by: Patty Mah, Associate Director, Communications & External Relations
Hooray! You made it to university and you get to decide which courses to take, which clubs to join and what to eat for dinner. Also: how much money to spend.
The Women in Accounting and Finance: Global Summit is an event that celebrates our female leaders and showcases their accomplishments in the field of accounting and finance. This year, though virtual, was a great opportunity to hear the unique and empowering stories of the panelists from around the globe.
Recently the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) was pleased to be notified that one of its former faculty members, Sally Gunz (MA, LLB Sydney, MBA Manchester), Professor Emerita (1981-2019), was made an Honorary Member of the University. Now retired, we caught up with Gunz to talk about her career and the contributions she has made to SAF.
Su-Yin Tan is the first to acknowledge that the sudden shift to online learning during the pandemic was hard on teachers and students. So, when public health restrictions lift, Tan doesn’t want to lose all the valuable lessons learned.
Tan, a teaching fellow in the Faculty of Environment, is supporting a new Blended Learning Initiative at the University of Waterloo. “The pandemic forced me to try different things and to think differently about all of my assignments,” says Tan. “I do see advantages to offering some activities online and was surprised to get good feedback from students.”
Globally, 2020 has been a year of unanticipated decision-making as organizations pivoted to ensure business success, often with very tight timelines. With the common theme of the global pandemic as the driving force of these strategies, the School of Accounting and Finance leveraged its annual Women In Accounting and Finance event to invite five SAF alumni from across the globe to share their stories and insights in managing and pivoting their teams, organizations, and personal lives through the global pandemic.
‘Using a combination of speech recognition technologies and natural language processing technology, it’s able to communicate with the guests regardless of dialect, accent or what their order is.’
Globalization of businesses and increased public interest from consumers and investors have meant that organizations are demonstrating how their companies are governed responsibly and doing good for the environment and society. Additionally, employers today are expecting more from their employees than just technical skills. Business leaders are wanting professionals who have the judgement, collaborative, and team skills backed with ethics and integrity to navigate and harness the power of big data to drive business solutions and decisions.
As the President and CEO of Sun Life, Kevin Strain (MAcc ‘90) brings close to thirty years of insurance industry experience to his new role. Strain spent much of those years with Sun Life in various finance and business roles to advance his career to eventually assume the responsibility of Sun Life’s leadership. The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) caught up with the very busy President and CEO to chat about his career, how he hopes to lead Sun Life beyond the global pandemic, and why he chooses to give back to Waterloo to help build future talent.
With the start of the fall term, our community is getting ready to return to campus, and so it is a great time to be introduced (or re-introduced) to some of our faculty and staff. Candid, enlightening, serious, and not-so-serious, our Q&A series allows the personalities of the faculty and staff members who make up the School of Accounting and Finance community to shine.
This week, we interview David Ha (MAcc ’09), Professor and MAcc Co-Director, who has been with the School for ten years. Fun fact: At Grad Ball when Ha was a university student at Waterloo, he was voted by his class as most likely to become a professor one day—guess they were spot on in their assessment!