Affiliated Researchers

As a management consultant, Alex Beraskow provided counsel to organisations for over 3 decades.  Founding 3 management consulting firms, after selling his last one, he transitioned his career to that of board governance. His view is that board governance draws on 3 disciplines:  management, law and social sciences. He has ben an adjunct professor at the University.  He also completed the ICD.D certification.

Joining the Center on Governance, his research project is directed to board governance of Not For Profit corporations.  The project will examine existing board practices, document common practices, and propose best practices for NFP boards.  He draws on his direct experience with a dozen such boards, completing an extensive literature search and intends to also survey both boards and executive management to in turn identify any gap.

Dr. Yousif El-Ghalayini is an Associate Professor in Public Administration at Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government, Executive MPA Program Coordinator, and Research Affiliate at the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa. His areas of teaching focus on public sector management and governance, HRM and PM, public policy development along with organizational behavior and development. 

Before joining Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government, Dr. El-Ghalayini was the Program Manager of HRM Program at the School of Business affiliated to the Australian College of Kuwait. Dr. El-Ghalayini spent few years of his career working with the United Nations as specialist in civil society development and capacity building in post-conflict zones. He designed several organizational capacity-building programs and helped with the implementation of several training programs including public policy development, strategic thinking and results-based management. Dr. El-Ghalayini also served as Consular Services Officers with Global Affairs Canada. Dr. El-Ghalayini holds a PhD in Public Administration from University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He holds a Master in Project Management from Université du Québec en Outaouais (Gatineau), Graduate Diploma in Administration from John Molson School of Business at Concordia University (Montreal), and BSc. in Electrical Engineering from Amman National University (Salt).

Dr. Mohammad Habibur Rahman is Affiliated Researcher at the Centre on Governance and Seconded Professor at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa. In his 36-year professional career, Dr. Rahman has been teaching public administration, public policy, international affairs, development management, governance, and environmental policy in a few universities world-wide including at Lakehead University, Ontario. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, USA and Research Associate at the York Centre for Asian Research in York University, Canada. Dr. Rahman facilitated numerous executive leadership training on leadership, strategic management, civil service reforms etc. in several countries including at the Professional Development Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada. As consultant, he served UNDP, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and others. His recent research contribution was on open government, administrative reforms, digital public services, civil society, knowledge management, and agile policy implementation.

David Dubinski’s research interests include cultural policy, international trade policy, climate policy governance, and the bounded rationality of public management.  From 2000-2017 he worked in the federal public service in the areas of international trade, international labour, Canada-US relations, and cultural policy.  He served on Canadian delegations to UNESCO, the WTO, and UNCTAD.  He was part of the team that promoted and then negotiated UNESCO’s 2005 Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions.  From 1994-2000 he worked for the parliamentary caucus of Canada’s New Democratic Party, serving as the House Leader’s Assistant and then Research Director.  He studied for his PhD in Modern History from the University of Cambridge as a Commonwealth Scholar.  He did his postgraduate research on British progressive politics during the First World War and its aftermath. He has been a university lecturer in British History, International History, and Public Management.

Professor Cristina D'Alessandro, PhD, is responsible for statistical cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa within the French Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques, Insee). She is associate professor at Sciences-Po Paris Executive Education (France), a member of the Centre on Governance of the University of Ottawa (Canada). She is also Associate researcher at the PRODIG Research Centre (UMR PRODIG), at the University of Paris 1 Sorbonne and Affiliate Associate Professor at Riara University, Nairoby, Kenya. Prof. D’Alessandro is widely published in English, French, and Italian. Her research focus are urban planning, management and transformation; natural resources and environmental governance; economic and territorial governance; economic policies; institutional capacity building and leadership.

With over 20 years of academic and policy research experience, she serves as an international consultant with international organizations, including the African Development Bank, UN-WOMEN, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, but also the BMW Foundation, and the Qatar National Research Found, inter alia.

She holds a number of board membership positions: the International Advisory Board of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies; the editorial board of the journals L’Espace Politique and of African Geographical Review.

Previously she served as a Scientific Manager at the French National Agency for Research, as a Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences-Po, Paris, France), as Knowledge Expert at the African Capacity Building Foundation in Harare (Zimbabwe) and as a professor at the University Lumière Lyon 2.

Dr. D’Alessandro holds: a French Habilitation à diriger les recherches (HDR) from l’Université Bordeaux Montaigne (France); a post-doctorate from the West Virginia University (West Virginia, USA); a Masters and a PhD in development geography from the University François-Rabelais de Tours (France); and a bachelor of geography from the University of L’Aquila (Italy).