Zicklin School Mourns Late Professor Who Championed the Environment 

There were tears and laughter last month at a bittersweet tribute to Ivan Montiel, professor of business sustainability in the Narendra Paul Loomba Department of Management at the Zicklin School of Business. The event, organized by the Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity, marked the one-year anniversary since Dr. Montiel’s passing while on a visit to his hometown of Nigüelas, Spain.

Prof. Montiel was known for his love of nature

David Rosenberg, academic director of the Robert Zicklin Center, offered opening remarks in English and Spanish, and Montiel’s family sent a video greeting and joined a live Zoom call. “I wasn’t aware of how brilliant my brother was,” said his sister, Rut Montiel. “He’s our angel now.”  

Other speakers included Montiel’s former doctoral student, Junghoon Park (PhD, ’23), now an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, as well as his colleagues Jared Peifer, Lucrezia Nava, Elena Vidal, and Cynthia Thompson from the Department of Management, and Sankar Sen, Lawrence and Carol Zicklin Chair in Corporate Integrity and Governance in the Allen G. Aaronson Department of Marketing and International Business. They highlighted Montiel’s kindness, sense of fun, and deep commitment to the environment. 

Dr. Montiel was also widely published, with 29 articles, 13 book chapters, four case studies, and over 5,500 citations on Google Scholar to his name.   

“Ivan was my climate change buddy,” said Dr. Thompson. “We worked together to address climate change issues in our research lab for the Baruch Climate Scholars, created a faculty summer seminar to help Zicklin faculty find resources on climate change for their courses, and collaborated on our quest to implement sustainability and climate change issues throughout the business school curriculum.” She added that he would be proud to see the progress the Zicklin School has made in “keeping climate change front and center,” with the second annual Conference on Climate Research, Teaching, and Collaboration having just taken place, and an upcoming certificate program in sustainable business.

“However, I’m sure Ivan would agree that we have so much more to do,” she continued. 

Thompson ended her remarks with a call to action: “In Ivan’s name, I challenge you all to take the lead on teaching climate change…We must continue the good work that Ivan was doing by continuing to enlighten our students and the business world about the need to act quickly to address climate change.”

The Zicklin School also used the occasion to announce the establishment of a $25,000 annual scholarship in perpetuity in Montiel’s name, the Ivan Montiel Memorial Scholarship for Climate Action, to fund an undergraduate or graduate student who wants to focus on of corporate sustainability and climate change.  

Categories: Alumni News, Faculty, News