Mr. Nesbitt believes in the community of nations and people as an important and timeless value instilled in him by generations of higher education, international work and travel in his family. 

After graduating from the University of Michigan with a B.A., he earned a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto after completing a combined course of study at the  University of Michigan Law school. He qualified as a lawyer in the US, Canada and England and Wales. 

He worked as a lawyer in international finance for two of the world’s largest financial institutions, The Maufacturers Life Insurance Company based in Toronto and subsequently Swiss Reinsurance Company based in Zürich. At Manulife, he was General Counsel of the US operations and the international reinsurance operations.  He also served as head of the corporate law department responsible for managing the corporate lawyers. Manulife operates throughout the world. 

At Swiss Re, he was General Counsel of the North American life business based in New York and Toronto, and then, after transferring to Zurich, became General Counsel of the global property and casualty business, then Swiss Re’s largest business group. He managed functionally, in that role, a large law department spread across many countries.

At both Manulife and Swiss Re, he was responsible for among other things the legal issues related to various international transactions as well as managing and delivering operational legal advice to both the parent company and its various subsidiaries and their boards of directors.

Most recently and for 10 years, Mr. Nesbitt was an external member of the board of directors of Gerber Life Insurance Company, a New York based then wholly-owned subsidiary of Nestlé, A.G., based in Switzerland.

Mr. Nesbitt is a clarinetist who studied classical music for years at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto and now studies jazz with a member of the Naples Philharmonic jazz orchestra. 

He chose to become an advisory member of GPS  because he believes in its mission of providing musical education to its audiences and the fine work it does within the education system. He knows that exposure to the arts, with its inherent human message, is, more than any other, the route to global harmony.