Meet the Dean
Aliza Lakhani
Managing Director–Global Campuses, Regional CEO and Dean
Northeastern University–Toronto
Aliza is a senior leader who has experience building, scaling and transforming companies from start-ups to large organizations in the education, financial and technology sectors.
She is currently leading the vision and growth of Northeastern’s first international campus, the first U.S. university to operate successfully in Ontario. Aliza is responsible for all aspects of the campus – from strategy, P&L, partnerships, innovation, talent development, operations, regulatory, and overall student experience. Under her leadership, the Toronto campus has grown from serving a handful of students to being Northeastern’s largest campus outside Boston with 100+ staff and faculty and a significant student population. The Toronto campus works with 600+ industry partners including Canada’s largest employers.
As of February 2024, Aliza’s portfolio expanded to also include Northeastern’s campuses in Miami, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina. The Miami campus is focused on entrepreneurship and the Charlotte campus on health sciences.
Prior to Northeastern, Aliza was Head of Business Development (BD) and International at the DMZ – now the #1 ranked university tech incubator in the world, raising $1.2B in funding and working with 500+ start-ups. She built and led the BD team and achieved a 10x increase in revenue through scalable partnerships with Fortune 500 companies, building start-up founder programs and expanding into global markets, including establishing the New York office.
Aliza worked for years in revenue generating, strategic, operational and advisory roles at RBC Capital Markets, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of Montreal in Toronto and New York. She started her career on the trading floor in fixed income sales and trading where she covered global hedge funds and pension funds.
Aliza serves on several advisory boards including: C.D. Howe Institute Human Capital Council, #MoveTheDial, Wealthsimple Foundation, and was elected Chair of the Board of Directors for Rexdale Women’s Center. She was appointed to the Aga Khan Council for Canada where she serves as a board member.
She holds a Bachelor of Mathematics with distinction from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business.