SFU

Confirmed Speakers

• Mark Brand
  “Bartender of the Year” turned successful entrepreneur, Mark Brand is the owner of Save On Meats. His vision has revitalized the Vancouver establishment and engaged the community of the Downtown East Side. He has several businesses that have served as a schooling for his latest endeavour in community revival. Save On Meats has been the topic of a docu-series entitled Gastown Gable on OWN Canada. Mark makes time to speak at several events annually and is an active participant in City Council discussion and the advocacy of food security in the DTES.
• Luke Brocki
  Luke Brocki is a Vancouver-based freelance journalist, essayist, broadcaster and agitator. He loves innovative curse words, ethical dilemmas, foreign accents and the dirty realism of Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. His work appears on CBC Radio, The Tyee, BCBusiness, Open File and in street screaming matches on the other side of the tracks. For frenetic dispatches from the field, follow him on Twitter @lukebrocki.
• Lauryn Oates
  Lauryn Oates is a human rights activist, who started working passionately for the rights of Women in Afghanistan at age 14. She is the founder of the Vancouver and Montreal Chapters of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan). She has worked with several international organizations and Afghan women’s charities. Lauryn is the recipient of several awards and distinctions, including the 2000 Chatelaine Women of the Year, the 2001 National Post/L’Oréal Canada Women of Influence, and a YTV Achievement Awards finalist for Public Service. In 2008, The Globe & Mail named her as the first of Ten Canadians to Watch in 2009.
• Alexandra Samuel
  Alexandra Samuel applies research to help companies leverage digital media expertise as the Director at the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University. Through her company, Social Signal, she leads online community projects for clients including the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, CompuMentor’s NetSquared, the Mountain Equipment Co-op, and The Elders. Samuel has written for Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and Oprah.com. She holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard. You can find her insights on her blog (alexandrasamuel.com) and on Twitter (@awsamuel).
• Melanie Dewberry-Jones
  Melanie provides “rebelpreneurs” with verbal swagger, through provocative language. A coach and business woman, she makes it her mission to eradicate the divides between people through language. A tough upbringing in the United States provided her with a voracious appetite for language, wisdom, truth and faith - she makes those part of her business and daily life. You can follow her on Twitter (@verbalswagger) and Facebook (Soul Identity Branding).
• Roman Onufrijchuk
  Dr. Roman Onufrijchuk is a senior research fellow at The Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology (CPROST). Roman has divided his career between scholarship, broadcasting, and communication management. He served as an Executive Producer for Radio in the Department of Radio and Television at the University of Alberta, as well as a host for morning radio at Edmonton’s CBC. As an SFU Professor in Communication, he has a background in community articulation and has delivered award-winning programmes on arts and culture administration. His current interest is the implication of new media experiences of the human condition.
• Riaz Meghji
  Vancouver wakes up to Riaz Meghji on CityTV’s Breakfast Television. As a local who grew up in North Delta, Riaz pursued a career in Finance after graduating from Simon Fraser University. After feeling that he wanted to do more with his career, Riaz’s entertainment skills led him to a career in radio with Z95.3FM, after which he made the move to television. Outside of his professional obligations, Riaz supports several charities, including The Aga Khan Foundation Canada and Free the Children.
• Dr. William (Bill) Rees
  The Ecological Footprint Analysis - a measure of land and water needed to support a population - was the brainchild of Dr. Bill Rees. Dr. Rees, a professor at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, narrowed his field of study from population ecology (his degree at the University of Toronto) to address the international implications of population sustainability and resource use. No stranger to lectures, Dr. Rees is also Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Founding Fellow of the One Earth Initiative, a founding member and recent past-President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics, and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. He was the recipient of the 2007 Trudeau Fellowship Prize.
• Loretta Cella
  Loretta Cella is the Executive Director and Founder of the Passion Foundation, a charity with a mission to greatly improve the lives of girls and young women 11-24 years of age by assisting them to realize and live out their full potential. Loretta has worked with youth and families in Vancouver, Toronto, New Delhi, Kenya and Uganda over the last 11 years. Loretta has a number of innovative projects on the go including Global Sorority, a documentary featuring 100 girls in over 12 countries to be completed in 2014. She is a trained Life Coach, Child and Youth Care Counsellor, and Canadian Career Development Practitioner who’s choosing to live life a little outside the box. Twitter @lorettacella @passionteams.
• Jill Earthy
  Jill Earthy is an entrepreneur with an MBA. and has successfully built 2 companies (Frontline Staff Inc. and momcafe Network Inc.), grown them nationally and then sold them. For the past 5 years, she has been the Executive Director and then CEO of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), a non-profit organization educating, mentoring and energizing female entrepreneurs. She is a BIV Top 40 under 40 (2010) and was recognized globally in 2011 by The International Alliance of Women for supporting the economic empowerment of women. Jill’s passion is identifying opportunities, connecting people and helping small businesses to grow.
• Dr. Ray Hsu
  Dr. Ray Hsu is the co-founder of Art Song Lab, a multidisciplinary composition workshop. As an educator, and artist, Dr. Hsu has had a varied and colourful career path. He has written and published two award-winning books, written in over 50 international publications, taught a prison music workshop, and is the editor of Ricepaper Magazine. Ray has appeared on a variety of media, and contributes to several arts boards in the city and across the world.