Beyond the US: Building Canada's International Relations

Alan Middleton is an independent consultant, author and speaker in marketing and mentorship.  He is a member of Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends and is an advisor to the Mentor Exchange run by AMA Toronto.

Middleton, who earned his MBA at Schulich in 1977, came back to the school in 1991 to earn his PhD after a 25-year career, during which he worked as a marketing practitioner with Esso Petroleum, UOP Inc.; the executive vice-president of J. Walter Thompson (JWT) worldwide; and president/CEO of JWT Japan. Before becoming an assistant professor at Schulich in 1998, Middleton taught at Rutgers Graduate School of Business in the U.S. and at business schools in Argentina, China, Russia and Thailand.

In September 2001, he took over as executive director of the Schulich Executive Education Centre (SEEC), which trains more than 16,000 managers and executives domestically and internationally.  As an educator, Middleton taught in Schulich’s MBA and BBA programs, with a focus on international marketing, marketing communication and brand management until 2020.

Middleton is the author of several publications, including the books Advertising Works II and Ikonica – A Fieldguide to Canada’s Brandscape, and published papers for the ACA/ICA on marketing communications ROI, client-agency compensation strategies and client-agency relations.

He is a co-founder of the ‘CASSIES’ advertising awards, a member of the Academic Committee of Leger Marketing and was inducted into the Canadian Marketing Hall of Legends in the mentor category in 2005.

In 2015, Middleton received the International Association of Business Communicators Toronto Communicator of the Year Award. He is also the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Award for services to literacy in 2012, the same year he received a gold medal from the Association of Canadian Advertisers.