Janet Rossant, CC, PhD, FRS, FRSC is Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, and President and Scientific Director of the Gairdner Foundation. She is an internationally recognized developmental and stem cell biologist, exploring the biology of the early embryo and its stem cells and their applications to understanding and treating human disease. She has also been actively involved in ethics and public po...
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Andrée Poulin has written some 60 books for children. Her picture books and novels have won her several literary prizes. She started off as a journalist, and she really enjoyed telling stories based on facts, but now, as an author, she takes great pleasure in telling fictional stories. Her favourite challenge is to write books that make her readers both laugh and think. For over 12 years, she has hosted workshops in schools to help inspire a love of reading in children. She has published a...
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Afua Cooper is a Jamaican-Canadian multidisciplinary scholar, author, and artist. Her 13 books range across such genres as history, poetry, fiction, and children’s literature. Her indomitable research on slavery, and Black history has made her one of the leading figures in Black Canadian studies, and the authority on Canadian slavery. Additional areas of expertise include women’s history, race and gender, public history, abolitionism, freedom, and emancipation, Caribbean Studies, and Black lite...
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Under-Secretary-General Pramila Patten was appointed as the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict on April 12, 2017. Prior to this appointment and since 2003, Ms. Patten served as a member of the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). She was the chairperson of the Working Group on General Recommendation No. 30 on “Women in Conflict Prevention, Conflict and Post-Conflict situations”.She has been ...
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As a family physician in Montreal, Dr. Sheldon Elman saw an opportunity to complement the Canadian healthcare system. He identified the personal and systemic value in treating health issues before they became medical problems, not once diagnosed. A lifelong innovator, Dr. Elman founded Medisys Health Group in 1987. Under his leadership, Medisys became Canada’s leading national private and corporate healthcare service provider. This has established Sheldon as one of Canada’s top corporate medica...
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Dr. Etches was appointed medical officer of health (MOH) for Ottawa Public Health (OPH) in April 2018, having served as deputy MOH for three years and associate MOH for five years before that. She is passionate about preventing illness and injury and working with partners across many sectors to keep people well and promote population health. She is known for fostering a culture of community and client engagement and providing information to help people navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. She is als...
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Paul C. Genest has been senior vice-president of Power Corporation since 2016. From 2016 until 2020, he was senior vice-president of Power Financial. His background includes government, academia and business. He served in a number of portfolios as a deputy minister in the Ontario government, including intergovernmental affairs and francophone affairs, and as deputy minister responsible for the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games held in Toronto in 2015. He served in the federal go...
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Dr. Molly Shoichet is a professor at the University of Toronto, where she is one of less than 2% of the faculty at the institution to hold the title University Professor. She is also Michael E. Charles Professor of Chemical Engineering at UofT, in a department where she serves as associate chair, graduate studies, as well. In 2018, she served as Ontario’s first (and only) chief scientist, working to enhance the culture of science. Shoichet has published over 650 papers, patents and abstr...
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Senator Michèle Audette is a well-known Indigenous leader. Daughter of a Québécois father and an Innu mother, Michèle Audette comes from the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam in Quebec. She has played a key role in transforming the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Quebec and Canadian society since the 1990s. At only 27 years of age, she was elected president of the association Quebec Native Women. In 2004, she was appointed associate deputy minister to the Secrétariat à ...
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Julia Elvidge (BSc, BASc, ICD.D)brings 30 years of high technology business experience to her work as an adviser, board member and investor. She is the co-founder of SheBoot, a bootcamp for women entrepreneurs of scalable tech and tech-enabled businesses preparing for their first external investment, a critical period for any founder’s journey but especially difficult for women. In addition, Julia works as an advisor at Invest Ottawa and serves on the Capital Angel Network (CAN) andCentre of Ex...
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