Donna Appointed Senior Drucker Fellow at Drucker School of Management

Donna Finley has been honoured to be a regular guest lecturer at the Drucker School of Management over the past 16 years alongside her long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Vijay Sathe. In 2019, she was appointed as a Senior Drucker Fellow and has had the privilege of helping Dr. Sathe develop and co-teach the course “Managing the Family Business”. From the beginning, our Finley Team’s philosophy has been deeply rooted in Peter Drucker’s teachings of high stakeholder engagement coupled with data analytics. Donna always looks forward to sharing our cases with Drucker MBA/EMBA students.

More about Donna

Donna Finley is a lifelong learner, thought-leader, and award-winning strategist. As a pracademic, she combines her academic and practitioner experience to solve business challenges and create new opportunities. Over the course of her career, she has designed and led over 15 major organizational transformations in multiple sectors. She has the rare ability to translate knowledge and strategy across diverse stakeholders, sectors, and situations that lead to unique solutions to complex problems.

To work alongside Finley is to be given an invaluable opportunity to experience and learn what it means to lead with vision and energy, and to be a catalyst for bold change. She has an unwavering dedication to the fundamental principles of ordered strategy that are grounded on listening systems that place the needs and interests of customers and primary stakeholders at the center of decision-making.

Finley is particularly interested in developing sustainable social enterprise and adaptive business models as foundational for organizational success. She serves the for-profit, public, and non-profit sectors through her management consulting practice, Finley & Associates, and family businesses through a new venture, Family Office by Finley. Dedicated to community, Finley has served on multiple boards and has worked with hundreds of boards in improving their performance. She is a renowned facilitator, gifted educator, and a published author.

Finley is a global citizen who holds a PhD from the University of Calgary in interdisciplinary studies (Knowledge Transfer); an MBA from IMD, University of Lausanne (Switzerland); and a BEd and BA from Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada).