In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus John Robert Graham Jenkins

It is with great sadness that I write today that John Robert Graham Jenkins,  MIIS Emeritus Professor of International Business, passed away late Friday evening. John joined MIIS as a Grover Hermann Professor in 1985 and was elected “MIIS Best Business School Teacher” in 1997-1998. 

Born on June 30, 1928 in Treforest Wales, he was educated internationally and spoke French and Welsh moderately well with some facility in German and Spanish.

During his lengthy academic career, Jenkins was a visiting professor in Australia, Canada, China (twice), England, Ireland, and New Zealand and directed management seminars in such countries as Brazil, Fiji, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Scotland, and Wales. Following service in the Royal Air Force and education at Cambridge and Toronto, he became a senior marketing executive with three international firms before joining the Canadian Television Network as Director of Market Research. He subsequently re-entered academic life and established his own consulting firm, Glantegid Associates.

In 1963-1964 John was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto prior to studying at Harvard. Following Harvard he became dean of Wilfrid Laurier University’s School of Business & Economics in Ontario, Canada where he introduced both an MBA program and supported a colleague in the establishment of an undergraduate Co- Op program. Both became very successful. 

John’s particular interests included all forms of marketing, political geography, the geography of language and entrepreneurship among Indigenous linguistic groups. These latter have included Inuit, Métis and Indians (Canadian Arctic), Maoris in New Zealand, Pacific Islanders, Aboriginals in Australia, Native Americans in the U.S, Irish, Romansh-speakers (Switzerland), and Ladins in the Italian Dolomites. John published articles and papers on entrepreneurship in these communities and served on the editorial board of an academic journal devoted to this topic. He was an active supporter of Native American rights. John established the Frances Elizabeth Jenkins Scholarship, in honor of his late wife, to provide graduate financial aid for students at the Institute, with a preference for students born in the United States who identify as Native American.

John held an MA in Political Geography from Cambridge and an MBA from the University of Toronto. He additionally held doctorates in Business Administration from Harvard and Political Geography from Oxford. His Oxford doctoral thesis was selected for publication by the Clarendon Press. John is the sole author, co-author, or a major contributor to six books in both his disciplines, two marketing simulation games, 36 business cases, and 47 marketing and entrepreneurship articles and papers. His works have been translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, French, German, and Welsh.

John considered MIIS to be a “warm, welcoming academic community with a dedicated faculty and staff and wonderful young people who want to help change the world for the better.” He stayed actively engaged with the Institute after his retirement and was frequently seen on campus and at Institute events. Jennifer and I – who share his Welsh heritage – were pleased every year to receive a Christmas card from John with greetings written in Welsh, and I appreciated that John always dropped in to talk when he made visits to campus in recent years. At the time of his passing, John was the most senior emeritus professor at MIIS.