Deciphering the Current US Policy Landscape: Perspectives and Potential for Canadian HEIs

Dr. Adel El Zaïm

Chief Internationalization Officer
The University of Ottawa, Canada

Dr. El Zaïm is the Chief Internationalization Officer of the University of Ottawa, Canada, in the office of the Vice-President International and Francophonie. He oversees the International Office and the acceleration of the University’s internationalization efforts.

Dr. El Zaïm has worked for several organizations, most recently the University of British Columbia (UBC) when he held the position of Executive Director for International. He was Director General, Internationalization, at Université de Sherbrooke, in Quebec, Canada, and Senior Program Specialist, Information and Communication Technologies for Development with Canada’s International Development Research Centre, Middle East and North Africa Regional office.

Dr. El Zaïm is President of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), located in the USA. He also assumed the chairmanship of the AIEA Awards Committee and was a member of the AIEA Strategic Planning Task Force. Adel was founding member, Vice-President and President of the Internet Society in Québec (ISOC-Québec) and he was a member of the Civil Society Bureau for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS-UN) from 2003 to 2005. He served as a member of the board of several organizations including Association ISOC Quebec, Collège de Maisonneuve (Montréal), Association of Arab Translators (Beirut) and the Economic Local Development Centre Sherbrooke Innopole (Sherbrooke, Quebec).

He frequently speaks on internationalization of higher education strategic issues, strategy development and implementation, evaluation of internationalization, and the contribution of internationalization to the different dimensions of HE.

Dr. El Zaïm was born in Tripoli, Lebanon. After graduating from the Lebanese University in French Language and Literature, he prepared a Master in Didactics at the University of Paris III, Sorbonne-Nouvelle, and received a PhD in Linguistics (Semantics, 1994) from the University of Paris IV, Sorbonne. Adel El Zaim undertook his post-doctorate research at the University of Québec at Montréal in Semiotics and Human Language Technologies.

Bernard Burrola

Vice President, International Programs
Associations of Public & Land-Grant Universities (APLU), USA

Bernie Burrola joined APLU in February 2020. He provides leadership to the APLU Office of International Programs and the APLU Commission on International Initiatives (CII) and is responsible for strengthening the global engagement and impact of member universities in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Bernie led a five-year bilateral presidential initiative to increase higher education partnerships, research collaboration, and student exchange among U.S. and Indonesian universities. He also worked within the Office of Global Educational Programs at the U.S. Department of State to promote U.S. higher education abroad and increase the number of international students studying at American universities.

Earlier in his career, Bernie worked in college admission at Claremont McKenna College and served on the admission committee at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. Currently, he serves as an application reviewer for the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University in China.

Bernie earned his master’s degree in development economics from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and his bachelor’s degree in international relations from Claremont McKenna College. He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Cape Verde, West Africa and is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Alex Usher

President
Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA), Canada

Alex Usher is the President of Higher Education Strategy Associates, a role he has held for over a decade. He is an internationally recognized consultant and expert in post-secondary strategic planning and counselling. He is regularly engaged by Canadian and international clients for projects on student financial aid and access to post-secondary education; rankings, benchmarking and quality measurement in higher education, and development of strategic plans in higher education at the national, provincial, and institutional levels.

Prior to founding Higher Education Strategy Associates, Mr. Usher served as the Director of Educational Policy Institute Canada and as the Director of Research and Program Development at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Usher served as a researcher and lobbyist for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and before that was the first national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. He holds degrees from McGill University and Carleton University.

Mr. Usher is regularly consulted by the media for his expertise, making appearances and providing editorials to a range of publications including The Globe and Mail¸ Macleans, CBC, Radio–Canada, Inside Higher Education and others. He has also authored several scholarly publications, including pieces with Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press, and McGill-Queen’s University Press. He is a frequently requested conference speaker, and has presented at conferences in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, and elsewhere. His internationally read (and free) daily intelligence e-mail, One Thought to Start Your Day, has 10,000 subscribers. He also regularly engages with fans and critics alike on Twitter (@alexusherhesa).

When Alex is not thinking about post-secondary systems and outcomes, he can be found raiding used bookstores for their most eccentric titles, ardently cheering for Toronto FC, or obsessing about the latest developments in sumo.