Gene Deszca Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Gene Deszca is professor emeritus of business administration and a former MBA director
and associate director in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid
Laurier University. He played a variety of leadership roles at Laurier, including the development
and launch of the full-time, one-year MBA program, the executive MBA program,
and the undergraduate international business concentration. He was instrumental
in the development of the post-university professional accreditation programs for one of
Canada’s major accounting bodies and was a member of its national board of directors for
several years.
Gene loves working with students and practitioners and values the excitement, energy,
and breakthroughs that can emerge from these interactions. He has served on boards and
continues to teach graduate and executive courses, both nationally and internationally, in
organizational behavior, leading organizational change, and international business. His
consulting work follows similar themes for clients in both the public and private sectors,
with a focus on framing and navigating organizational change and the development and
delivery of executive programs. He is involved in entrepreneurial initiatives that are in the
process of scaling. One of these focuses on the development and deployment of public and
private blockchains for use across a wide array of applications.
Gene is the author or coauthor of over 100 journal articles, books, monographs, cases,
conference publications/presentations, and technical papers. These include the books
Canadian Cases in Human Resource Management, Cases in Organizational Behaviour, and
Organizational Change: An Action Oriented Toolkit (now in its fifth edition) and the articles
“Driving Loyalty Through Time-to-Value,” “Managing the New Product Development
Process: Best-in-Class Principles and Leading Practices,” and “Aging Well in Management
Education: An Interview.” He is an active case writer, and his current research focuses on
organizational change and the development of high-performance enterprises.