Staff

Prof. Dr. Renata Thiébaut, Professor of Marketing at GISMA University of Applied Sciences is an experienced professional with a renowned academic background. Skilled in E-commerce, digital marketing and digitalisation, she has worked in the private and public sectors, with the likes of Amazon, Alibaba, and the United Nations, in multiple countries and continents. From 2018 to 2020, Dr. Thiébaut worked at Harvard university as a Researcher. The GISMA professor’s education history shares a similar regard, with an undergraduate degree awarded in Brazil, followed by an MA and a PhD awarded during her time in China. Her global academic excellence, along with her multi-sector professional accolades, makes her the perfect fit for GISMA. Her expertise in e-commerce, live-commerce, digital strategy and transformation within multinational teams is pioneering the way for the future of marketing.

Prof. Dr. Sara Ravan Ramzani joined GISMA in October 2022. Sara has several years of experience as a principal lecturer, programme team leader and postgraduate director at international universities in Berlin, Malaysia and Singapore. Sara teaches on a variety of modules in the areas of management, business and accounting. She studied at University Putra Malaysia, where she received her PhD in Economics and Information Systems in 2015. Sara has published 89 papers to date and received the ‘Best Innovative Paper Award’ from the Sydney International Business Research Conference in 2018. She has published several articles on financial economics, monetary economics, marketing, HR and business management. Sara is also the Chief Executive Editor of the Journal of Development Economics, Horizon Journals from 2019 -2024. She has led and collaborated in various international research projects, notably from the United Nations, Measuring Up 2.0 (SDG 9 & SDG 16). Sara has supervised 24 Ph.D. students, primarily in the fields of project management, business, and finance. In her personal life, Sara is passionate about badminton, taking long walks, food and hiking around the Scottish Highlands.

Tilmann Lindberg studied management at Hohenheim University in Stuttgart as well as at the University of Potsdam, where he also completed his PhD on business creativity and design. He held a PhD scholarship from the Hasso Plattner Institute in the field of design thinking research. After completing his PhD, he moved to Ghana where he joined as a lecturer the faculty of Lancaster University’s Ghana branch campus in its foundational years, being involved in building up the business studies program and the Lancaster University Ghana business department. During this time, Tilmann gained specific interest in the management education of international students, especially with a focus on developing countries. After his return to Germany, he worked for a group of family companies in Hamburg. In 2020, he joined SRH Berlin University of Applied Science as Professor for International Business Administration and was entrusted with the academic build-up of SRH’s newly founded Campus in Hamburg. In January 2022, Tilmann relocated to the Berlin-Brandenburg area working now as Professor for International Business Management at GISMA Business School in Potsdam.

Prof. Dr. Varun Gupta is a Professor at GISMA University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam, Germany. He also serves as the Head of the Multidisciplinary Research Centre for Innovations in SMEs (MrciS) at GISMA. He has maintained various associations with Universidad de Alcalá in a number of capacities, most notably as a Postdoctoral Researcher, Researcher, and Co-Director of a master’s degree in Innovation Economics, Management, and Technology. He was also a visiting Postdoctoral Researcher with the Software Engineering Research Group (SERG), Department of Computer Science, Lund University, Sweden.

Professor Dr. Ramon O’Callaghan serves as the President of Gisma. He brings a wealth of experience in business education, having served as Dean of Porto Business School and Founding Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Nazarbayev University. He has also held leadership positions at other business schools in Europe and Asia. Prof. O’Callaghan’s expertise lies in Management of Technology and Innovation, and his work has been published in top academic journals. His educational background includes a Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Ahmad Abu-Alkheil is the Programme Leader for Global MBA and International Business Management courses at Gisma.

Roy joined the faculty of GEM in August 2000, he later became the Dean and Academic Director of GEM’s London campus in 2015. He was previously the Principal Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University and Director of Postgraduate Programmes at the Sheffield Business School in the UK and has taught at a number of UK and other European academic institutions.   Roy’s academic and professional areas of interest are in digital technology-enabled organisational design and development including digitally-enabled collaborative commerce, business process analysis & design, information & knowledge management, information system strategy development and project management.   Roy currently works as a consultant for private and public sector organisations in business process analysis & organisational design, on the formulation of information strategy, project management of IT infrastructure development projects, development of business information systems and IS/IT. He has worked for a range of public and private sector organisations across Europe and the Middle East in aerospace, automotive, materials, finance and technology industries.

Saud Ahmad holds a master’s degree in International Business from London Metropolitan University. His work focuses on how leaders, brands and organisations communicate their identity by storytelling. He regularly consults with executives from a variety of fields to help create marketing solutions in today’s fast forward business environment. Saud currently teaches marketing at different educational institutions in the UK and Europe.

About Tina Roso has more than 20 years of experience in the corporate world, specialising in general management, strategic marketing development, brand development and markets development. Her international expertise lies in management, people, training, marketing and sales. In her 20 years of international experience in the corporate world she has excelled in the following areas: