Darren Dahl serves as Dean and Innovate BC Professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business, where his journey began as a PhD student in 1992. After completing his doctorate at UBC, he has built an extraordinary career combining academic excellence with practical business impact. His research focuses on consumer behavior, creativity, and new product development, earning him recognition as the #1 marketing professor worldwide by the American Marketing Association in 2015. His scholarly work spans influential publications in leading journals, with over 20,000 citations demonstrating his significant impact on the field. Beyond academia, Dahl has worked extensively with organizations ranging from Procter & Gamble and General Electric to Lululemon Athletica and Earls Restaurants. His teaching excellence earned him the prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellowship in 2013, and he was runner-up for The Economist's Business Professor of the Year. As Dean, he emphasizes creating meaningful student experiences while focusing on sustainability, equity, and Indigenous reconciliation. His leadership philosophy combines positivity with practical innovation, aiming to position UBC Sauder as a world-class institution that develops business leaders who think creatively and act responsibly. Through his roles as associate editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and editorial board member of several prestigious journals, he continues to shape the future of marketing research and business education.

Paul Cubbon serves as Assistant Dean of Innovation at UBC Sauder School of Business, where he leads groundbreaking initiatives in entrepreneurship education and innovation. After earning his BA Honours from Oxford University and MBA from Simon Fraser University, he built an impressive career spanning advertising at J. Walter Thompson and a decade with Unilever before transitioning to education. As a multiple award-winning educator, including the prestigious Sauder School "Talking Stick" for pedagogical innovation, he has transformed entrepreneurship education through his work with the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Vancouver, where he served as site lead from 2016 to 2022. His teaching philosophy emphasizes practical application, focusing on helping scientific inventors scale their impact in human and planetary health. Through his leadership at CDL, he has pioneered a "marketplace for judgment" approach, helping first-time founders navigate complex business decisions. His expertise extends beyond academia through extensive consulting work, where he helps organizations break down seemingly insurmountable challenges into solvable components. Cubbon's impact on innovation education is particularly evident in his cross-faculty collaborations, where he focuses on customer discovery and business model validation with STEM researchers, creating bridges between academic research and commercial applications. His vision for innovation emphasizes the importance of combining top-down and bottom-up change, while advocating for reducing bureaucratic friction to accelerate progress in solving global challenges.