TEDxVaughan 
The Age of Amazement

2016 Speakers

​​Sarah Kaplan

​​Sarah Kaplan is University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Gender and the Economy, Professor of Strategic Management and Director of the Institute for Gender + the Economy at the Rotman School, University of Toronto. She is author of the New York Times business bestseller, Creative Destruction, challenging the notion of sustainable competitive advantage and the myth of excellence.  The research shows that long-established companies, instead of maintaining excellence, almost always under-perform the market over time.  Ironically, the very culture and meticulously maintained systems that fuel the good times cause companies to stall out.

Her current research continues this exploration of how organizations participate in and respond to the emergence of new fields and technologies. Her studies examine the biotechnology, fiber optics, financial services, nanotechnology and most recently, the field emerging at the nexus of gender and finance. Her interest in gender lens investing is in understanding how whole new ecosystems can be built. She recently authored “The Risky Rhetoric of Female Risk Aversion” (2016) in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Meritocracy: From Myth to Reality” in the Rotman Magazine (2015), “The Rise of Gender Capitalism,” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (2014).

​​Formerly a professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (where she remains a Senior Fellow), and a consultant and innovation specialist for nearly a decade at McKinsey &Company in New York, she completed her doctoral research at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

​​Isabella Bakker

​Isabella Bakker is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University and a York Research Chair on Global Economic Governance, Gender and Human Rights. She is a leading authority in the fields of political economy, public finance, gender and development. She has held visiting professorships at a number of institutions including the European University Institute, New York University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has also held consultancies with the United Nations, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Canadian government as well as with numerous advocacy groups dedicated to advancing economic and social justice. Her most recent book (with Brigitte Young and Diane Elson) is Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective (Routledge).

​​Poonam Puri

​​An internationally acclaimed expert in business law, capital markets regulation and corporate governance, Poonam Puri is a tenured professor of law at Osgoode Hall, York University and former Associate Dean. Appointed to Osgoode’s faculty almost twenty years ago, she is an award winning teacher, author, lawyer, and public intellectual. Poonam holds an LL.B. degree from the University of Toronto and an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School.

In 2016, Poonam was recognized as a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation for her interdisciplinary, collaborative, community-engaged research which will formulate innovative solutions for governments, regulators and corporate leaders to ensure greater accountability of multinational corporations when they cause harm to people and local communities.

Poonam has been recognized as one of Canada’s top 25 most influential lawyers and one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada. She is a former recipient of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 Award.

​​Diana Lucaci

Diana Lucaci inspires business leaders to better understand customer needs and preferences, in order to create experiences that are relevant and meaningful to their lives.She is the Founder and CEO of True Impact, a leading neuromarketing research and strategy firm serving marketers, market researchers and advertisers. Diana translates customer insights from neuroscience into actionable marketing strategies. She serves as the Canadian Chair on the Neuromarketing Science and Business Association (NMSBA) and is a Winner of the Best in Class Research Award, from the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA). True Impact’s mission is to humanize the customer, having partnered with organizations such as Canada Post, Colgate-Palmolive, Yahoo, Bell, Burger King and many more. True Impact uses neuroscience and biometrics technologies to quantify emotion, motivation and attention, in order to offer game changing business recommendations. She has a degree in Neuroscience and Psychology, from the University of Toronto.

Jennifer Ladouceur

​Jennifer is driven by constantly challenging the status quo. While taking a diverse career path holding leadership roles in the private and public sectors, she has always been committed to thinking differently, innovating, and creating positive change, while building strong teams and inspiring those around her to achieve new heights. Jennifer holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA), a Masters Certificate in Municipal Leadership from Schulich School of Business, a Certificate in Economic Development from the University of Waterloo and Harvard Business School’s ManageMentor Program. All her personal and professional experiences have led Jennifer to this point: the founding of “Pozentivity Inc” which focuses on working directly with professional women in retreats around the world and within large organizations creating women leadership networks, in-house.

2015 Speakers

In November 2011, Dr. Cavoukian was ranked as one of the top 25 Women of Influence, recognizing her contribution to the Canadian and global economy. In October 2013, she was named one of the top 100 City Innovators Worldwide by UBM Future Cities for her passionate advocacy of Privacy by Design. In December 2013, the Founding Partners of the Respect Network, the world’s first peer-to-peer network for personal and business clouds, named Dr. Cavoukian as its first Honorary Architect. In August 2014, Dr. Cavoukian was chosen as one of the ‘Power 50’ in Canadian Business magazine for her efforts as a privacy champion.

​​Ann Cavoukian

​​Dr. Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the world’s leading privacy experts. Appointed as the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada in 1997, Dr. Cavoukian served for an unprecedented three terms as Commissioner. In that time, she elevated the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner from a novice regulatory body to a first-class agency, known around the world for its cutting edge innovation and leadership. Her Privacy by Design framework seeks to proactively embed privacy into the design specifications of information technologies and business practices, thereby achieving the strongest protection possible. In October 2010, regulators at the conference of International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Jerusalem unanimously passed a Resolution recognizing Privacy by Design as an essential component of fundamental privacy protection. This was followed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s inclusion of Privacy by Design as one of three recommended practices for protecting online privacy – a major validation of its significance.

​​Vicki Saunders

​IVicki Saunders is an entrepreneur, award-winning mentor, adviser to the next generation of change makers and leading advocate for entrepreneurship as a way of creating positive transformation in the world.

Vicki is Founder of SheEO; a two-decade long initiative to dramatically transform how we support, celebrate and finance female entrepreneurs building new models, new mindsets and new solutions for a better world.

Vicki has co-founded and run 4 ventures in Europe, Toronto and Silicon Valley including Zazengo (an online platform for consumer and employee engagement for Fortune 500 companies focused on sustainability); KidsNRG, The NRG Group (which went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2000) and Impactanation, a global consulting firm focused on engaging youth to tackle the grand challenges we are facing. In 2001, Vicki was selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.

Bonnie Stevens

Dr. Bonnie Stevens, RN, PhD, is a professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, and Signy Hildur Eaton Chair in Paediatric Nursing Research, Associate Chief Nursing Research, and a Senior Scientist in Child Health Evaluative Sciences at SickKids. She is also the Director of the University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Pain, the Co-Director of the Pain Centre at SickKids, and a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
Dr. Stevens has held a Career Scientist Award from the Ontario Ministry of Health and the Premiers Research Excellence Award from the Ontario Ministry of Energy, Science and Technology. She received the Dr. Mary Ellen Jeans Lectureship Award from the Canadian Pain Society, The Mayday Society and Fellowship Award and the American Pain Society’s Jeffrey Lawson Award for Advocacy in Children’s Pain Relief. Recently, she was the recipient of the 2014 CIHR Knowledge Translation Award in recognition of her leadership and exemplary knowledge translation (KT) efforts and activities. In her research, Dr. Stevens has worked to transform the way that health professionals think about pediatric pain and to help translate research evidence into practice to manage pain. Dr. Stevens has over 200 published papers and abstracts and is the co-editor of the “Oxford Textbook of Pain in Children” (Oxford University Press) and “Pain in Neonates and Infants” (Elsevier).

​​Catherine Middleton

Dr. Catherine Middleton holds a Canada Research Chair in Communication Technologies in the Information Society at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. Her research focuses on the development and use of new communication technologies, with specific interests in mobile devices and fixed and wireless broadband networks. She is also interested in how Canadians use (or don’t use) the internet in their daily lives.
Her research projects have investigated the use of ubiquitous communication technologies (like Blackberries) in organizations, the development of next generation broadband networks (including Australia’s National Broadband Network), competition in the Canadian broadband market, and Canadians’ internet use. Current initiatives include the Canadian Spectrum Policy Research Project, the Ageing + Communication + Technologies project and a study of public Wi-Fi in Australian cities. Dr. Middleton is the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of CANARIE, Canada’s national research and education network.

She is a contributing member of numerous feminist academic and community groups including the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, the Canadian Women’s Studies Association, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, and the Women Environment and Development Organization. Her achievements include co-founding ‘The Feminist Party of Canada’, ‘The Antigonish Women’s Association,’ ‘Toronto Women for a Just and Healthy Planet’, ‘The International Feminist Network for the Gift Economy’, and the ‘International Feminist Journals Network’. She has been Co-Chair of Research Committee 32 (‘Women in Society’) of the International Sociological Association and is currently on the Executive Editorial Board of the journal, Canadian Woman Studies. Through her participation in these groups and in an academic capacity Angela is engaged in feminist educational work around a broad range of current global issues

Angela Miles

Dr. Angela Miles is a feminist activist, theorist, academic, editor and publisher. She has a PhD from the University of Toronto and is a Professor in the Adult Education and Community Development Program, Head of the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education and co-founder of the International Women’s Human Rights Education Institute at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. She is committed to building and studying women’s transformative activism locally and globally.

She has been involved in the women’s liberation movement since the early nineteen seventies, and has been active in Canada since then, both inside and outside the University at the local, provincial, and national levels. Since the beginning of the 1980s she has been active internationally in both United Nations’ processes and autonomous feminist networks, conferences, and activist initiatives.

Christy Anderson

Christy Anderson studies the ways architecture changes us emotionally. She works on both historic and contemporary buildings in order to understand how we are shaped by history and the present. Students at the University of Toronto praise her enthusiastic teaching style. The author of several books on architectural history, Christy is now writing a history of the connections between architecture and natural history. She is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Oxford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.