Victor Chen, PhD

Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor of International Management at The Belk College of Business, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), where he teaches global business strategy at both undergraduate and MBA levels. His research focuses on institutional dynamics and diversity around the world, business strategy from a top management perspective, and general questions on research infrastructures such as business schools, journals, and alternative platforms. His work has been published in Global Strategy Journal, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Advances in International Management, Multinational Business Review, and Columbia FDI Perspectives amongst others. For teaching, he has invented a three-way transformational teaching model, which combines into the classroom academic research, real-time projects brought by the industry guests, and students’ group assignments. His collaborators on this practice include Wells Fargo Country Risk Analytics, Wells Fargo International Strategic Initiative, Charlotte Chamber of Commerce Business Development, 3D Systems Inc., General Microcircuits Inc., among others. He is also developing a few science-practice interfaces based on systematic reviews and meta-analysis. For his community-engaged teaching, he was named by Charlotte Chamber of Commerce as the Young Professional Educator of the Year of 2015.

Supported by Columbia Center of Columbia University and Investment Analysis Center of UNCTAD, he co-founded the Transnational Corporations Review, advised by Dr. Karl Sauvant and Nobel laureate Dr. Elinor Ostrom. He finished a Ph.D. in strategy and international business at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His doctoral study was in conjunction with Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, the leading Canadian think tank chaired by Dr. John H. McArthur on Asia Pacific affairs. He is a fellow of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a joint center of Columbia Law School and The Earth Institute at Columbia University. At CCSI, he serves as the Global Coordinator and Editor of Emerging Market Global Players (EMGP) project, a global research network of elite “ground” researchers on outward FDI and emerging-market multinationals. Prior to his academic career, he was active in both the international economic and commercial arenas. He served as an economic officer at the coordination office of the Asia Pacific Gateway and Corridor Initiative (APGCI) at Government of Canada in 2010-11, where his role included assisting former Minster Stockwell Day’s Asian business missions. In 2008-09 he was a Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, where he employed Statistics Canada’s confidential sample of Canadian censuses to identify the traits and patterns of Canadians abroad and worked with China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) to survey and guide Chinese outward investment. In 2006-07, he was a founding partner of an Ottawa-based foreign investment policy consulting company, where he organized a major international meeting with Industry Canada in the event of 2007 amendment to Investment Canada Act regarding FDI by foreign state-owned enterprises. Dr. Chen believes in serving the community. He was inducted into the Rotary Club in 2016. He is also currently serving as an advisor on Charlotte-China Business Council for Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts. He is a member of Strategic Management Society, Academy of International Business, Academy of Management, and American Finance Association. Before being a professor, he completed all three levels of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and his research projects have been widely quoted by such major public media as CNBC (USA), The Globe and Mail (Canada), RT (Russia), and Shanghai Daily (China) among others. He is a strong believer in the ideal of a Renaissance (wo)man. Since a child, he has maintained wide-ranging interests, having won Chinese national awards in a variety of areas including physics, mathematics, language, watercolor painting, and novel-writing during schools. He was born in China, educated in China and Canada, and is a Canadian citizen. He resides in Charlotte with his wife Lu Zhou, who is an operations researcher in healthcare, and their daughter Paris. See more information at his webpage at http://chenzitian.com/.