Get to know NBS Director, Oana Branzei

At NBS, Oana focuses on strategic direction, with a particular passion for enabling others. She believes the members of NBS’s global community are already a powerful force for good in their own regions, and she wants NBS to ‘grow that good.’ Oana has a PhD in Business Administration from the University of British Columbia. She is also the Paul MacPherson Chair in Strategic Leadership and Professor of Sustainability and Strategy at Ivey.

  Credentials

• • PhD, Business Administration, University of British Columbia, Canada, 2005
  • MBA, International Business, University of Nebraska Lincoln, United States, 1998
  • HBA, International Relations, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania, 1996

Learn more about Oana:

• • LinkedIn Profile
  • NBS Publications

25 years of sustainability scholarship

On July 1, 2026, NBS’s current director, Dr. Jury Gualandris, will pass the torch to a new leader – Dr. Oana Branzei. Oana brings with her a wealth of experience. She’s been researching business sustainability for 25 years, first with a focus on social issues and later shifting to environmental issues. Most recently, Oana integrated both of her research passions into a wholistic research agenda on regenerative economies.

“I’ve really co-evolved with the sustainability field,” laughs Oana. “Almost every aspect of firm strategy and practice, collective action, policy, and pedagogy has been designed and developed since I started my PhD.” Oana currently serves as the Paul MacPherson Chair in Strategic Leadership and Professor of Sustainability and Strategy at Ivey. Her scholarly record spans 47 peer-reviewed papers, 11 special issues, 3 books, and 31 teaching cases.

More than just research

Oana’s career has also reached far beyond traditional research outputs. She pours energy into the same impact-oriented activities that are core to NBS’s mission: building academic capacity, and advancing sustainability in practice.

Passionate about supporting others, Oana has founded, run, and advised on many initiatives that strengthen the field of sustainability scholarship. Examples include:

• The Ivey-ARCS PhD Sustainability Academy: In 2008, Oana founded this internationally recognized learning and networking event, and has been running it ever since. Each year, the Academy convenes promising PhD students and senior scholars, so students can receive intensive feedback on their research and grow as scholars and change-makers.
• Academy of Management Leadership Team: Oana is in year 2 of a 5-year term on the Academy of Management leadership team. She currently serves as the Program Chair for the Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE) division.

Oana is also energized by working alongside students and business leaders, shaping the next frontier of sustainability practice. She has developed and delivered many practice-facing programs, including:

• The Ivey HBA Sustainability Certificate: Oana founded this program in 2009 – long before sustainability was mainstream in business school education. The program uses a coordinated set of courses and experiences to empower undergraduate students to build and lead more sustainable organizations. She directed the program until 2025, before passing the torch to Dr. Lara Liboni.
• The Regenerator: This impact-driven entrepreneurship program accelerates the growth of ventures who give back to society more than they take. Over 16-weeks, ventures receive hands-on mentorship and training from academics and industrial partners, to help them act on critical issues, like decarbonization and biodiversity conservation.

Why Oana is excited to lead NBS

“Now is a time when NBS can really change the course of the future,” exclaims Oana. “And it can do so by energizing and activating its global members.”

Oana believes the global change-makers who make up the NBS community are already a powerful force for good in their own regions and communities. By supporting their individual and collective efforts, NBS can ‘grow the good’ already happening in the world.

“There’s a heavy energy right now, which can make it hard to move forward,” reflects Oana. “But just as a flower turns toward the sun, people also turn toward the light in their lives. I’d like NBS to be that source of light, through community. We can turn to each other for energy, support, collaboration, and learning.”

Vision for the future

To support and energize one another, scholars and practitioners need the right spaces to connect. NBS has been creating such spaces since it was founded by Dr. Tima Bansal in 2008. First, NBS convened the leaders of large companies to discuss shared challenges and guide the creation of systematic reviews on those challenges. Later, in 2012, NBS formed its Sustainability Centres Community and began offering a variety of spaces – synchronous and asynchronous, in-person and virtual – for scholars to connect and share learnings. Most recently, NBS is even piloting a year-long program to catalyze new collaborative research and funding applications (Centre Collaboration Incubator).

Oana will build on NBS’s history of convening and supporting change-makers. Going forward, she plans to offer many types of collaborative spaces, from short knowledge exchange events, to deep-dive programming that accelerates collective action. “I’d love to see NBS scale its own impact by ‘growing the good’ that’s already happening within our global sustainability community.”