From the ten nominations received from ten institutions in ten countries (Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Oman, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa and Ukraine), the evaluation committee has selected:
- Sophia Opatska, Lviv Business School of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Ukraine, in the category of Institutional Management. During the economic crisis in 2008 Sophia she was the Founding Dean of Lviv Business School of UCU, aiming to bring the community of business people inside Ukraine together with a common goal of promoting the «brand» of Ukraine outside the country. During the past decade under her leadership, LvBS has developed from a small start-up to a truly successful institution. Today, LvBS is one of the three best business schools in Ukraine. She is also the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs at the Ukrainian Catholic University. Her areas of expertise are Organizational Behavior and Learning Organizations, Organization Development and Entrepreneurship.
- Zoltan Buzady, Corvinus Business School, Hungary, in the category of Innovative Pedagogy. Zoltan is Associate Professor of Leadership, and at both Corvinus University and at CEU Business School served as Faculty Director of MBA programs. Zoltan is an expert in participant-centered education and is the first person to have won twice the CEEMAN case competition awards. Guided by the motto "Learning, Leading, Leapfrogging", Zoltan has a quarter-century of experimentation and innovation at the interface of Leadership, Cross-cultural People Management and Organizational Strategy. Together with Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, founder of positive psychology, and other colleagues they have developed FLIGBY, the global #1-award-winning and official Flow-Leadership Development Simulation Game. His is the Director of the ‘Leadership & Flow Global Research Network’, and has been selected by Google as an official Google+Create member.
- Daniil Muravskii, Institute of Business Studies (IBS-Moscow), RANEPA, Russia, in the category of Responsible Management Education. Danill’s expertise focuses on teaching digital marketing to meet industry demand. Together with the Chief Digital Officer at L’Oreal Russia, he launched the first Digital Marketing Management Course in Russia. As the Director of a Digital Marketing and Online studio, he created numerous online courses for academic colleagues and Russian companies; he is also acclaimed for his “Gamification for Managers” training for students and managers. He is the founder of the student project MOST (Mobile STudets) that creates accessible and friendly environments in higher education for people with mobility challenges.
“The winners of this year’s CEEMAN Champion Awards – and indeed all of the nominees – represent the best in management education today. We applaud their leadership, teaching and research successes and urge our CEEMAN members to look to them for best practices and innovations that are most relevant to the needs of our students, business community and institutions today,” said CEEMAN President Danica Purg.
The official announcement of the winners and the award ceremony will take place at the 26th CEEMAN Annual Conference award ceremony in Prague, Czech Republic on 21 September.