Opening Speaker, April 21, 10:00 am – 10:50 am

Flexible and Adaptable Leadership is Essential to Building Resilience in a World of Disruption

Magdalena María de las Mercedes Barreiro Riofrío, Ph.D.

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Standard of Global Leadership Education Roundtable, April 21, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Mark E. Mendenhall, Ph.D.

Mark E. Mendenhall holds the J. Burton Frierson Chair of Excellence in Business Leadership in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He received his B.S. degree (1980) in psychology and his Ph.D. degree (1983) in social psychology, both from Brigham Young University. Dr. Mendenhall is an internationally recognized scholar in the field of global leadership and international human resource management. In 1998, he held the Ludwig Erhard Stiftungs professor endowed chair at the University of Bayreuth (Germany). From 1999-2004 he was a visiting professor at the Europa Institute at the University of Saarland (Germany). In 2013, he was a visiting professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria), and from 2009-2015 he was a visiting professor at Reykjavik University (Iceland). See GLIC Keynote Speaker for more information.


Jennie Walker, Ph.D., SHRM-CP

Jennie Walker, Ph.D., SHRM-CP: Dr. Walker specializes in developing leaders and organizations for success in complex, diverse, and increasingly global environments. For the past 20 years, she has provided professional education and coaching in leadership development, talent management and organizational effectiveness within Fortune 500 organizations, as a professor and executive in higher education and as a consulting partner to many organizations across the world.  She is currently Professor of Practice at Indiana Institute of Technology’s Ph.D. Program in Global Leadership. She also has her own consulting practice Luminary Global LLC, where she provides advisory services, training and coaching.

Dr. Walker is an award-winning educator, having been recognized as Faculty of the Year in 2021 and 2019 for the Ph.D. program at Indiana Tech. Previously, she led the Business Leadership degree programs at University of Arizona Global Campus, where she was a co-founder for Center for Women’s Leadership at Forbes School of Business. She also served as a Director of Global Learning and Executive Education at Thunderbird School of Global Management, where she contributed to Global Mindset research and development strategies. She regularly serves as a subject matter expert in global leadership, DEI, talent development and distributed workforce management, sharing her thought leadership as a featured speaker for organizations and professional conferences, such as Academy of Management (AOM), Association for Talent Development (ATD), Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) and International Leadership Association (ILA). 

She is widely published across journals, books, magazines and digital media, including Journal of Management Education, Advances in Global Leadership, HR People & Strategy Journal, Inside HR magazine and SHRM’s award-winning blog We Know Next.  She has authored several books, including Developing Your Global Mindset: The Handbook for Successful Global Leaders, Teaching Methods in Business: Vol. 1. Experiential Exercises in the Classroom, and Handbook of International and Cross-Cultural Leadership Research. Outside of her career, Dr. Walker is a mother to four young children and enjoys travel, scuba diving, creative writing, films and pets.


Donald L. Cassell, Jr., M.Div., Architect, AIA, CSI, CDT

Donald L. Cassell, Jr., M.Div., Architect, AIA, CSI, CDT, as Sagamore Institute’s Senior Fellow and Director of the Liberian Initiative in the Africa portfolio, has spearheaded several projects, including a case study on the Liberian Philanthropy Secretariat, a database listing connections between the State of Indiana and Africa, the annual publication of the newsletter-journal Marketplace Liberia, and various papers on African growth and development. In 2015 he launched the ISOKO Leadership Workshop in Liberia and has directed each session of the workshop ever since. Mr. Cassell works “to encourage and nurture Liberia’s growth and development through scholarship, conversation, and action with the hope of strengthening [governance], civil society and business investment in Liberia.” He recently published a book entitled National Development as an Aesthetic Project. Additionally, he serves as co-host of Sagamore’s internship program and an Adjunct Professor at Anderson University.

Previous to his role at Sagamore, Mr. Cassell spent 20 years working as an architect in Indianapolis. He is a member of the Liberian Studies Association, American Institute of Architects (AIA) and Construction Specification Institute (CSI).

A native of Liberia, Mr. Cassell graduated from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts, where he took undergraduate degrees in Architecture Engineering Technology. Mr. Cassell also studied at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he received his Master of Divinity.

Closing Speaker, 2:15 pm – 3:00 pm

We are the Power:” Global Followership as the Force to Reckon with.

Yulia Tolstikov-Mast, Ph.D.

Yulia Tolstikov-Mast, Ph.D. is a global leadership scholar, educator, consultant, and author. She is an advocate for culturally responsible leadership research models, and an expert on global leadership and followership, and international professional communication. Originally from Russia, Yulia experienced the Soviet system, perestroyka, and emerging market economy before relocating to the United States. Yulia was a Founding Faculty, and later, a Lead Faculty and Associate Professor at the Ph.D. in Global Leadership Program at Indiana Tech. Her innovative publications address global leadership doctoral education and a conceptual formation of global followership. Yulia is currently completing her multi-stage exploratory study of Russian followership that she has led since 2015. She is also a Co-Investigator in Russia for the GLOBE 2020 Project. Yulia published in Advances in Global Leadership, Journal of Leadership Education; Culture 2.0, Women Courageous, and The Study and Practice of Global Leadership books among others. Yulia’s significant global leadership research contribution is a publication of the co-edited Handbook of International and Cross-Cultural Leadership Research Processes. She also contributed a large number of chapters to the handbook. Yulia is the Chair and Professor of Ethical and Creative Leadership in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program at the Union Institute & University. Her latest scholarly endeavor is at the intersection of global followership and social justice. 


Leading global innovation through crisis, from both practitioner and academic perspectives, lessons learned: “ISOKO Leadership Workshop in Liberia, West Africa”

Donald L. Cassell, Jr., M.Div., Architect, AIA, CSI, CDT