Global is Local Business Summit: The Future of Work

Margaret Annunziata currently serves as the president of Isothermal Community College, a role she began in 2021 after serving as the  vice president of academic affairs at Davidson County Community College in North Carolina. Leading an outstanding team of faculty and staff across curriculum and noncredit programs, Dr. Annunziata works in collaboration with business, industry, K-12, and university partners to build and sustain opportunities for students to earn educational credentials and skills that position them for highly skilled, rewarding careers.

Prior to her current role, Dr. Annunziata served the faculty, staff, students and communities of DCCC as a faculty member, director of student success and institutional assessment, coordinator of continuing education programs, and director of the campus child development center. She is a passionate advocate for educational access and equity, leading the college’s Achieving the Dream and Frontier Set initiatives and working with faculty to support teaching and learning in support of student success. Dr. Annunziata was recently recognized by Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society with the Distinguished College Administrator Award.

Dr. Annunziata holds a doctorate in educational leadership from Wingate University, a master of science in human development and family studies from Auburn University, and bachelor’s degrees in psychology and economics from Bellarmine University. Margaret lives in Davidson County, North Carolina, with her husband, Ken; two sons, Nicholas and Michael; and daughter, Sydney.

Sharon McMillen Cannon teaches written and oral communication courses to undergraduate business, full-time MBA and PhD students. She received the 2020 Weatherspoon Award for Excellence in MBA Teaching.

Dr. Cannon includes intercultural communication simulations and activities in many of her courses to build awareness of how cultural differences affect communication in a business setting. She is certified to use and debrief individuals and teams with the GlobeSmart Profile (Aperian Global), Cultural Orientations Indicator (TMC) and Intercultural Edge.

Having a passion for intercultural communication, she teaches an undergraduate elective on the topic and has led an undergraduate Global Immersion Elective to Japan.

In 2020, the American Council on Education selected her as one of 15 U.S. faculty to collaborate on a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) initiative with a professor in Japan, which will provide a virtual exchange experience for UNC Kenan-Flagler undergraduate business students.

Dr. Cannon has facilitated presentation training for the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health program, the Royster Fellows, National Science Foundation Fellows, UNC medical interns and others.

She has provided public speaking training for a number of organizations and coached students in the Evening MBA and Weekend Executive MBA programs.

She has taught the elective “Presentation Skills” course for graduate students across the University in the UNC Graduate School’s Professional Development Program. Annually, she is one of the judges for the graduate school’s three-minute thesis presentation competition and frequently judges case competitions.

Dr. Cannon joined UNC Kenan-Flagler in 2004 as the director of the Business Communication Center after a career in higher education administration, which included serving as a dean of students and creating and facilitating a leadership development program.

From 2008-12, she taught management communication at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis where she founded the Management Communication Lab.

Dr. Cannon’s speaking engagements outside of the University frequently focus on gender communication. She presented to the Americas Women’s Network and the Women’s Leadership Initiative in 2019.

She received her PhD from North Carolina State University, MEd from the University of Florida and an AB from in English and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis.

John Loyack is the Vice President of Global Business Services for the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina. In this role, John leads the department composed of the EDPNC regional offices, the International Trade Division and the small business counseling team known as Business Link North Carolina. This team supports North Carolina businesses in everything from starting up a new enterprise to expanding an existing business to the development of export strategies aimed at increasing international sales. Previously, John served as the Director of International Trade for the North Carolina Department of Commerce, the state’s lead export assistance agency. On the private sector side, John has more than 25 years’ experience in the area of new product development for companies like MercuryMD, Thomson Reuters, United States Surgical and Esteve Laboratories.

John earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Spanish from Gettysburg College and holds an MBA in International Business Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. He is fluent in Spanish, is a patent holder and a Certified Global Business Professional (CGBP®).

Arvind Malhotra’s area of research focus on crafting innovation problems, open innovation approaches, crowd creativity, crowdsourcing for innovation, using crowds to solve complex societal problems and the future of work. His research projects include studying successful open-innovation organizational and extra-organizational structures, creating the process and structure for large-scale collaboration and management of knowledge in extra-organizational collaborative contexts.

His book “Unleashing the Crowd: Collaborative Solutions to Wicked Business and Societal Problems” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) focuses on how organizations can leverage crowds for solving wicked business and societal problems.

Dr. Malhotra has received research grants from the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise, Society for Information Managers Advanced Practices Council, Dell, Carnegie-Bosche Institute, National Science Foundation, RosettaNet consortium, UNC-Small Grants Program and the Marketing Sciences Institute.

He has consulted, conducted applied research projects or led executive development workshops with ESPN, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, IBM, ExxonMobil, Primax Properties, Sprint, RosettaNet Consortium, American Golf Corporation, Cisco, ING Direct and Cargill Sweeteners.

Dr. Malhotra’s research has been published in leading academic journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Perspectives, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Academy of Marketing Sciences, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Knowledge Management and Communications of the ACM.

He received the best paper award from MIS Quarterly, the top information science journal, in 2001, and the best paper of the year from the Journal of Services Research and Journal of Knowledge Management in 2005. Two of his papers earned the prestigious Society for Information Managers Best Paper Award.

He received his PhD in business administration and his MS in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Southern California. He earned his BE in electronics and communications engineering from the University of Delhi.

Barbara J. Stephenson is vice provost for global affairs and chief global officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a distinguished diplomat, former U.S. ambassador, international leader and prior dean of the Leadership and Management School at the Foreign Service Institute. She leads UNC Global and advances a pan-university global strategy to enhance UNC-Chapel Hill’s global reach, impact and reputation. Stephenson is a fierce advocate for the role of higher education in constructively addressing complex global challenges, and she has extensive experience in collaborating across societies and geographies.

Previously, Stephenson was president of the American Foreign Service Association from 2015-2019 and was a U.S. Foreign Service officer for over 30 years. She was a principal advocate for diplomacy, working closely with Congress, the media and globally engaged strategic partners.

At the Foreign Service Institute, Stephenson launched the Culture of Leadership Roundtable to improve leadership across the State Department and in U.S. embassies around the world. In 2008, she was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Panama and later became the first woman to serve as deputy ambassador and acting ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in London.

As deputy senior advisor to the secretary and deputy coordinator for Iraq (2006-2008), she was recognized with the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award for developing and implementing the civilian surge, the largest deployment of civilians to a war zone since the Vietnam War. She coordinated across federal agencies and the U.S. Congress to unite stakeholders behind a mission to reverse the spiral into sectarian violence by strengthening governance in Iraq.

From 2001-2004, as the American Consul General in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she helped renew support for the Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to decades of violence. As Consul General and Chief of Mission in Curaçao (1998-2001), she won support from local and Dutch officials to establish two U.S. Air Force bases to support Plan Colombia.

Earlier in her career, Stephenson served as special assistant to Under Secretary for Political Affairs Tom Pickering, covering European affairs, including the war-torn Balkans. Other assignments have included desk officer for the UK, political-military officer in South Africa, and political officer in The Hague, San Salvador, and Panama.

Stephenson holds a doctorate, master’s and bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Florida.

Patric Vestlund has extensive experience with international businesses in a variety of sectors, such as governmental affairs, computer software, construction, and industrial components and machinery. He has been living, managing and developed businesses in Sweden, Germany, South Africa, The Netherlands, and the USA. He and his wife were also involved in Boys&Girls Club of Wisconsin while living there.