Who is that person running the Zoom classroom? Getting to know your professors is one of the joys of the UVic MBA in Sustainable Innovation, and we thought we’d get the conversation started with some quick facts about a few of them. (See other Study Break profiles here.)
BASMA MAJERBI
Associate Professor
MSc (International Finance), HEC Montreal, QC, Canada
PhD (Finance), McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Hometown: Tunis, Tunisia
Fun Facts
Coffee or tea: definitely tea during the day, but love my morning coffee J
Last book you read: Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (UVic Alum)
Most recently played song on your playlist: Cello Suite No.1 (J.S. Bach) played by Yo-Yo Ma
Teaching
MBA class taught (MBA 530, Finance for Impact):
“Every financial decision has an impact on people and the planet. The impact can be positive or negative, and maximizing the social and environmental impact should be a top priority along with pursing financial returns. This class helps students move away from the trade-off mentality in favour of a long-term and multi-stakeholder perspective when thinking about financial risk and returns. This mind-set is critical to re-orienting capital to finance innovative solutions to the world’s pressing challenges and ensuring a sustainable, inclusive and resilient future.”
A question you hope students will ask this term:
I like questions related to things that students are passionate about and show curiosity to learn how topics discussed in class can help them pursue their passions.
Research
Research topics: Sustainable finance, impact investing, climate finance, financial crises, financial development, foreign exchange risk, international asset pricing, financial system diversity
Recent work:
Carbon Footprint Tracking
Since 2009, Basma has overseen the calculation of the annual carbon footprint of Gustavson faculty, staff and students. This measurement, which tracks emissions resulting from Gustavson’s air travel, commuting, paper, electricity and more, is an important foundation for the school’s efforts to minimize and offset these emissions. Beginning in 2010, the province required UVic to offset all Scope 1 and 2 emissions on campus, but in 2016 Gustavson took the additional step of offsetting Scope 3 emissions as well. Scope 3, which includes our emissions from travel and commuting, made up 80% of the school’s emissions that year, so offsetting them was an important step.
Gustavson is now one of the only business schools in the world to be carbon neutral. Read more about how we offset emissions on the Centre for Social and Sustainable Innovation site.
Current Project: Vancouver Island Impact Investing Hub (VI3Hub)
Thanks to funding from the UVic Strategic Framework Impact Fund, Basma is currently leading the VI3Hub project, a multi-stakeholder platform designed in collaboration with community members and UVic scholars and students to create awareness, share information, research insights, best practices and to facilitate connections between investors and local businesses and start-ups developing climate solutions. By mobilizing private finance to support the local climate solutions ecosystem, VI3Hub will embody UVic’s vision of “integrating outstanding scholarship, engaged learning and real-life involvement to contribute to a better future for people and the planet”. It will also serve the Gustavson strategy of “cultivating partnerships for positive impact” within UVic and with the business community in Vancouver Island and BC.
IWFSAS/Sustainable Finance
Basma is a co-founder of the International Workshop on Financial System Architecture and Stability (IWFSAS), an annual conference offering a forum for academic researchers, practitioners and policy makers to discuss current issues related to the structure and design of financial systems and their impact on macro-financial stability and sustainable economic growth.
