Theme: Climbing Ladders

With this year’s conference theme of “Climbing Ladders”, we hope to pose a series of questions. What have we overcome to get to where we are today? Is where we are, good enough? Can we go higher, do better? What personal journeys have we all gone through to be the person we are today?

We want to give a glimpse of our speakers’ futures through their stories. Beyond the literal meaning of “Climbing Ladders”, we are looking to showcase one of the guaranteed aspects of every single individual’s life: moving forward. Whether moving forward means striving towards your career, personal, technological, social or environmental goals, we are looking to explore the notion that the future is never stagnant.

Join us on November 24, 2018 at McCord Museum to hear the inspiring stories of our speakers.

Musee McCord
690 Sherbrooke St W
Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1E9
Canada

Anita Nowak

Empathy expert, award-winning educator, author, speaker and coach

Anita Nowak, PhD is an empathy researcher. She teaches Social Entrepreneurship and Leadership at McGill and was awarded Best Professor of the Year in 2014. As a certified coach, she helps HNWIs and their families achieve philanthropic dreams through intergenerational values-alignment. She also mentors aspiring social innovators and advises social impact organizations. Her first book, The Empaths Strike Back, will be published in 2019. Her talk will be centered around the topic “Millennials and GenZ deserve Empathy and Allyship”. The description of her talk is as follows: At the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution, the world is besieged by crises. Climate change. Refugee migrations. Rising wealth inequality. Fascist-leaning populism. Erosion of mental health. No wonder Millennials and GenZs are scared – and angry. Based on a decade of observations in her classroom, Anita Nowak makes the heartfelt case that today’s youth need our empathy and allyship.

Eleni Bakopanos

Former Member of Parliament | Public Policy Analyst

Eleni Bakopanos was the first Greek-born woman to be elected to the House of Commons and served for 13 years as the Member of Parliament for Saint-Denis and Ahuntsic. Ms. Bakopanos served as Assistant Deputy Speaker and as Parliamentary Secretary to a number of Ministers, including Justice, Human Resources, Skills Development and Social Development. In July 2004, Ms. Bakopanos was sworn-in by the Governor-General of Canada as a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. After leaving politics, she served as special advisor for caucus to the Honourable Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Official Opposition. Ms. Bakopanos serves on numerous Board of Directors, including past President of the McGill Women’s Alumnae Association and is presently Co-Chair of the McGill Leadership Advisory Committee of the MAA. Presently, she is working on the international level with a number of non-governmental organizations, including the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society.

Emilie Nicolas

Ph.D. Candidate at University of Toronto

Emilie Nicolas is an anthropologist, human rights advocate, and consultant based in Montreal, Canada. She sits on the boards of the Broadbent Institute, an important progressive think-tank, and the Quebec Women’s Federation, the largest feminist organization in Canada. An active bridge-builder, Emilie co-founded Québec inclusif in 2013, and has since initiated a broad civil society coalition for equality and against systemic racism in Quebec. Her work has been published in several journals, magazines and newspapers, and she is a frequent media commentator, analyst and public speaker on human rights issues. She has contributed to building equity practices in various organizations in Canada and internationally.

Harmata Aboubakar

Student at McGill University

Harmata Aboubakar is a 20-year-old student from Montreal. She is a published author, an award-winning spoken word poet and an undergrad at McGill University. She has been performing poetry and writing poems ever since she has been introduced to this artform in 2014. Since then, she has performed at various Open Mic events and competed in many competitions, including Quebec’s first ever intercollegiate Slam Poetry competition. Outside of performances, Harmata is involved with many organizations; She is a Jack.Org speaker (Canada-wide organization for mental health awareness), and a McGill ACCE Team educator (Ambassador for Campus and Community Engagement). All in all, she is very passionate about having a positive impact on society, learning new things, advocating for important causes, public speaking, having meaningful discussions, as well as helping and educating others.

Lucia De Luca

Student at McGill University

Lucia De Luca is a third year Bachelor of Education student and spoken word poet. Born and raised in Montreal, she is looking forward to honouring her grandmother and Italian background in her performance of "If I Spoke Better Italian". About five years ago, Lucia was inspired to start writing and performing poetry after seeing Sarah Kay's TedTalk, "If I should have a daughter". In addition to writing poetry, Lucia enjoys solo travel, works in recreation programs for people with intellectual disabilities, and has an article called "Imagination in the Rational Classroom" published in The Journal of School & Society.

Madhukar Pai

Canada Research Chair | Physician & Researcher at McGill University

Nayem Alam

Canada's Top 20 Under 20 | Global Shaper | Student at McGill University

Nayem Alam, Founder of Speak Up, one of Canada's Top 20 Under 20, Governor General Award recipient and World Economic Forum's Global Shaper is best known as a driven, young social entrepreneur and a slam poet who’s in a continuous pursuit of making an impact on the world with the power of voice. Raised in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy, he is currently 21 years old majoring in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in Software Engineering at McGill University. Nayem's talk will surround his realization of living life to its fullest stemming from being a victim of bullying at an early age. Nayem’s talk surrounds the notion of living life to its fullest. While chasing happiness, we end up getting the total opposite. Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with unexpected outcomes and at one point of our lives we face an existential crisis that make us feel empty inside. How do we craft our purpose, how can we give life a meaning?

Oren Hodes

Undergraduate Student at McGill University

Oren Hodes is an entrepreneur with a strong desire to empower people. His childhood was split between vibrant Manhattan and the lively ski-town Mont-Tremblant, before landing in the beautiful city of Montreal. A passion for athletics led Oren to compete in several sports, eventually pursuing his Division 1 college basketball career in Quebec. At McGill, Oren is the founder of the McGill Sports Management Club, and active supporter of the Movember Foundation as chair of Movember McGill and member of Movember Quebec’s committee. To balance his academic focus in Finance & Strategy, Oren is trilingual and spent a semester abroad in Barcelona. He remains an avid learner who loves to travel and dream about innovative solutions to real-world issues. Upon graduation from McGill’s Class of 2019, Oren will return to New York City to launch his career in management consulting at Accenture.

Susanna Zaraysky

Author | Polyglot | Content Strategist at Google

Susanna is a polyglot, speaking eight languages. She is originally from the former Soviet Union and currently resides in California. At age 29, Susanna found out that she was partially blind and could not see in three-dimensional depth (3D). She had been born with strabismus (crossed-eyed) and amblyopia (lazy eye) and had two operations to straighten her eyes. Her talk is about how she rewired her brain to see in more depth and detail and awoke to a new world. Susanna is the author of Language is Music (translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Russian), Travel Happy, Budget Low and One-Eyed Princess (about her vision journey). She is the co-producer of the documentary, Saved by Language. She gave a TEDx talk in 2014 about Saving Endangered Languages with Music. She has been featured on the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, Los Angeles Times and the CBS and NBC television networks in the US.