David Williams is the Norman Professor of Public Health, at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and a Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His prior academic appointments were at Yale University and the University of Michigan.  Dr. Williams received his early education in St. Lucia, holds Master’s degrees in Divinity and Public Health and a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan.  An internationally recognized authority on social infl...
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Dr. Myrna Lashley received a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from McGill university, was the first Black Associate dean at CEGEP John Abbott in Montreal, is an associate professor department of medicine at McGill University and a researcher at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research of the Jewish General Hospital. Her research focuses on the intersections of geopsychiatry, culture, and mental health.A recognized clinical, teaching and research authority in cultural psychology, and consulta...
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In 1980, pediatrician-hematologist Dr Yvette Bonny performed the first bone marrow transplant in Quebec in a child. She went on to perform approximately 200 during her career, giving hope to sick children and their families.Haitian by birth, Yvette Bonny earned her medical degree at the Faculty of Medicine of Haiti. After arriving in Canada in 1962, she dedicated most of her career to research and to treating children suffering from leukemia, cancer, and sickle cell anemia.  When Yvette Bo...
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Dr. Cara Tannenbaum is a medical leader, health research expert and government advisor who is internationally recognized for her leadership in drug safety and the integration of sex and gender in health research, education, practice and policy. She co-founded and was the inaugural scientific director of the Canadian Deprescribing Network, a national organization aimed at eliminating inappropriate medication use among seniors. From 2015 to 2022, Dr. Tannenbaum served as the scientific director o...
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Angela Cooper Brathwaite is a past president of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO), past president of the International Nursing Interest Group and co-chair of RNAO’s Anti-Black Racism Task Force, and an adjunct professor and associate graduate faculty member, Ontario Tech University (OTU). She holds a PhD in Nursing from the University of Toronto (UofT), a Master of Nursing from the University of Manitoba and a Bachelor’s in Nursing from Memorial University, N.L., and is a...
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The Honourable Lisa Raitt, BSc, MSc, LLB, P.C. served 11 years as the Conservative MP for Milton (Halton), during which time she served as Deputy Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, as well as holding various portfolios including Transport, Labour and Natural Resources.Raitt joined CIBC Capital Markets as Vice-Chair and Managing Director, Global Investment Banking in January 2020.Raitt serves on the boards of Leon's Furniture Limited, Pomerl...
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A native of north-eastern France, Pascal Mayer studied at the University of Strasbourg to earn a doctorate in macromolecular biophysics from the Institut Charles Sadron in 1991. His thesis dealt with the dynamics of DNA under pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and the creation of related automatic optical instrumentation.From 1991 to 1994, he completed a first post-doc at the University of Ottawa, during which he worked on the physics of DNA in gel sequencing and began his research on end-...
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The Honorable Sethuraman Panchanathan is a computer scientist and engineer who serves as the 15th director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Panchanathan was nominated to this position by the President of the United States in 2019, and then unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 18, 2020. NSF is a $9 billion independent federal agency and the only government agency charged with advancing all fields of scientific discovery, technological innovation and STEM education.Panch...
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Debora Diniz is a Brazilian university professor, feminist human rights activist, documentarian, and public intellectual. Since 2018, she has been living outside of Brazil due to her work on the decriminalization of abortion. She is an experienced voice in global health who works to promote social change at scale through various media and methods, including research, academia, advocacy and the arts.An academic by training, Diniz worked as a professor at the University of Brasília for nearly 20 ...
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Michael D. DeGagné has been president and CEO of Indspire since 2020. Indspire is an Indigenous national charity that supports and invests in the education of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people across Turtle Island.He was appointed president and vice-chancellor of Nipissing University in 2013, becoming one of the first Indigenous presidents of a Canadian public university. While president of Nipissing, Dr. DeGagné dedicated much of his work to Indigenous issues, ensuring that Nipissing Univ...
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