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Dr. Ana Boamorte de Azevedo

Dr. Azevedo is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Management in the Faculty of Business at Athabasca University. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), an MBA degree from COPPEAD/UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Florida International University (Miami, USA).

Dr. Azevedo is an accomplished educator with over 30 years of work experience in teaching, research, curriculum development, and student supervision. Before she joined Athabasca University in 2010, Dr. Azevedo taught at Florida International University (during her doctoral studies), the University of Texas at El Paso (El Paso, USA), Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, USA) and the University of Applied Sciences FH Joanneum (Graz, Austria). In her teaching, research, and consulting activities, Ana is passionate about developing soft skills and nurturing adaptive capacity and entrepreneurial thinking among working professionals, business leaders, and entrepreneurs.

Dr. Azevedo’s research interests include management, intercultural, and entrepreneurship education. Her publications addressed topics such as cultural intelligence development, cultural and generational diversity, adaptive leadership, soft skills development in higher education, and competency-based entrepreneurship education. As a consultant, Dr. Azevedo has assisted entrepreneurs and small businesses in market research, strategic planning, and business plan development.

Dr. Azevedo’s research is interdisciplinary. A key question she explores is how to encourage individuals and organizations to change over time. Since 2003, Dr. Azevedo has studied how to develop soft skills and work-readiness among students, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. From 2005 to 2007, she served as the principal investigator of an EU-funded project that examined essential knowledge and soft skills considered critical for employability by employers and business graduates in four European countries: Austria, England, Slovenia, and Romania. After moving to Canada in 2010, Dr. Azevedo teamed up with a faculty colleague to conduct a longitudinal survey of Canadian MBA students to identify skills that significantly improved during Athabasca University’s online MBA program. They also interviewed various university stakeholders.

During 2016-2017, Dr. Azevedo developed a new training program in cultural intelligence (CQ), with support from a faculty colleague. In a pilot study involving MBA students and HR professionals, the researchers tested and confirmed that this program significantly increased participants’ cultural intelligence, innovative work behaviour, and resilience. The CQ training program can be used to promote intercultural competence and essential future skills that support inclusion and innovation. Currently, Dr. Azevedo is working on a book project that explores how cultural intelligence training fosters learning agility in leaders and teams.

As a Brazilian citizen who has lived and worked in four countries, Dr. Azevedo has gained firsthand experience of the importance of intercultural competence for individual and organizational performance. Since 2015, Dr. Azevedo has also earned three certifications from the Cultural Intelligence Center (CQ certification [Certified CQ Facilitator], CQ Train-the-Trainer program, and Unconscious Bias Train-the-Trainer program) and one certification in learning agility with EASI Consult (Burke Learning Agility Inventory Assessment and Administration).

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Research interests

• Business and Entrepreneurship Education;
• Soft Skills Development;
• Cultural Intelligence Development;
• International/Intercultural Management and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI);
• Learning Agility and Innovation;
• Adaptive Leadership;
• Individual and Organizational Transformation.

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Educational credentials

• PhD in Business Administration – Florida International University
• MBA – COPPEAD Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
• BSc in Economics – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

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Professional affiliations

• Administrative Sciences of Canada (ASAC)
• Certified Professional Human Resources Association (CPHR - BC & Yukon)

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