About Me

In 2004, I finished my Bachelor of Arts in political science (minor in French Language/Literature) at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.  During that time, I became a major fan of all things Canadian and I found myself absorbing the culture, history, and politics of the country and the province. The experience had a significant impact on my worldview and shaped me as an individual.

In 2008, I finished my Master of Business Administration in international business (minor in marketing) at St. John’s University in Queens, NYC.  I was intrigued by the social responsibility/sustainability movement and wrote a thesis entitled, “Corporate Social Responsibility Marketing of American and Western European Multinational Enterprises: A Longitudinal Study of Stakeholder Engagement.”  Understanding that there were multinational companies involved in social responsibility helped me develop a more pragmatic view of corporations than I had while in Montreal.

During my MBA program, I had worked as a marketing associate at AllianceBernstein, L.P. until October 2008, when I became a “casualty” of the economic crisis.  This forced a rethink of my career goals, upon which I decided to again pursue my educational studies. Two days before starting the Ph.D. program, I married my lovely wife.

At present, I am in my fourth-year of Ph.D in marketing at University of Massachusetts-Amherst in Amherst, MA.  I have developed an interest in studying prosocial behaviors — specifically through the lens of exchange and equity sensitivity theories — and how they relate to consumer-centric sustainable behaviours. My dissertation, “Why Do Consumers Consume Ethically? The Equity Exchange Theory of Marketing”, focuses on the synthesis of these theories in explaining how personality and individual differences affect marketing exchange. More directly, I’m interested in seeing how these individual differences with respect to equity sensitivity effect ethical/prosocial consumer consumption.

As a long -time tech early adopter, I’ve also been interested in interactive marketing research, looking at computer-mediated environments and social desirability bias, digital privacy in a new era of information and data collection, and consumer responses to mixed-media-based experiential consumption.

Additionally, I love the Montreal Canadiens, coffee, music (of virtually all sorts — five favorite bands include Radiohead, Sigur Rós, U2, Coldplay, and Wilco), and doing the New York Times crossword puzzles.  My favorite periodicals are the Financial Times and the Economist (not that I have much time to read them these days). At this point, I’ll have even less time for “pleasure reading”, as my wife and I are expecting our first child in November 2012.

Courses taken during my doctoral program (all classes at UMass unless otherwise noted):