TORONTO, August 10, 2009 -- Archana Sridhar has been appointed Associate Director of the Jay and Barbara Hennick Centre for Business and Law at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School and the Schulich School of Business. She will work closely with the Hennick Centre’s inaugural director, Edward Waitzer, who is Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corporate Governance at Osgoode and Schulich and a Senior Partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP. Co-directors of the Centre are Professors Poonam Puri (Osgoode) and James Darroch (Schulich).  Its Advisory Board is chaired by Marshall (“Mickey”) Cohen.

Sridhar received her Juris Doctor (JD) degree from Harvard Law School and served most recently as the Assistant Dean for Research and Special Projects at Indiana University Maurer School of Law.  In this position, she worked with senior staff and faculty to secure government and foundation funding and managed strategic planning and board relations for several university centres and programs.

Sridhar has practised tax and non-profit law as an attorney at the firm of Sullivan & Worcester LLP in Boston, and also served as Senior Director of Foundation & Corporate Relations for Interplast, an international humanitarian organization.  She completed a prestigious 2006-07 Fulbright Fellowship in Guatemala City, conducting original research on philanthropy and tax reform.

Sridhar has published several law review articles and policy reports in, for example, the Berkeley Journal of International Law and the Fordham International Law Journal.  Complementing this professional and scholarly record, she is also co-founder of the South Asian Philanthropy Project, a charitable organization to foster philanthropy and board service among South Asians in North America.

The Hennick Centre for Business and Law, which was launched in February of this year, is the first Canadian centre to promote and develop joint business and law scholarship and education.  Made possible by a $3 million gift from Jay and Barbara Hennick, the Centre is a joint initiative of Osgoode and Schulich focusing on a range of activities at the intersection of law, business and public policy.

Central to the Hennick Centre’s contributions to joint business and law education and scholarship is the existing JD/MBA program that was jointly established by Osgoode and Schulich in the mid-70s and the new Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corporate Governance at Osgoode and Schulich established in 2006.

Under the Centre’s auspices, Waitzer and Puri have established an Investor Protection Seminar for third-year law students and business journalists. This fall, the Hennick Centre will host several events, including a consultation on behalf of the Ontario Securities Commission into best practices on environmental, social and governance reporting standards, a multi-stakeholder expert consultation for the UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, and an expert panel on the constitutional issues related to the proposed national securities regulator.  New programs will be launched in the coming year.

 

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For further information, please contact:

Virginia Corner

Communications Manager

Osgoode Hall Law School of York University

416-736-5820

vcorner@osgoode.yorku.ca