Maria Sushkova, Ph.D., is a business educator, marketer, and organizational sociologist. From 2022 to 2026 she was Assistant Professor (Continuing Track) and MBA Course Lead at University Canada West (UCW) in Vancouver, where she taught graduate courses in leadership, organizational behaviour, ethics, power and influence, and organizational change to more than 300 students a year in a hybrid format. Her primary course was Leadership in the Global Context.

Maria holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Institute of Socio-Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and an M.A. in Sociology from D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia (Department of Management and Marketing, Moscow). Her doctoral research became her first monograph, Paradigms in Sociology (Moscow, 2005). She also holds certificates from the MIT Sloan School of Management (Neuroscience in Business, 2025), MIT xPRO (Systems Thinking, 2026), UBC Sauder School of Business (Integrated Marketing Strategy, 2009), and Alacrity Academy (Digital Marketing Bootcamp, 2023).

Her peer-reviewed study in the International Journal of Business Communication (SAGE, 2025), covering 189,584 employees across 90 Canadian federal departments, found that communicating mission, vision, and goals explained 53.43% of the variance in successful organizational change. With Tim Cummins, President of World Commerce & Contracting, she co-authored a scholarly paper on adaptive contracting and organizational decision-making, accepted for publication in a SAGE journal (December 2026) and to be presented at the CCM Academic Symposium in December 2026, as well as the practitioner article “Why adaptive contracting fails in predictable ways” (CCM Institute, 2026). She also comoderated the Situation Room executive roundtable at the WorldCC Americas Summit in Phoenix (October 2026).

Her teaching draws on a career in marketing that began in Canadian market research in 2006: regional brand and portfolio leadership at Pfizer Animal Health across Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus; leading marketing and communications for a federation of 350+ companies in a regulated industry; and, since 2014, marketing strategy, executive education, and applied research through her firm, Ultramarine Advisory, where she created her proprietary executive program, Decision Making Under Pressure.

Maria’s approach connects theory to the decisions professionals actually face, through cases, simulations, and structured discussion. A 2025 peer classroom observation rated her teaching “Exceeds Standard,” citing “clear planning and coherence” and questions that “stimulate critical thinking and active participation.” She teaches culturally diverse, international cohorts, including students from the Middle East, and works in English and Russian.

Areas of Specialization:,

• Marketing: Principles of marketing, strategic marketing, brand management, digital marketing, marketing research and consumer insights (undergraduate, graduate).
• Communication: Business communication, presentation skills, leadership and organizational communication (undergraduate, graduate, professional).
• Leadership & Organizational Behaviour: Leadership in the Global Context, organizational behaviour, ethics, power and influence (graduate, MBA).
• Organizational Change & Strategy: Change management, strategic management, principles of management (undergraduate, graduate).
• Decision-Making: Judgment and decision-making under pressure, systems thinking, applied decision cases (graduate, executive).
• Sociology & Research Methods: Sociology of organizations, social theory, quantitative research methods and survey design (undergraduate).
• Online Teaching & Course Development: Online and hybrid delivery, curriculum architecture, assessments and rubrics aligned to learning outcomes, and a 120-hour experiential Applied Learning Lab.

A detailed CV is available on request.
For more information, please visit Maria’s LinkedIn profile: