Roelof Makken joined the Goodman School of Business as an Adjunct Professor in 2013.

He received a BAdmin in Finance and a BA in Economics from Brock University. Graduate studies were pursued at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where he obtained a MA in economics. After six years in corporate and investment banking at the TD Bank, he returned to Leuven to pursue a PhD and work on some of his ideas in the area of yield curve rotations and exchange rate behaviour. Rather than writing the final version of the dissertation, he was recruited by Citibank. The banking experience provided him with tremendous insights in the capital markets. It was a chance to work with some of the most influential institutional investors in the world.

Deep thinking around modelling lead to the founding of Tern Analytics with an emphasis on dynamic models to assess large capital expenditure programs. Additional advisory services were provided in the areas of general modeling, risk management, Basle compliance and M&A support.

Makken teaches currently in the MBA program the Economic Environment course (MBAB503). Since 2004, he has taught undergraduate international finance and graduate level portfolio management. He also teaches in the Department of Economics.

Given his commitment to teaching and mentorship, it should not be a surprise that he was the recipient of the ClarkeThomson Award for Excellence in Session Teaching (2009) and the Graduate School Professor of the Year Award (2018).

In 2010, he was the recipient of the Brock University Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Award.

He was instrumental in establishing some of the international exchanges at the GSB and the Bloomberg lab, co-founded the Centre for Business Analytics and organizes the annual data analytics event, Datathon.

He is multilingual: Dutch, English, German, French (Ste. Anne de la Pociatiere, Quebec), Spanish (Bolivia) and some Japanese (U of T). He has taking mining courses in Chile, Peru and Canada. His other interests are rowing, farming, piano and international politics.
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