Faculty Directors
Global Energy Leadership Program
Faculty Co-Director, UC Berkeley
Andrew Isaacs, Adjunct Professor, Executive Director; Management of Technology Program. Co-Executive Director; Center for Energy and Environmental Innovation
Andrew M. Isaacs is Adjunct Professor in the College of Engineering and in the Haas School of Business. He is also Executive Director of UC Berkeley’s Management of Technology Program, the joint graduate program of the Haas School of Business, College of Engineering and School of Information. He is founder and Co-Director of UC Berkeley’s new Center for Energy and Environmental Innovation, and since 2005 has served as Faculty Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Executive Education, Berkeley’s center for advanced training of corporate management.
The Management of Technology (MOT) Program at UC Berkeley is a graduate program offering 52 courses in management and high technology, plus a wide range of programs that integrate high tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere with UC Berkeley. Under Isaacs’ leadership the program has grown to be the largest interdisciplinary program at Berkeley with nearly 1,500 graduate student enrollments in the program annually, making it the largest joint engineering-MBA program in the world. Along with his teaching and program leadership responsibilities, Isaacs directs several graduate fellowship programs, including the IBM Venture Fellows Program, the Hitachi Fellows Program, the Mayfield Fellows Program, the China Fellows Program, and the UNIDO Fellows Program. MOT’s impact at UC Berkeley has been profound: Berkeley is now ranked by The Wall Street Journal as the #1 MBA program by technology company recruiters, ahead of MIT, Stanford, CMU and other leading technology-focused MBA programs.
In early 2007, Isaacs co-founded the Center for Energy and Environmental Innovation (CEEI) with a mandate to serve as UC Berkeley’s campus-wide center focused on commercialization opportunities for new energy technology. CEEI operates as a hub for Berkeley’s many cleantech and renewable energy initiatives, and includes on its board many of the university’s cleantech thought leaders.
Isaacs teaches four popular graduate-level courses at UC Berkeley: The Business of Nanotechnology; Marketing for High Tech Entrepreneurs; Energy, Sustainability and Business Innovation; Opportunity Recognition: Technology and Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. In addition to his work at UC Berkeley, Isaacs consults on technology strategy at companies in the US, Europe and Asia. Isaacs’ clients include start-ups and multinationals in IT, energy and life science.
Isaacs’ experience prior to joining UC Berkeley includes successful careers as an entrepreneur, scientist and marketing executive with public can private companies in Silicon Valley. He began his career as Senior Scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.
Faculty Co-Director, University of Calgary
Michael J. Robinson, CFA, ICD.D has a B.Math degree (Majoring in Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo, and an MBA and Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Western Ontario. He also is a holder of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation granted by the CFA Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the certified corporate director designation (ICD.D) from the Institute of Corporate Directors in Toronto, Ontario.
He has been an Associate Professor of Finance in the Haskayne School of Business at The University of Calgary since 1990. He was recently awarded the Haskayne Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence for the 2005/2006 academic year. Prior to the U. of C. he taught at two other Canadian universities: Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Robinson has also been a sessional instructor for the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, a Visiting Professor at the University of Petroleum in Changping, China and a Visiting Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland. He founded the Calgary Portfolio Management Trust (CPMT) program at the Haskayne School of Business in 1993. He is also the Calgary Academic Director of the Directors’ Education Program, a joint initiative of the Haskayne School of Business, the Rotman School of Management, and the Institute of Corporate Directors.
Dr. Robinson has non-academic work experience as a computer programmer and systems analyst, and more recently he worked as a Venture Capitalist while on a leave from the University of Calgary. In this later position he was the lead investor for several multi-million dollar investments in high technology firms in Western Canada. Dr. Robinson has served as a member of the Board of Directors for a number of private and public Canadian companies. As well, Dr. Robinson is the former Chair of the Investment Operations Committee which provided oversight of Alberta Investment Management, a department of Alberta Finance, which managed over $50 billion of assets on behalf of the Government of Alberta and selected public sector pension plans. He currently sits on the Board of the Calgary CFA Society, the Board of Governors of the Glenbow Museum, the Board of Governors of the Certified General Accountants of Alberta, and onthe APEX Pension Board.
Dr. Robinson has published several books and academic research papers that study Canadian capital markets, market efficiency,s and methods of raising equity capital for developing firms. His most recent interests include corporate governance practices in Canada, the role of a firm’s board of directors in growth oriented firms, and the role of the private equity markets in financing growth-oriented firms in Alberta.
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