MBA Graduate Joins Rotman as Lab Executive Director
At the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, graduation can mean a new position with the school itself, which is exactly what happened to Sonia Sennik.
Sennik recently graduated from the school’s Executive MBA program, according to a press release. Now, she’s joining the business school as the first-ever national Executive Director of the Creative Destruction Lab. She will be working alongside lab founder and Academic Director Ajay Agrawal, the school’s Peter Munk Professor of Entrepreneurship. The lab has been helping science-based business ventures succeed since 2012. It mentors them what they need to know to get past the “seed stage.”
Rotman describes the lab:
“It employs a unique, objectives-focused coaching process to help founders commercialize advances in science and technology. The Lab also provides experiential learning to MBA students through year-long courses where students work alongside the Lab’s Fellows and venture founders, giving them a unique chance to learn how to evaluate, finance, and manage technology businesses.”
“The Creative Destruction Lab is expanding rapidly, both geographically and programmatically. Sonia will provide leadership, vision, and energy to help ensure the success of the Lab and its ventures in the coming years,” Agrawal said in the press release.
Sennik’s held important titles before, too. There’s HATCH, a consulting agency for engineering and construction projects, where she “held senior project and engineering management roles.” She was also the first to receive the Rotman Social Impact Award.
She’ll now help take the lab further, and it’s accomplished lots already. Its graduates prove it. Some of these companies include Atomwise in San Francisco and Kyndi in Palo Alto. This year, the lab expanded to include a program all about quantum machine learning startups.
We’ll see what’s next with Sennik in charge.
Highest Paid Starting Salaries for Toronto MBA Grads
Earning an MBA in Toronto can be a practical decision for a myriad of reasons. Forbes named Canada the best country for business in the G20, with Toronto as its formal financial and business capital. It stands to reason Toronto may be one of the strongest areas for business not just in North American, but around the world as well. Its advantageous position close to the U.S. border makes the city a hotbed of international commerce, and as the fourth largest city on the continent, Toronto provides a wealth of opportunities for motivated professionals.
As though these reasons weren’t incentive enough to pursue higher education in Toronto, the city has the second highest quality of life in North America, according to the Mercer Quality of Living Survey. The city’s vital university system is full of talented and aspiring industry leaders ready to launch their own careers, readily taking advantage of everything the city has to offer.
For those of you planning to pursue your MBA in this cultural and fiscal epicenter, we’ve laid out which school grads have the highest starting salaries in the city.
The Highest Paid Toronto MBA Salaries
Ivey Business School—Western Canada University
Graduates from Ivey Business School will not be disappointed with the opportunities made possible by their degree. In 2016, 90 percent of graduating MBA students looking for jobs had received an offer by September and, by December, an impressive 96 percent of students were fielding offers. The average starting salary for grads in 2016 was $104,007 ($84,098 USD). The base salaries ranged from $40,000 to $192,000 ($32,344 to $155,255 USD), with the higher end of this range going to students who pursued consulting jobs. Since this program is just one year long, the high average starting salaries for students indicate a considerable return on investment, in terms of both money and time. Bloomberg BusinessWeek also ranked Ivey’s MBA as the best MBA program in Canada for the past three years.
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Rotman School of Management—University of Toronto
Those looking for an MBA education that will provide ample chance to earn a generous starting salary may be impressed with the possibilities open to Rotman School of Management grads. The average base salary for graduates in 2016 was $92,524 ($74,819 USD). The 2016 class had an employment rate of 80 percent within three months of graduation and an 85 percent employment rate after six months. The range of starting salaries for the class of 2016 went as high as $214,737 ($173,486 USD) in the legal services industry. Moreover, the Financial Times has named Rotman the best business school in Canada every year for over a decade.
Schulich School of Business—York University
An average starting salary of $91,860 ($74,282 USD) for the class of 2016 makes a Schulich School of Business an ideal place for motivated students to jump-start their careers. With 89 percent of MBAs from the class of 2016 hired within three months of graduation, Schulich grads clearly have a competitive edge in the business community. Schulich’s program is also renowned for its flexibility. Students can switch seamlessly between part-time and full-time enrollment, and can choose to accelerate their program for the opportunity to earn their degree in just eight months.
Toronto’s Best Nonprofit MBA Options
It’s fair to say that the finance and consulting industries are the most popular for business school grads. But what about non-profits and social enterprises—where do they rank? While some assume that an MBA and working for a nonprofit do not go hand-in-hand, that’s not the case. Continue reading…
Rotman Launching New MBA Program in Healthcare and Life Sciences
The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto will begin offering a new Global Executive MBA program in healthcare and the life sciences.
The Toronto-based university created the 18-month program to keep up with the industry’s fast-changing ways, according to a recent press release. Rotman wants to create leaders in the sector by teaching them the management skills and technical skills necessary to succeed in the healthcare and life sciences field.
While this MBA is the school’s latest health-based degree, it’s certainly not the school’s first. MBA candidates already have the option to major in Health Sector Management. This program is more geared toward healthcare delivery systems and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
The new MBA, however, will begin this semester, breaking up into five portions. Three will take place in Toronto, but the other two will fall elsewhere—in San Francisco and Singapore. Students will get a front-row seat to how the healthcare industry operates on a global scale. Individuals from life science firms, service delivery organizations, and global agencies are encouraged to apply for the program. It’s best suited for those who want to build their career.
“The program will focus on the most effective ways of organizing industries, whether in the public sector or the private sector to deliver the best healthcare and to make it more affordable,” says Brian R. Golden, Vice Dean of MBA Programs, in the press release.
The program will work with the school’s Centre for Health Sector Strategy, which Golden leads, to build upon its offerings on the topic. The Centre, according to Rotman, is “Canada’s leading academic provider of healthcare executive programs.” An additional plus? The city’s medical discovery district is not far at all. Students will have quick and easy access to innovations as they see fit.
“The health and life sciences sector is the most important industry in the world,” said William Mitchell, a Co-Academic Director of the Program, added. “Globally it has a huge impact on economic development and a huge impact on human life. Our new program will teach general management and leadership skills, with direct application to people working in life sciences and healthcare.”
Rotman Creative Destruction Lab Partners with Rigetti Computing
The Rotman School of Management in Toronto is working with Rigetti Computing, a quantum computing company, on a new program to develop quantum machine learning software.
The partnership is with the Creative Destruction Lab, in particular, which announced its Quantum Machine Learning Program earlier this year. Now, the lab is building on its already accomplished work in accelerating machine learning startups. Quantum computing is the next step in computing and may prove better than classical computing soon.
“We announced the Quantum Machine Learning Program earlier this year with founding technology partner D-Wave Systems, and since then, the interest from applicants, investors, and technology partners has exceeded our expectations,” said Daniel Mulet, Associate Director of the lab’s program, in a press release. “The partnership with Rigetti expands the options of quantum systems available for algorithm development for the companies in our program.”
Within the program, Rigetti will be offering training for its Forest programming environment, which offers tools for experimental quantum programming.
The Creative Destruction Lab launched at the Rotman School in 2012 and has fostered many successful business leaders since then. including the founders of Kik, Bloomberg Beta, and LocoMobi. The lab received many applications for people interested in taking part in the Quantum Machine Learning Program, choosing 40 individuals and teams to begin in the program starting Sept. 5.
Startups that participate in the program can receive up to $80,000 in pre-seed investment. Rotman’s MBA students will also offer their advice in business development and implementation. The school is merging its business and technology expertise to bring forth a new program that has the ability to change the way computing operates in the modern world.
“Quantum machine learning will power some of the most impactful and exciting near-term applications of quantum computing. The startups at the [lab] are at the leading edge of this technology and will get early access to Rigetti’s general-purpose quantum hardware and to Forest, one of the most sophisticated quantum programming environments in the world,” said Madhav Thattai, Rigetti’s Chief Strategy Officer, in the press release. “We’re looking forward to working with these pioneering individuals and teams to help create and accelerate the quantum application ecosystem.”
Four University of Toronto Professors Appointed as Chief Scientists
Four chief scientists have been tasked with leading research and activities at the University of Toronto in behavioral insights as applied to consumers, citizens, organizations and markets. The appointees will work at the Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR) center, which is part of the Rotman School of Management. The center’s goal is to facilitate behavioral change through research in decision-making and use of empirically tested tools. Using a behavioral science framework, the centre strives to develop non-traditional solutions to social and economic problems. Continue reading…
