aMBAssadors

Allison Leanos @AllisonnTweets

LA Allison Leanos has been working in the online marketing space since 2007. Her strengths include social media marketing and strategy. Before joining the marketing team at Monrovia, she was a key player at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where she managed the hospital's blog, partnered with physicians, researchers and nurses on health care topics for online content and lead the hospital's social media strategy. These efforts helped propel the hospital’s award-winning care beyond the walls and into the global community digitally. After working at Children’s Hospital L.A., Allison took a 4-month sabbatical and taught business and social media courses at a local community college.

While working at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (2009-2011), Allisoncoached volunteers around the U.S. on how to mobilize their local volunteer base using online tools. She also partnered with members of Congress on advocacy efforts in Washington D.C. Her social media expertise also includes the fashion industry, which is where she began when she graduated from college.

Allison enjoys discovering meaningful touch points between brands, its consumers, clients and employees. Because of her dedication and focus to social media strategy and storytelling, she's been invited to present at conferences and has earned a number of awards: Five-time Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Association Award (HRMA) recipient and two-time Public Relations Society of America Award (PRSA-LA) recipient.

Follow Allison on Twitter at @AllisonnTweets

Kevin Seto @KevinSeto

Kevin Seto is an Executive MBA alumnus from the Ivey Business School at Western University. He has always valued lifelong learning and cares deeply about the work that he engages in; this has influenced his education and career choices. Kevin has led many cross-functional teams to successfully achieve strategic goals and implement major initiatives in both the private and public sectors, including notable tenures at DaimlerChrysler and the Toronto Transit Commission.

His career has been an interesting journey that started after completing foundational education in the form of a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from Queen’s University. Kevin has worked in the areas of product design and development, quality assurance, manufacturing, process re-engineering, strategic sourcing and procurement, supply chain management, enterprise-wide project and program management, transformational organizational change, operations leadership, and technology. He continued to complement his skillsets over the years becoming a Licensed Professional Engineer, certified Project Management Professional, and Six Sigma Green Belt prior to pursuing his MBA.

Completing an MBA opened up opportunities to new industries, companies, and roles. A formal business education that refined skills and added new capabilities has allowed Kevin to continue to stretch himself professionally, develop complementary strengths in functional business disciplines, and transition successfully into new leadership roles in the Financial Service industry where he had no previous experience. Building on his rich experience with premier education such as an MBA from a world-class institution allows him to offer a unique business perspective and deliver great value to organizations on a number of different levels.

Currently Kevin holds the role of Head of Technology and Data at BMO Financial Group with key accountabilities in technology strategy and implementation, transformational organizational change, operational risk management, relationship management, and managerial leadership/oversight within the enterprise Sourcing, Payables, Supplier Governance, and Productivity group.

Follow Kevin on Twitter at @KevinSeto

Dilani Rabindran @dilani_r

Unique to her graduating class at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, Dilani Rabindran applied her MBA in the exciting realms of international film and entertainment. Her passion for cinema has her operating in two time zones!

In her full-time role in Finance for the Toronto International Film Festival she helps secure government funding for the non-profit organization, while also assisting with South Asian film selection for the festival. By night/early morning she interviews stars & candidly evaluates the latest happenings in South Indian cinema via her column "East Meets West”, for leading Indian film website Behindwoods.com.

As of 2015 she also began assisting with programming for other international festivals, including Toronto’s Reel Asian Film Festival. She is also an avid social media personality within the Canadian and South Indian film and music communities who can often be seen or heard sharing her love of Indian films on TV and radio programs, or spotted emceeing Toronto film events & concerts. She is also beginning her transition to film production by consulting an up- and-coming Indian film studio on their international sales & marketing.

Towards the end of her undergraduate degree in science Dilani realized that her interest in Indian film and entertainment was too strong to be confined to just a part-time passion. So she set her sights on an MBA for its diverse applications. Recognizing that film producers have a need for advanced training in sales and overall project management skills, Dilani was keen to get her MBA to help equip her for production. She joined the DeGroote MBA Co-Op program just 4 months after graduating with her Honors Bachelors of Science and has focused on making a name for herself in the international film business ever since, time zones be darned.

Follow Dilani on Twitter at @dilani_r

Carolina Cheung @CarolinaCFON

Originally from Vancouver, Carolina is an entrepreneurial-minded sales and marketing professional currently pursuing her MBA at Rotman School of Management in Toronto. At Rotman, she is involved as the VP Communications for the Women in Management Association and VP Internal for Rotman Marketing Association. She recently interned with a leading luxury cosmetics company in Digital Marketing and plans to pursue a career in Marketing & Strategy post-MBA.

Follow Carolina on Twitter at @CarolinaCFON

Daniel Kramer @DanKramerHabs

Daniel Kramer is a graduate of the McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management MBA program from the class of 2012. Prior to attending McGill, Daniel, a bilingual Montreal native, had completed a Bachelor of Commerce from Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, and had worked for two years in a Sales role with Montreal-based tech firm Genetec. He began the MBA program to reorient his career with an interest in marketing and entrepreneurship, wanting to supplement his undergraduate with more in-depth knowledge of all areas of business management.

In addition to his experience in his own country, Daniel has spent two semesters at top European business schools in France and Spain, in addition to completing an internship in the hospitality industry in Israel, helping to shape a well-rounded perspective.

Currently, Daniel works as a Product Manager for Pfizer Canada, where he is able to combine his interests by taking ownership of the local management of major international brands. Working within the Marketing team in the Consumer Healthcare division, he has led multiple product launches, contributed to the development of national T.V. and multimedia campaigns, and collaborated closely with colleagues on significant cross-functional projects.

Outside of work, Daniel is an avid sports fan, cheering on his hometown Montreal Canadiens from behind enemy lines as he is based in Toronto. Writing is a passion of his and he spent three seasons’ worth of his spare time as a beat reporter covering the American Hockey League’s Hamilton Bulldogs, contributing articles to various online hockey sites and serving as a weekly radio correspondent.

Follow Daniel on Twitter at @DanKramerHabs

Jennifer Nachshen @jenn_nachshen

Jennifer Nachshen is a clinical psychologist specializing in Autism Spectrum Disorder, intellectual disabilities and mental health, with experience as a researcher, professor, clinician and knowledge translation consultant. She was the primary author and project coordinator of the Canadian Best Practices Guide for the Screening, Assessment and Diagnosis of Autism Specutrum Disorders in Young Children.

Jennifer’s passion for writing, editing and digital media resulted in a three-year sabbatical from psychology, during which time she launched All Beef Media, a social media company specializing in custom content for lifestyle, fashion and beauty brands, and was the Digital Content Manager for Urban Expressions, a lifestyle web magazine created by the Montreal Gazette.

Jennifer is entering her MBA as a winner of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Science to Business Scholarship awarded to MBA candidates with with a PhD in a health-related field, and will major in Health Sector Management.

Her goal is to bring her unique combination of skills in science-based health practice and digital marketing and communication together with Rotman’s unparalleled business education to create a career focused on knowledge translation and research commercialization, connecting science and business to create lasting behaviour change.

In her spare time she can be found training for her next (and last) 10k, sourcing new shops, services and restaurants to write about on VitaminDaily.com, and planning her survival strategy for the zombie apocalypse.

Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @jenn_nachshen