of Science in Management from Smith School of Business (2003). She obtained her Chartered Accountant (CA) designation while with Deloitte's Audit practice in 2000. Her audit experience includes life insurance, oil, agriculture, NFPs and prospectus engagements, as well as internal audit.

Most recently, Erin managed a budget of $100 million while at Queen's University, while participating in activity-based budgeting and PeopleSoft systems conversions. Erin has teaching experience with CA School of Business, CPA Ontario, University of Regina and Queen's University. Her accounting research has been published and received media attention. Erin has served on not-for-profit boards as Chair, Treasurer, Finance Director and executive member.