Academic Board

Welcome to the Australian Institute of Business (AIB), a 40-year-old business school that delivers practical, high quality and innovative education to its students. As Chair of the Academic Board, I am pleased to play a part in AIB’s mission to deliver quality life-changing experiences for our students by giving them the skills required to be irreplaceable in business.

One of the primary roles of an Academic Board is to foster excellence in teaching, learning, scholarship and research. It is a role that we take very seriously here at AIB, and one that determines the nature of the oversight given to the AIB programmes and academic activities.

AIB provides students with the opportunity to apply their studies directly to the workplace, resulting in fast returns on investment for both students and their employers.

AIB is highly regarded, both nationally and internationally, offering the full suite of business degrees, including the prestigious PhD and the largest MBA in Australia*.

AIB is registered as a higher education provider in Australia by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), and its qualifications are accredited within the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) and internationally recognised. This ensures our degrees are equivalent in standing to qualifications issued by Australian universities.

AIB is an organisation, committed to the promotion of further understanding of what business leadership is and what the sustainable development of business enterprise means, as well as pursuing the development of the skills to practice effective performance in these fields. Its individualised attention and approach to online learning offer just the right environment for busy practitioners to share their insights, ask questions and consolidate their practical work-related learning.

As an experienced quality assurance specialist and winner of the Australian Higher Education Quality Award, I am committed to maintaining the high level of quality in AIB’s programs, so that you can be assured that you are receiving qualifications of the highest standard to lead you and your business into the future. I look forward to welcoming you to AIB, helping you reach your career goals and enabling you to be irreplaceable.

*AIB is Australia’s largest provider of MBAs: see Domestic Enrolments Surged During COVID, MBA News (March 2023) at www.mbanews.com.au

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Emeritus Professor Hilary Winchester AM (Chair, External Member)

M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon), FAICD

Professor Winchester is a higher education consultant, specialising in Quality Assurance. She was the former Provost of CQ University and has chaired the Academic Boards of two Australian Universities. In 2011, she won the Australian Higher Education Quality Award and is a member of TEQSA’s Register of Experts. She was awarded Member of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022 for services to Higher Education Governance and Administration.

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Professor Margaret Hicks (External Member)

BEd, GradDipRdg&LangEd, MEd, EdD

Professor Hicks is a consultant specialising in learning and teaching in higher education. She has held former roles as PVC Student Life at Flinders University and Director of Learning and Teaching at the University of South Australia.

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Professor Santina Bertone (External Member)

PhD, MA, Grad Dip, Grad Cert, BA(Hons)

Santina is a long-standing academic leader, having led 65 externally funded research projects, including Australian Research Council projects, totalling more than $2 million, and authored/co-authored 132 publications. She has worked as a Research Centre director, Associate Dean (Research), Deputy Dean (Research) and Head of Department at Victoria University, Swinburne University of Technology, and more recently, Central Queensland University. As an employment relations academic, her research focusses on the intersection of immigration and employment, with particular focus on skilled migrants, their careers and employment barriers. She emphasises the value of industry and community-engaged research, and has produced research with a wide range of government, industry and community partners. In recent years, she has also focussed on postgraduate research supervision, and has supervised 11 research completions, including 7 PhDs. In 2003 Santina won the Centenary of Federation medal for contributions to industrial relations, academia and the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria. She has also gained other recognitions from professional associations, such as Best Reviewer for ANZAM (Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management) 2017.

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Professor Darius Pfitzner

PhD, MIT, BCS, BIB

Professor Pfitzer is the Academic Dean of the Australian Institute of Business. Joining AIB from his most recent role as Associate Dean of Innovations at Charles Darwin University, he brings decades of academic experience. His distinguished career includes roles such as Associate Dean of Learning & Teaching, Associate Dean of Innovations, Discipline Leader of Economics, and Discipline Leader of Information Technology. Additionally, he has served as an Academic and Project Lead for campus deployments in New South Wales and Victoria. Professor Pfitzner’s contributions to numerous academic boards, including the Australian Business Deans Council Teaching & Learning Executive, the NT Trades and Labour Council Executive, the National Tertiary Education Union Territory and National Councils, and the Small Business Association of Australia, as well as various learning and teaching committees and policy development bodies, underscore his broad expertise and commitment to educational excellence. Aligning perfectly with the AIB ethos of the practical business school, Darius brings practical business experience, having owned and managed several successful businesses over the past 30 years.

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Associate Professor Mulyadi Robin

BBus(Management), BBus(Hons)(Management), PhD(Leadership)

Associate Professor Robin is the Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning at AIB. He is an experienced academic who has previously held academic appointments at the Centre for Workplace Leadership (The University of Melbourne), Monash University, and Alphacrucis College. He served as the Bachelor of Commerce Course Coordinator (Management Studies) and Monash College Course Coordinator at Monash University, and was Program Director for the flagship Master of Leadership Program at Alphacrucis College.

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Professor Gayle Morris

PhD(Applied Physical Chemistry), Bachelor of Applied Science(Honours): First Class, Bachelor of Applied Science in Chemistry(with Distinction)

Professor Morris is the Associate Dean, Research at AIB. She has an extensive background within the research and education sector, as a scientific researcher both in academia and industry, a research manager, and as an advocate for research and researchers. Gayle is currently Principal of G Morris Consulting specialising in research management and innovation. She was Director Research Services at Flinders University from 2010-2017 and prior to this she was Director of the VU Research Office at Victoria University for over 4 years. She has been an active and successful scientific researcher since 1992, at the Ian Wark Research Institute, University of South Australia, as Senior Chemist at Rio Tinto Technical Services and more recently at Victoria and Flinders Universities, attracting significant nationally competitive and industry research funding. She is an active professional committee member, as former Australasian Research Management Society (ARMS) Executive Committee Member and ARMS President.

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Dr Uwe Kaufmann

PhD, MCOM

Dr Kaufmann has worked on a wide range of consulting and projects analysing the impact of policy on business performance and development. He has done considerable research on the operation of the Australia’s FTAs including the ASEAN Australia New Zealand Free Trade Area (AANZFTA) and their impact on private sector performance. He led research consulting projects on the assessment of non-tariff measures affecting business trade among AANZFTA members, and has contributed to work on assessing policy in the health and education services sectors of those economies. For the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index, Uwe led a group of researchers on the collection and analysis of policy information in the services sectors in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa.

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Dr Svetlana De Vos

PhD, MBA, MPH, BSc

Svetlana is a Marketing Lecturer and a Project Coordinator at AIB. She has over ten years’ experience in industry and academia. Svetlana earned her PhD degree at the University of Adelaide, for which she received the Dean Commendation Award for Doctoral Thesis Excellence. Svetlana holds an MBA (summa cum laude) from the Uzbek-American Academy in collaboration with Tashkent State University of Economics, and earned Master of Public Health (cum laude) from the University of Maastricht.

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Dr. Christiana Osei Bosnu

PhD (Finance), MSc (Finance), BSc (Agricultural Economics)

Christiana is a lecturer in Finance. She completed her PhD in Finance at The University of Adelaide, where her research focused on the impact of foreign CEOs on corporate polices and firm performance. Christiana was awarded Dean’s Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence. Prior to joining AIB, Christiana worked as an academic tutor at the University of Adelaide Business School. Christiana also worked as a Lecturer in financial management and business strategy at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.

Prior to becoming an academic, Christiana spent six years with the Ghana Free Zones Authority as project evaluation and research officer where she was involved in evaluating domestic and multinational companies’ projects for government license. Her research interests are in corporate finance, corporate governance, financial economics, behavioural finance and investment banking. Christiana has been awarded highly competitive scholarships such as the Adelaide Scholarship International (ASI) and Finatrade Foundation Scholarship.

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Ms Vicki Golsby

MBA, GradCertEd(HighEd), GCertSupplyChainMgt

Vicki has more than 20 years industry experience in Supply Chain Management and Purchasing in manufacturing in South Australia. Vicki later joined the University sector where she worked initially as a Lecturer at Flinders University, and more recently as Academic Director for the Flinders International Study Centre.

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Ms Tess Coughlan

B.Ed (Humanities), PGCert(AppliedEcon)

Tess has more than 25 years in the Higher Education sector in Australia, and has been employed at both public and private institutions in compliance and quality assurance management roles, including as AIB’s Quality and Accreditation Manager since December 2014. Tess is a member of the Higher Education Private Providers’ Quality Network Steering Committee.

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Ms Liz Heathcote

MBA, DipEd, Adv Dip Comp Studies

Liz is the Director of Online Learning at AIB. She has 20 years’ experience in leadership positions in the higher education sector including eLearning and distance education as well as project and change management. Her previous roles included the establishment of strategy and operational processes in IT and eLearning; implementing quality assurance certification; management of IT and instructional support staff; senior IT and Faculty executive management; project management and organizational change management. Liz’s focus is on providing strategic leadership and concrete actions to enhance and deliver Online Learning to students, staff and stakeholders.

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Ms Brigitte Julien

Brigitte is the Coursework Student member of the Academic Board and is currently studying her MBA with AIB.

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Mr Cole Ambrock

Cole is the Research Student member of the Academic Board and is currently studying his DBA with AIB.

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Dr Megan Dean

Megan is the recent Alumni Member of the Academic Board. She completed her MBA with AIB.