PROF. BASIL A. KALYMON

Professor Emeritus Finance, The Richard Ivey Business School

Date and Place of Birth: 1944 in Horlyci, Ukraine

Date of Interview: July 25, 2016

Place of Interview: Toronto, Ontario

Interviewer: Anastasia Leshchyshyn

Length of Interview: 01:04:22 (raw)

(Excerpt):

But from 1988 on, and especially after Independence in ’91 I was invited to teach at the business school that had been formed. There was an institution called MIM (Mizhnarodnyj Institut Managementu) [International Management Institute] or IMI started by a man by the name of Bohdan Havrylyshyn who was the Dean of the IMI business school in Switzerland. And he was actually a Ukrainian who used to live in Canada prior to his move to Switzerland. But anyways, he started the new business school in independent Ukraine, and so he invited me to do short courses…so once a year I would go and I would teach. I started with the financial support of a man by the name of Mykoliak, who has passed away, but uh, he supported a number of students from Ukraine to study in business schools. So they were doing PhDs in Ukraine and I would arrange for them to spend a year in the business school here in Toronto with Mr. Mykoliak’s funding.

So I still get involved in that matter, but subsequently I spent a month trying to do some trading for one of the business schools in Kyiv…I was teaching the teachers sort of, at that point, I was getting a little more senior. So I started travelling to Ukraine once or twice a year. I was doing a fair amount of lecturing in Austria, because I had an affiliation with an Austrian institution, Johannes Kepler University, so I usually linked the two so that I could make it easier for them…travel costs are expensive, right. So I would teach in executive MBA programs, first at MIM and then at Kyiv Mohyla. When Kyiv Mohyla started a business school, Vyacheslav Bryukhovetskyj was the first President, and he asked me if I would start working with them, so I started working with them a bit. I started teaching their program, and went on an advisory council with Mr. Temerty who Chaired that council. And I started becoming more aware, and started to follow more of what was transpiring in Ukraine, and got more involved, that was the start of it.

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