Staff

Andrea North-Samardzic is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management in Deakin Business School. Andrea has extensive experience of over 17 years of teaching at universities in Australia and overseas consistently receiving excellent student evaluations. She is currently the Director of the Master of Business Administration (MBA).

Deputy Director: Dr Rakesh Pati

Dr. Rakesh Pati is a Senior Lecturer in Management and Deputy Director of Women’s Entrepreneurship Research Alliance (WERA) at Deakin University, Melbourne. Rakesh’s current research and teaching interests are in Strategy and Entrepreneurship. He holds extensive experience in research, teaching, industry collaborations, and consulting that spans across the USA, Australia, and Asia. His research has been published in top management journals, such as Personnel Psychology, Harvard Business Review, Long Range Planning, R&D Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, among others. Rakesh teaches undergraduate, graduate, and executive education subjects in Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship, International Business, Behavioral Strategy, and Business Judgement. He also has been awarded numerous research grants and awards, including the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship during his Doctoral studies. Rakesh has worked on numerous consulting projects with several large publicly listed companies as well as with other privately held companies, government agencies, NGOs and entrepreneurs in Australia, USA and India. Rakesh also actively mentors several entrepreneurs during their inception and growth phases.

DEAKIN Members

Dr Jane Menzies

Jane Menzies is a Senior Lecturer of International Business in the Department of Management in Deakin Business School. Jane was awarded her PhD from Monash University in 2005, on ‘Women’s participation in international assignments in multinational enterprises’. Jane is the Course Director for the Master of Business Administration (International) in the Deakin Business School.

Associate Professor Ambika Zutshi

Ambika Zutshi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management in Deakin Business School. Ambika completed her Bachelor of Environmental Sciences, Master of Environmental Management and PhD at Monash University. Her current research is focused on corporate social responsibility, business ethics, the role of stakeholders in Environmental Management Systems (EMS), and supply chain management.

Dr Arpit Raswant

Dr Arpit Raswant is an Assistant Professor (AU: Continuing Lecturer) at the Deakin University and a Korea Foundation Fellow at the Korea University. He is also a Visiting Researcher at the Lancaster University. His research focuses on firm investment from social, economic, and security perspectives.

Dr Lee Martin

Dr Lee Martin is a senior lecturer in the Department of Management at Deakin University. She has previously held visiting fellowships at Simon Fraser University, Canada and Singapore Management University, Singapore.

Dr Nicole Larson

Nicole Larson is a Lecturer in the Department of Management in Deakin Business School. Nicole completed her PhD in Industrial Organisational Psychology at the University of Calgary in Canada.

Associate Professor Lubna Alam

Lubna Alam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics in Deakin Business School. Prior to joining at Deakin, Lubna worked at the University of Canberra. Central to her research is a focus on the nature of emerging, often disruptive, social information systems (e.g. social media, crowdsourcing, mobile technologies) and their impact on individuals and organisations, with a particular focus on public sector and not-for-profits.

Dr Simona Scarparo

Dr Simona Scarparo is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting in the Department of Accounting in Deakin Business School. Formerly, Simona worked at Warwick Business School, in the UK. She holds a PhD in Accounting from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, a Master in Public Sector Management and Accounting in the University of Bologna and a Bachelor degree in Economics and Commerce in University of Cagliari in Italy.

Dr Munirul Nabin

Dr Munirul Nabin is a Senior Lecturer in Economics, Department of Economics, Deakin University. Munirul completed his PhD in Economics from the University New South Wales (UNSW) in 2005. Prior to joining Deakin, he worked for UNSW and Federation University (formerly known as Ballarat University).

Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM – Pune)

Associate Professor Madhura Bedarkar

Madhura Bedarkar is Associate Professor and Deputy Director – Administration in Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, Symbiosis International (Deemed University). She holds a doctoral degree in Economics from University of Mumbai and also, Master’s degree in Personnel Management from University of Pune. Prior to joining teaching, she worked with renowned chambers of commerce and industry and think tanks, wherein she was involved in projects relating to civic issues, marketing and environmental research. Madhura has been in academia for over 12 years. She has also delivered training sessions to renowned corporates. She provides mentoring to aspiring entrepreneurs and start ups. Her areas of expertise include sustainability, social and women entrepreneurship. She has published her research in reputed journals and has also bagged a project funding from Ministry of Education, Govt. of India to study women entrepreneurship in India. Madhura is a Ph.D. guide in SIU. She was a member of Cartel Working Group, Competition Commission of India, GoI during the year 2020-2021.

Professor Yogesh Brahmankar

Yogesh is the CEO of SCEI (Symbiosis Centre for Entrepreneurship and innovation),and a Programme Evangelist for MBA (I&E) programme at SIBM Pune which is a unique and first of its kind programme in India. Yogesh is an Entrepreneurship Educator and Trainer, Mentor in the Field of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Operational Excellence. He has mentored more than 60 startups in the last few years. He is also TRIZ- Level-I certified professional and master trainer for Start-ups. He is also involved at NITI Aayog, Govt of India in the capacity of Mentor for Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) as part of SCEI Collaboration with WEP.

Prof Yogesh holds a Master’s degree in management from Mumbai University and Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Pune University. He has worked with the department of defence production (Govt. of India) in the field of quality assurance. He has 11 years of industry experience in the field of quality assurance and 9.5 years of teaching experience in premier business schools including 6 years at SIBM Pune.