Check Out Featured Spotlight Speakers!

Katharine Hayhoe is an accomplished atmospheric scientist who studies climate change and why it matters to us here and now. She is also a remarkable communicator who has received the American Geophysical Union’s climate communication prize, the Stephen Schneider Climate Communication award, and been named to a number of lists including Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Thinkers, and FORTUNE magazine’s World’s Greatest Leaders. Katharine is currently a professor and directs the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She has a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Toronto and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Illinois.

Please note: to reduce carbon emissions associated with this talk, Katharine will be presenting remotely from her office in Texas.

In September 2019, CBC Podcasts launched a first-of-its-kind pilot program in the audio education space. ‘Podcasts in Class’ is a way for teachers to bring podcasts into their classrooms, with custom-made lesson plans, slides, handouts, homework, and even videos featuring CBC Podcast hosts. These guides are free, and easily adaptable to different courses and curriculums. In this session, you’ll meet 12-year old Webby award-winning podcast host Tai Pool (Tai Asks Why) and hear from education experts who developed and vetted these teaching tools, and are spearheading their use in classrooms around the country.

Tai Huynh is Editor-in-Chief of The Local, an independent magazine exploring urban health and social issues in Toronto. He’s also Creative Director at UHN OpenLab, a design and innovation studio dedicated to a human-centred approach for advancing health and its social determinants. Tai is co-founder of Choosing Wisely Canada, the national voice for reducing unnecessary tests and treatments in health care. He previously held senior roles at the Ontario Ministry of Health, and in management consulting. Tai has a Master of Design from OCAD University, MBA from York University and Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto.

Justin Ling is a freelance journalist who has spent years covering politics, defence, national security and cyber issues. You may remember him from such stories as: Canadian Police Obtained BlackBerry’s Global Decryption Key; Canadian Cops Scrambled to get Approval for Cellphone Surveillance Hardware They Were Already Using; and Police Could Charge a Data Center in the Largest Child Porn Bust Ever. He is Toronto-based, but frequently covers Parliament Hill, and his work has appeared in the Globe & Mail, National Post, Maclean’s, VICE News, BuzzFeed News, and he has appeared on CBC, CTV, Global, CNN, the BBC, and a host of other outlets.

Tribally enrolled at Nambé Owingeh, a sovereign native nation in the state currently known as New Mexico, Debbie’s book chapters, and her academic and professional articles are used in Library Science, Education, and English courses across the continent. A former schoolteacher and assistant professor, she is well known for her blog, American Indians in Children’s Literature. An activist scholar, her writings and work on social media were important in a significant change in children’s literature: the renaming of the Laura Ingalls Award to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

Takara Small is a Toronto-based tech entrepreneur, journalist and developer. She is a technology columnist on Metro Morning and the founder and executive director of VentureKids Canada, a Toronto-based nonprofit that provides free coding classes and startup workshops to youth living in low-income and underserved communities. Since launching, the organization has worked with community-focused groups like Toronto Public Library and Venture13 to create inclusive opportunities for diverse students from across the city of Toronto and the province. Meanwhile her written and broadcast work been featured in news outlets around the world, which include the BBC, CBC, Toronto Star, Refinery29, Flare magazine, Fortune magazine and more. In addition to her work on CBC Radio she is also the host/producer of the Globe and Mail’s technology podcast “I’ll Go First”, which in 2018 was named one of the best technology podcasts in the country by Apple Canada.

Samantha Estoesta (she/her) is a multiple-published poet and long time #WomenInSTEM and equity advocate. With an MA in Intercultural Communications and ten years in advocacy, community engagement, digital communications, and social media strategy, she centres her efforts on growing communities through reciprocal relationships. When she’s not talking about being a brown female in tech, she can be found pushing her child in a red stroller around Downtown Kitchener or tweeting/instagramming at @smoestoe.

Dr. Sheila Cote-Meek is Anishinaabe from the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, and is the Vice-President, Equity, People and Culture at York University effective October 1, 2019. She is the former Associate Vice-President, Academic and Indigenous Programs at Laurentian University. Author of Colonized Classrooms: Racism, Trauma and Resistance in Post-Secondary Education and a leader in Indigenous education Dr. Cote-Meek has focused on bringing about systemic changes that attend to equity, diversity and inclusion in post-secondary education.

Shakil Choudhury (MES) is an award-winning educator and consultant with more than 25 years’ experience in the field of diversity, equity and inclusion. Co-founder of Anima Leadership, he has trained senior leaders across sectors and developed measurement tools for organizations, helping improve their diversity outcomes. Internationally, Shakil has designed and led peace-building projects for communities in conflict, specifically in Europe and South America. His book Deep Diversity: Overcoming Us vs. Them is a practical, scientific and compassionate approach to tackling systemic discrimination. He lives in Toronto and is currently experiencing his most challenging and rewarding management experience: your children teaching him about fatherhood.

Leslie Weir became the Librarian and Archivist of Canada on August 30, 2019. She is the first woman to be appointed to the position since the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada merged to form Library and Archives Canada in 2004. Prior to her appointment, Ms. Weir was University Librarian at the University of Ottawa from 2003 to 2018. She also held positions at the National Library of Canada and the Statistics Canada Library. Over the course of her career, Ms. Weir has demonstrated vision, dedication and outstanding service by encouraging connections both within and outside the world of librarianship. She guided many transformative moments at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network and research libraries in Canada. Ms. Weir is one of the founding architects of Scholars Portal, the state-of-the-art research infrastructure in Ontario universities that brings together information resources and services in support of research and learning. Ms. Weir also served as President of Canadiana.org, where she oversaw the introduction of the Heritage Project, in collaboration with Library and Archives Canada, to digitize and make openly accessible some 60 million heritage archival images. She was also President of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries from 2007 to 2009.

Florence Ngenzebuhoro est Directrice générale du Centre francophone de Toronto, le plus grand centre multiservice francophone en Ontario. Le Centre compte plus de 100 employés qui travaillent en santé primaire, en santé mentale, en développement de l’enfance et famille, en services aux nouveaux arrivants, en services de l’emploi et en aide juridique. Depuis le 9 avril 2018, Mme Ngenzebuhoro est membre du Conseil des gouverneurs de l’Université de l’Ontario français.

Speakers: Toni Samek, Chair of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta; Bessie Sullivan, CEO, Haliburton County Library System; Christina de Castell, CEO, Vancouver Public Library

Moderator: James L. Turk, Director of the Centre for Free Expression, Ryerson University