KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Pat Obi, Purdue University, USA
Pat Obi is an endowed professor at Purdue University, Hammond, in the United States with the title, White Lodging Endowed Professor of Finance. He received his Ph.D. in Finance and Econometrics from the University of Mississippi and, is a Certified Hotel Industry Analyst (CHIA), a charter he received in 2016. Currently, he is the Director of the Executive MBA program at Purdue University Northwest where he also teaches courses in corporate finance, financial derivatives, and quantitative methods.
In addition to serving on the board of various organizations in the Chicago area, Obi also consults for businesses and local governments in the United States on matters relating to valuation, financial planning, and financial performance. He also conducts regular financial workshops at community centers and businesses, especially those in the hospitality industry.
In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Obi joined a team of American professors in an annual volunteer teaching assistance at Université Nouvelle Grand’Anse in Jérémie, Haiti. At various periods from 1995, he served as a visiting scholar at overseas universities including Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Vilnius Technical University (Lithuania), Klaipeda University (Lithuania), Vaal University of Technology (South Africa), Kyung Hee University (South Korea), Khon Kaen University (Thailand), and Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.
Following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Obi gave invited presentations at a number of international venues. These include Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic (July 2009); Shahe City, China (August 2010); Khon Kaen University, Thailand (August 2009); Vaal Area Chamber of Commerce, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa (March 2009); Hotel & Tourism Industry Forum at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea (October 2009); Alliance Française in Jérémie, Haiti (September 2011); University of Cyprus in Nicosia (November 2012), Helsinki, Finland (July 2013), and New Orleans, Louisiana (Nov 2014). Similar presentations were also given at media events in the Chicago area between 2008 and 2014.
Obi is the recipient of the first Faculty Lecturer Award (2010) and the Outstanding Faculty Scholar Award (2015) at Purdue University in Hammond, Indiana. Teaching recognitions at Purdue also include Teacher-of-the-Year at Purdue (2000) and teaching excellence awards from the Executive MBA program. Research awards have come from the Academy of Finance, Institute for Global Business and Finance, Association for Global Business, and Applied Business Research. Obi has over 70 scholarly publications and is on the editorial boards of five academic journals. He is the author of Basics of Business Finance, a Lithuanian language college textbook; and We Must Change the Way We Live, a book on financial education, published by Archway Publishing.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Bernedette Muthien, Cape Town, South Africa
Over twenty years Bernedette Muthien has held senior executive management positions in academia, civil society and government in South Africa and abroad. An indigenous black woman from Cape Town, she is an accomplished facilitator, researcher and poet who designs, implements and evaluates projects for business, donors, government and NGOs, locally and internationally.
Until August 2016, she was the Deputy Director General in the Department of Women in the Presidency, managing Social Transformation and Economic Empowerment. She served as departmental representative in the high level Economic Cluster and on the executive Project Management Unit of the Nine Point Plan, as well as the National Oversight Structure of the Centres of Specialisation Project of the Department of Higher Education and Training (skills development for the economy), in addition to other official delegations. Among others, she oversaw production of The Status of Women in the South African Economy Report 2015, precipitating the Presidential Directive of 22 September 2015 to Economic Cluster Ministers to include women and gender in their planning, implementation and monitoring, a Directive extended to the entire Cabinet during 2016. In the Presidency she worked on, among others, Financial Inclusion, as well as Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting, in partnership with National Treasure and UN Women.
Over 22 years, on all six continents, she produced more than 200 publications and conference presentations, some of which have been translated from English into at least 16 local and international languages.
Muthien was the first Fulbright-Amy Biehl fellow at Stanford University (1994-1995), and holds postgraduate degrees in Political Science from the University of Cape Town (Dean’s Merit List, 1992), and Stellenbosch University (Andrew W Mellon Fellow, 2006-2007) in South Africa.
She serves on various international advisory boards, including the international journal Human Security Studies, as well as the International Institute on Peace Education. She is part-time Commissioner for South Africa’s Constitutional Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, and chairs its Research and Policy Development Committee, in addition to serving on the Performance Evaluation Committee.
During 2012 she published her first solo poetry anthology, “ova”, with critical acclaim around the world.
Join her on Twitter @BerneMuthien, Instagram and other social media.