Albert Knab, CITP│FIBP — International Business Management Professor/Coordinator

Albert Knab is an International Business Professor at Fanshawe College’s Lawrence Kinlin School of Business in London, Ontario.

After traveling the world for nearly two decades selling specialized agricultural equipment and functional foods on five different continents, he decided to make a return to academic life.  He now coordinates the college’s FITT-accredited International Business Management Program, and has been doing so for the last seven years.

In this role, I believe it’s important to model and value the students’ work and effort by obtaining the same designation they aspire to earn.

He chose to apply for the CITP®|FIBP® because he wants to be a model for his students.

Albert has an impressive range of knowledge and real-world experiences in almost every area of international trade. He has conducted market research and developed market entry strategies for countries in North America, South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. He has created marketing and sales strategies for a wide range of products in a variety of markets, and he has developed and negotiated contracts and ensured compliance for trade deals around the world. Albert has also managed the financial side of trade.

“I have successfully negotiated and executed payment and credit facilities for all of the international trades I’ve completed,” he says.

Now that Albert is back in the classroom, he works very hard to give his students not only an international-focused education, but also international experiences.

“One of my goals is to enable students to take a semester at one of our European partner universities in equivalent International Business Management Programs,” he says. “We hope to negotiate agreements that will allow European students to earn FITT credits as well, thus making the learning experience itself international.”

In the past year, Albert developed and delivered a paper at the Oxford Humanitarian Innovation Project on the utility of using MOOCs to create new knowledge about sustainable “Necessity Entrepreneurship” in the developing world.  He says follow-up work will likely include the UNHCR and UNIDO, and providing input on their livelihoods/entrepreneurship training programs.

“I hope some of my students will also decide to enter the international not-for-profit and NGO world as a career in international trade,” he says.  “I say this first because these organizations are massive transnational corporations that require all of the skills of a CITP, and second because of the valuable nature of the work they do.”

Albert has had close ties with FITT over the years, delivering the accredited courses as well as FITT’s Going Global series of introductory workshops. He also assisted with our International Trade Sector study, and is now an educational representative for our ongoing International Competency Standards project.

I truly enjoy working with FITT because it fills an immense professional void in a very focused and extremely effective way.

“I hope that I can continue to add value to the organization and the CITP designation for some time to come.”