Tony spent near thirty years in industry before switching full-time to academia. He holds a bachelors degree in engineering (Ibadan, Nigeria), an MBA (IESE, Barcelona, Spain), a masters degree in economics (Texas A&M), and is currently completing a doctorate degree in business administration. He has lived and worked in three continents (Europe, Africa, North America) and is at ease in different cultures and work environments. Multicultural and multilingual, he speaks five languages, including English and Spanish; and has a rudimentary knowledge of Latin and French.
In the course of his career, Tony has led and managed multiethnic and multinational interdisciplinary teams, at various times across different countries, and been credited with galvanizing team members' different individual talents, personalities and perspectives, while enthusiastically directing these towards a shared set of objectives. In consequence, his teams stood out and were acknowledged for their harmony and strength of will. He has also mentored and developed dozens of young managers who have themselves gone on to chart successful professional paths of their own in different parts of the world. He has more than three decades of active volunteer involvement with NGOs in projects for the less fortunate and for underserved communities.
Industry
Tony's career trajectory has enabled him accumulate international management experience in diverse industry sectors: engineering, business and management consulting, finance, economic development, executive business education, media, nonprofits, technology. Responsibilities included: business development; financial, market and industry analysis; business analysis; data deployment; strategy; marketing; corporate relations; research; stakeholder engagement; customer service; organizational change.
Several of these roles required developing business, economic and market intelligence solutions to support various international business ventures. He places particular emphasis on presenting complex material in ways that are easy to understand, and has pioneered new methods for various procedures and processes to achieve greater efficiencies, several of which continue to be used by the respective organizations. He strives in his approach to be driven by a constant quest for solutions and efficiencies, by a proactive problem anticipation stance, a continuous curiosity, and an active learning disposition.
International business, markets, economics and finance are fond specialties, and in the course of his career he has authored several publications including, among other works, a volume on select emerging economies and their markets, published in London, United Kingdom, which serves as a resource for companies in over twenty-two countries around the world, helping them make business decisions involving those regions; this work has been adapted to become an academic textbook on the subject of development economics. Among his publications is a business case study that is managed and distributed internationally across hundreds of business schools and universities by the world's oldest and largest repository of case studies - The Case Centre, United Kingdom; in it he explores the global expansion strategies of two of the world's largest automotive industry multinationals. His publications portfolio also includes a co-authored peer-reviewed academic paper in an engineering journal (Elsevier); hundreds of op-eds spanning themes as diverse as philosophy, literature, business, economics; etc.
Tony's intellectual and professional competences have received enthusiastic endorsements from prestigious quarters around the world, including at the Financial Times (UK), the AACSB (USA), INSEAD Business School (France), The Economist (UK), London Business School (UK), etc. They have also been recognized through a variety of merit-based awards such as the Chevening Scholarship from the United Kingdom Government.
Academia
The years since 2019 have been spent as a member of the professor of practice teaching faculties at Mays Business School (Texas A&M University), and Babson College, Massachusetts, teaching a range of business courses and modules - both in-person and online, and sometimes in a hybrid of the two formats - at undergraduate and graduate levels. Some of these are: International Finance, Financial Management, Corporate Finance, Macroeconomic Environment of Business, Managerial Economics, International Business, Global Context of Business, Business Strategy, Financial Statements Analysis, Managerial Accounting, Business Ethics, etc. He has also been responsible for curriculum development, faculty-led study abroad initiatives and various service assignments; a number of which were personal initiatives.
Tony considers this academic segment, without a doubt, to be the most fulfilling phase of a 30+ years working career. It has enabled him to further hone a talent for expressing complex material in ways easy to understand, while making them engaging at the same time. He is a strong proponent of bringing the real world into the classroom and adopts the case study method as frequently as is appropriate to the subject content; in the same vein, he routinely looks to adopt and integrate relevant real-time contemporary events into his teaching as they unfold, seeing how this aids the student's conceptualization and understanding of the subject matter. This approach has led him to realize how his prior experience across diverse industry sectors and in varied roles provides a rare versatility at teaching different subjects of a business curriculum to a high standard. He continuousy discovers valuable (and humbling) repercussions to this ability: students (of their volition) communicate that they are motivated and inspired, and that they leave with a greater and more secure confidence and sense of self, besides a deeper understanding of the specific course material. His constant mantra, which he passes on to his students is: "You Can Change the World!”; and - credit to them - they often come away enthused at the prospect of impacting society, using the knowledge and skills their college education presents them with.
Oblivious to it, these students illustrate the ways - no matter how small - in which an instructor is able to positively contribute to the development of another human person. In so doing, the students - again, oblivious to themselves - teach priceless lessons about how much one inexorably learns from the group of young and eager minds in one's classroom. These are but some of the invaluable joys that work in academia brings, and a reason Tony considers it a privilege to have a university career for an occupation.
All this notwithstanding, most important and above everything else, Tony is privileged to be a proud husband to a priceless wife, Lisa.
