Gary Armstrong is Crist W Blackwell Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Undergraduate Education in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in business from Wayne State University in Detroit, and he received his PhD in marketing from Northwestern University in Illinois. Dr Armstrong has contributed numerous articles to leading business journals. As a consultant and researcher, he has worked with many companies on marketing research, sales management and marketing strategy.

But Professor Armstrong’s first love has always been teaching. His long-held Blackwell Distinguished Professorship is the only permanent endowed professorship for distinguished undergraduate teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been very active in the teaching and administration of Kenan-Flagler’s undergraduate program. His administrative posts have included Chair of Marketing, Associate Director of the Undergraduate Business Program, Director of the Business Honors Program, and many others.

Through the years, he has worked closely with business student groups and has received several UNC campus-wide and Business School teaching awards. He is the only repeat recipient of the school’s highly regarded Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, which he received three times. Most recently Professor Armstrong received the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching honour bestowed by the 16-campus University of North Carolina system.

Sara Denize is Professor and Deputy Dean in the School of Business at the University of Western Sydney. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce (honours) degree in marketing from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and followed up with a Master of Commerce by research a few years later. After moving to Australia, she completed her PhD at the University of Technology, Sydney.

With over 30 years of experience as an educator, Professor Denize oversees teaching and learning in business at the University of Western Sydney. Her most recent accomplishments include the complete redesign of undergraduate business programs to include opportunities for students to equip themselves for future work, to practise innovation and to prepare to be the job-makers of the future.

This work included the development of flipped classrooms, hours of green-screen and screen-cast lecture pods, interviews with executives and location filming, as well as the development of exciting and active in-class learning opportunities. Professor Denize loves teaching and is keen to make all aspects of marketing and business education accessible and meaningful.

Her teaching accomplishments have been recognised in national teaching citations. Also a keen researcher, she continues to develop her interest in collaboration and information exchange in business marketing and innovation contexts.

Michael Volkov is the Director of Teaching and Learning in the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Melbourne, and has over 15 years’ experience in teaching and learning within the tertiary environment. He loves teaching and is passionate about student learning and developing student-centred learning environments.

He is an award-winning and recognised leader in the field of teaching and learning, having been awarded numerous international, national and institutional awards, most recently including the 2015 Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy ANZMAC Distinguished Educator Award; 2015 Deakin University Award for Teaching Excellence (Highly Commended); 2014 Deakin University, Faculty of Business and Law Award for Effectiveness, Excellence and Exemplar Practice in Teaching and Learning; 2013 Australian Award for University Teaching Office for Learning and Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning; 2013 Deakin University Award for Teaching Excellence;

2011 Deakin University, Faculty of Business and Law Award for Individual Teaching Excellence; and the 2010 Deakin University Commendation for Teaching Excellence.

Stewart Adam is Honorary Associate Professor of Marketing in the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University, Melbourne, and managing partner with Melbourne-based marketing consultancy Fontech Pty Ltd, which was formed in Sydney in 1984. He was Australasia’s first professorial appointment in electronic marketing in 2001, where his research interests concerned use of digital tools and technologies in marketing, and their impact on non-financial and financial organisational performance. Of particular interest was the social and economic impact of communities of interest/practice.

Dr Adam has co-authored 10 of Australasia’s most widely adopted marketing textbooks and been lead author of two electronic-marketing textbooks in a publishing career spanning more than 25 years. He has been a regular contributor to academic and professional journals, and a keynote speaker at academic conferences and industry events on the subject of digital marketing and organisational performance. He was involved with Google’s Online Marketing Challenge, firstly in beta testing the student learning exercise in search engine marketing, and then in engaging his postgraduate Online Marketing students in the challenge. His most recent achievement in learning and teaching involved spearheading the implementation of the flipped classroom model coupled with continuous peer-reviewed assessment in marketing management, with resultant greater student engagement.

Dr Adam has extensive industry experience, having held positions ranging from advertising agency executive to marketing manager of manufacturing and service firms, and on to general manager of an operating division of an unlisted public company, which he led from development of a green-field site to its takeover by a major investor. His industry experience was gained in both Australia and Europe.

Philip Kotler is the SC Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, in the United States. He received his master’s degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD at MIT, both in economics. Dr Kotler is author of Marketing Management (Pearson Prentice Hall), now in its 14th edition and the most widely used marketing textbook in graduate schools of business worldwide. He has authored dozens of other successful books and has written more than 100 articles in leading journals. He is the only three-time winner of the coveted Alpha Kappa Psi award for the best annual article in the Journal of Marketing.

Professor Kotler was named the first recipient of two major awards: the Distinguished Marketing Educator of the Year Award given by the American Marketing Association, and the Philip Kotler Award for Excellence in Health Care Marketing presented by the Academy for Health Care Services Marketing. His numerous other major honours include the Sales and Marketing Executives International Marketing Educator of the Year Award; the European Association of Marketing Consultants and Trainers Marketing Excellence Award; the Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award and the Paul D Converse Award, given by the American Marketing Association to honour ‘outstanding contributions to science in marketing’. In a recent Financial Times poll of 1000 senior executives across the world, Professor Kotler was ranked as the fourth ‘most influential business writer/guru’ of the 21st century.

Dr Kotler has served as chairman of the College on Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, a director of the American Marketing Association and a trustee of the Marketing Science Institute. He has consulted with many major US and international companies in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organisation and international marketing. He has travelled and lectured extensively throughout Europe, Asia and South America, advising companies and governments about global marketing practices and opportunities.

Sean Doherty began his career with surf journalism in 1997 with Tracks magazine and became editor in 2000. His 2004 biography on surf legend Michael Peterson was the basis for an upcoming feature film and he has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, Surfer and Surfing magazines in the US, as well surfing magazines in other parts of the world.