Rob Johnson serves as President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.

Johnson is an international investor and consultant to investment funds on issues of portfolio strategy. He recently served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz.

Previously, Johnson was a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. Prior to working at Soros Fund Management, he was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust Company managing a global currency fund.

Johnson served as Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire (D. Wisconsin). Before this, he was Senior Economist of the US Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici (R. New Mexico).

Johnson was an Executive Director of the Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney, and is the former President of the National Scholastic Chess Foundation. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of both the Economic Policy Institute and the Campaign for America’s Future.

Johnson received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.S. in both Electrical Engineering and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Doug Saunders writes the Globe and Mail’s international-affairs column, and also serves as the paper’s online opinion and debate editor. He has been a writer with the Globe since 1995, and has extensive experience as a foreign correspondent, having run the Globe’s foreign bureaus in Los Angeles and London.

He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and educated in Toronto. After early success in magazines and journalistic research, he first worked for the Globe and Mail as a general news reporter, then as an editorial writer and feature writer. In 1996, he joined the weekend section where he created a specialized writing position on media, culture, advertising and popular phenomena. In 1999, he became the paper’s Los Angeles bureau reporter, covering both social and political stories in the American west and the broader developments in wider U.S. society. From 2003 until 2012, he was the paper’s London-based European bureau chief, responsible for the paper’s coverage of more than 40 countries. He has also done extensive reporting in the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian Subcontinent and East Asia.

He has won the National Newspaper Award, the Canadian counterpart to the Pulitzer Prize, on five occasions, including an unprecedented three consecutive awards for critical writing in 1998-2000, and awards honouring him as Canada’s best columnist in 2006 and 2013. He has also won the Stanley McDowell Prize for writing and has been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award.

He has published three books. His first, Arrival City (2010) chronicled the unprecedented wave of rural-to-urban migration and the rise of urban immigrant enclaves, using firsthand reporting on five continents. It has been published in eight languages and has won numerous honours, including the Donner Prize for best book on politics and a runner-up for the Gelber Prize for the world’s best international-affairs book. His second, The Myth of the Muslim Tide (2012), examined the effects of immigration from Islamic countries to the West and has been published to acclaim in Canada, the United States and Germany. His third, Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough (Knopf, September 2017).

Adrienne Clarkson was Canada’s 26^th Governor General from 1999-2005. She came to Canada from Hong Kong as a refugee in 1942 and made the astonishing journey from a penniless child to accomplished broadcaster and distinguished public servant in a multi-faceted lifetime. During her time at Rideau Hall, her energy, enthusiasm, and passion left an indelible mark on our nation’s history. Madame Clarkson has published six books and recently gave the 2014 CBC Massey Lectures, published as Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship.

Shamina Singh is the President of the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth. In this position, she is responsible for the Center’s consistent achievement of its mission to advance sustainable and equitable economic growth and financial inclusion around the world. In her previous position as Global Director of MasterCard’s Government Social Programs, she worked to digitize social subsidy programs in over 40 countries.

In 2015, she was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to a six-year term on the Board of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Currently, she serves as Board Chair of this U.S. federal agency responsible for engaging more than five million citizens in community service through its core programs of AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and the Social Innovation Fund.

Prior to joining MasterCard, she led Government and Public Affairs for Nike and spent five years with Citigroup’s Global Community Development Group. Over the course of 15 years in the public sector, Shamina has held senior positions within the Clinton Administration and the US House of Representatives.

She is a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum and serves on their India Global Agenda Council and their Meta-Council on Inclusive Growth. She is a Henry Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute and served on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Military Leadership Diversity. Her Advisory Board service includes Data & Society; the Beeck Center of Social Impact & Innovation at Georgetown University; and Care.com, a public company operating in 11 countries connecting care providers and families.

Shamina has a graduate degree in public policy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School for Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and completed her undergraduate degree at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She has completed executive programs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Yale’s Jackson Institute for Diplomacy and the India School of Business.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi is currently serving his second term and is Calgary’s 36th mayor.

During his first term in office, Mayor Nenshi’s leadership resulted in many positive changes in Calgary to build better communities, keep Calgarians moving, and transform government to reinforce a culture of constant citizen-focused improvement at The City of Calgary.

Prior to becoming mayor, he was Canada’s first tenured professor in the field of nonprofit management at Mount Royal University’s Bissett School of Business and a trusted business advisor to corporate leaders in Canada and the USA.

His real passion is to make cities, especially Calgary, work better. He’s the lead author of Building Up: Making Canada’s Cities Magnets for Talent and Engines of Development and has long put his ideas to work in Calgary.

Mayor Nenshi grew up in Calgary and has lived and worked in cities around the world before returning home. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree (with distinction) from the University of Calgary and a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he studied as a Kennedy Fellow.

Richard van der Laken, is an acclaimed Dutch graphic designer, entrepreneur, initiator and on a fearless mission as an unlikely globetrotting ambassador for the social impact of design.

His work is well known in graphic design circles. His Amsterdam design agency, Design Politie (Design Police) has shaped the cultural scene in Holland and shot to fame in the ‘90’s on a wave of interest in the Dutch design.

Today, he divides his time between designing for clients and running a global project called What Design Can Do. It started as a conference on the impact of design. It rapidly attracted thousands to Amsterdam’s state theatre and to exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum. Earlier this year civic leaders in São Paulo invited What Design Can Do to Brazil. Now Richard is talking to the UN about a design response to the humanitarian crisis.

In his career Richard was honored with many awards and nominations for D&AD, DesignMuseum Design Of The Year, ADCN (Art directors Club Netherlands), Dutch Design Awards and more. In 2008 a monograph about Designpolitie’s work came out under the title ‘The ABC Of The Designpolitie’.

In 2015 What Design Can Do launched the book ’31 brilliant Ideas For A Better World’, curated by Richard.

Richard is a frequent lecturer at creative conferences and art schools worldwide.

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin is an Emmy-nominated journalist and a former Correspondent/Producer for the groundbreaking award-winning documentary series VICE on HBO. In 2015 and 2016, he was featured on the Arabian Business power list of the planet’s 100 most influential young Arabs. In 2012 he was featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list of ‘young disruptors, innovators and media entrepreneurs impatient to change the world’.

Ahmed joined VICE from HuffPost Live, an award-winning online network he helped launch in 2012. There, he produced and hosted World Brief, a 30 minute interactive global news show, averaging one million views a day.

In 2010, Ahmed created, produced and co-hosted Al Jazeera English’s “The Stream,” an award-winning interactive talk show nominated for an Emmy award for Most Innovative Program in 2012.

Before joining Al Jazeera English in 2009, Ahmed helped launch the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar where he worked as a Correspondent and led the site’s editorial content. Before Qatar, Ahmed worked in New York as a Digital Producer at PBS’s award-winning series Wide Angle, a videographer for FRONTLINE/World and for The New York Times foreign desk.

In 2009, Ahmed began teaching digital media courses as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School Of Journalism, his alma mater, where he graduated with honors in 2007. In 2013, Ahmed published his first book, ‘Demanding Dignity’

Ahmed has interviewed Presidents and A-list celebrities, but his passion is in giving voice to the voiceless and reporting under-covered global stories. Ahmed often appears as a commentator for CNN, NBC, BBC, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Yahoo and other online platforms. He is often invited to speak at leading media, technology, and ideas conferences around the world, including the UN, World Economic Forum, SXSW, Aspen Ideas Festival and Google Zeitgeist. In 2013, the Network of Arab-American Professionals honored him with the 2013 Professional Excellence Award.

Denise Dresser is a professor of political science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) since 1991. She has published articles in the Journal of Democracy, Current History, Harvard International Journal and Foreign Policy.

She writes a political column for Reforma and Proceso and participates in a political talk show on Mexican TV. She served on the Citizens’ Committee in charge of investigating Mexico’s dirty war, and has been on the board of the Human Rights Commission for Mexico City.

Dr. Dresser earned her PhD in Politics at Princeton University, and has taught at Georgetown and Berkeley. She edited Gritos y susurros: experiencias intempestivas de 38 mujeres, and produced a documentary on it. in 2010 she wrote “El País de Uno. Reflexiones para entender y cambiar a México” which immediately became a best seller. She has been named many times one of the 300 most influential people in Mexico by the magazine Líderes Mexicanos and won the National Journalism Award in 2010.

Ratna Omidvar is an internationally recognized expert on migration, diversity and inclusion. In April 2016, Prime Minister Trudeau appointed Ratna to the Senate of Canada as an independent Senator representing Ontario.

Ratna is the founding Executive Director and currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Global Diversity Exchange (GDX), Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. GDX is a think-and-do tank on diversity, migration and inclusion that connects local experience and ideas with global networks.

Ratna is a director at the Environics Institute, and Samara. She is the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council’s Chair Emerita and was formerly the Chair of Lifeline Syria.

Ratna is co-author of Flight and Freedom: Stories of Escape to Canada (2015), an Open Book Toronto best book of 2015 and one of the Toronto Star‘s top five good reads from Word on the Street.

Ratna was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2005 and became a Member of the Order of Canada in 2011, with both honours recognizing her advocacy work on behalf of immigrants and devotion to reducing inequality in Canada. In 2014, Ratna received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of her contribution to the advancement of German-Canadian relations.

Essayist and novelist, John Ralston Saul proposes a new humanism through what he calls responsible individualism. His philosophical trilogy and its conclusion — Voltaire’s Bastards, The Doubter’s Companion, The Unconscious Civilization and On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism — has impacted political thought in many countries. In A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada, he argues that modern Canada is profoundly shaped by Indigenous ideas. He is general editor of the Extraordinary Canadians biographical series and contributed his own biography of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine & Robert Baldwin.

In 2012, he published his first novel in 15 years, Dark Diversions: A Traveller’s Tale. The Comeback, his latest release, explores how Indigenous peoples are empowering themselves for a grand return to a position of power and influence. Saul is President Emeritus of PEN International, and Founder and Honourary Chair of French for the Future. Saul is a Companion in the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario and a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. His many literary awards include Chile’s Pablo Neruda Medal, the Governor General’s Award and the inaugural Gutenberg Galaxy Award.

Photo: Gianluca Battista.

Dr. Orbinski is the 2016-2017 Fulbright Visiting Professor from Laurier University to University of California, Irvine. As a medical doctor, a humanitarian practitioner and advocate, a best selling author, and a leading scholar in global health, he believes in actively engaging and shaping our world so that it is more just, fair, and humane. He has more than 20 years experience in humanitarian relief, having worked in situations of war, famine, epidemic disease and genocide with Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF). He was International President of MSF from 1998-2001, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to MSF in 1999. From 2001 to 2004 he co-chaired the establishment of the Drugs For Neglected Diseases Initiative, a global not-for-profit product development partnership focused on drug research and development for neglected tropical diseases. Known as the DNDi, it has since released six new treatments for tropical diseases, and has 17 other New Chemical Entities under development.

In 2004 he co-founded Dignitas international, a hybrid academic-NGO, which now has more than 270,000 patients on full treatment for HIV in Malawi, and an extensive research and publishing record on health systems in the developing world. Some of Dr. Orbinski’s research is recognized as among the “best science in the world” (in 2006), and as having “shaped scholarship in the field of global health in the post Second World War years”. He is a member of the United Nations Environment Program’s Scientific Steering Committee on Disaster Preparedness and early Warning for Extreme Weather, and sits on several global health-related boards. He is a best selling and award winning book author, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Dr. Orbinski is a full professor and the CIGI Research Chair in Global Health at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. He is also Full Professor of public health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Orbinski looks at global health through a trans-disciplinary human security lens. His current research is focused on understanding and designing interventions on the health impacts of climate change; on intervention strategies around emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (such as HIV and EBOLA); on medical humanitarianism, and on global health governance.

As the 2016-2017 Fulbright visiting professor to the University of California, he will be working with other researchers to develop a health oriented and community based early warning system for extreme weather events that occur because of climate change.

Jennifer M. Welsh is Professor and Chair in International Relations at the European University Institute and a Fellow of Somerville College, University of Oxford.

She was previously a Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford, and co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. In 2013, she was appointed by the UN Secretary General to serve as his Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, a position she held until March 2016.

Professor Welsh is a former Jean Monnet Fellow of the European University Institute, and a Cadieux Research Fellow in the Policy Planning Staff of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. She is the author, co-author, and editor of several books and articles on humanitarian intervention, the evolution of the notion of the ‘responsibility to protect’ in international society, the UN Security Council, and Canadian foreign policy. She was the Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Massey College (University of Toronto) in 2005, and a 2006 recipient of a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship and a Trudeau Fellowship. In 2014, she began directing a five-year ERC-funded project on the ‘Individualization of War’.

Professor Welsh sits on the editorial boards of the journals Global Responsibility to Protect and Ethics and International Affairs, on the steering committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences project on Ethics, Technology and War, and on the Advisory Board of the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt. She has a BA from the University of Saskatchewan (Canada), and a Masters and Doctorate from the University of Oxford (where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar).

Mohamed Fahmy, a dual Canadian-Egyptian citizen lives in Vancouver and works as an adjunct professor at UBC. He has reported on the Middle East and North Africa for CNN, the LA Times, and BBC. In 2011 he and his CNN associates were honored with a Peabody Award for the network’s coverage of the Arab Spring; he also co-authored the photo documentary Egyptian Freedom Story.

In 2012 he won The Tom Renner Investigative Reporting Award for producing the CNN Freedom Project documentary series Death in the Desert, which exposed the trafficking of Sub-Sahara Africans to Israel through Sinai-Egypt. He was appointed Al Jazeera English Bureau Chief in 2013. He is the recipient of the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom Award from UNESCO.

He and his wife, Marwa Omara, founded the Fahmy Foundation NGO in 2015, dedicated to providing financial assistance and advocating on behalf of imprisoned journalists and photographers around the world.

Appointed in 2016, Mr. Jost joined the AGO after holding a 5-year post as Director of the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA). While at HoMA, Stephan’s goal was to make the Museum a welcoming and accessible place for a more diverse audience to experience great art. Under his leadership, the Museum’s finances were dramatically improved, with debt and pension obligation reduced by 85 per cent; the education program expanded in reach and capacity, serving more than 30,000 students and adults through tours and classes; its membership increased by 64 per cent; and its staff revitalized with key hires, resulting in an energized visitor experience.

Prior to that appointment, Mr. Jost was the Director of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont (2006-2011), the Director of the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California (2002-2006), and held several curatorial positions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin College in Ohio (1997-2001). He also worked at the esteemed international auction house, Sotheby’s, as part of the marketing department that coordinated the production of auction catalogues.

Born in Michigan, Mr. Jost has a BA in art history from Hampshire College in Massachusetts and an MA in art history, specializing in the history of photography, from the University of Texas at Austin.

Zabeen Hirji is RBC’s Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) with global responsibility for Human Resources as well as Brand, Communications and Corporate Citizenship.

Reporting to the CEO, she is part of RBC’s eight member Group Executive which is responsible for setting the overall strategic direction of RBC - extending to over 80,000 employees in 38 countries.

Zabeen joined RBC in 1977, holding progressively senior roles in Vancouver and Toronto spanning Retail Banking, Operations and Credit Cards. She moved into Human Resources in 1997 and held a number of executive roles prior to being appointed CHRO in 2007.

She is an active leader in the community, serving as a member of the Governing Council of the University of Toronto, Co-Chair of Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, and director of Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance.

Zabeen’s external recognition includes: Canada’s Meritorious Service Medal for advancing diversity and inclusion; Outstanding Alumni Award from Simon Fraser University for professional achievement; Catalyst Canada Honours Champion for leadership in the advancement of women and minorities; inducted into Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Hall of Fame by the Women’s Executive Network; and twice named a Top 25 Woman of Influence.

She speaks frequently and is quoted in media on topics such as leadership, diversity and inclusion, careers and youth employment.

She holds an MBA from Simon Fraser University.

Madeleine Redfern, LLB, was born in Iqaluit, Nunavut (formerly, Frobisher Bay, NWT). She was Mayor from 2010 to 2012 after winning a by-election but she stood down for the next election. She ran again in 2015 and was re-elected. Madeleine has a strong commitment to her community, and she strives to be accessible, responsive and accountable.

Madeleine has more than 25 years of experience working on issues related to housing, education, employment and training, justice, community services, preschool child care, health care, business and economic development, and governance. She is a graduate of the Akitsiraq law school with a law degree from the University of Victoria. After graduating, she worked at the Supreme Court of Canada for Madam Justice Charron, and then as a legal researcher with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., Executive Director of the Qikiqtani Truth Commission and is the Chair of Nunavut’s Legal Services Board. In these capacities she has done extensive work in the areas of governance, law, legislation and policy.

Madeleine’s expertise is grounded in partnership-building and developing local capacity towards fulfilling the goal of self-government and good governance. She has a record of working with industry, governments, aboriginal organizations and communities, helping to assess and identify strategies and approaches for better outcomes. Madeleine is also President of the Ajungi Group, Ajungi Tourism, Northern Robotics, Arctic Decontamination.

Pete Sweetnam started his working life as a merchant navy officer, but has been involved in the Development and Relief sectors since the mid-1980’s. In addition, he built up and ran an engineering company in Scotland with a business partner.

Throughout his professional career, Pete has worked as an engineer, manager, leader, consultant and director of a number of organisations, including Save the Children UK, and Merlin. His experience lies in growing medium sized organisations as well as working within large multi-membership organisations, including the United Nations and its donors.

Pete brings a deliberate focus on delivering high value results for the beneficiaries his organisations serve. To achieve this, he employs an all-encompassing approach of designing, developing, funding and running high impact, large scale programming. Pete has led humanitarian programs in over 20 countries across both Africa and Asia in a number of wide-ranging sectors including health organisations, community development, water and sanitation, as well as livelihood programming.

Married with two children, he now lives in Malta.

Performance and media artist Anthony Ramos was among the earliest video artists to use the medium as a tool for mass media critiques and cultural documentation, and to examine media presentations of “truth.” In his powerful but rarely seen video works of the 1970s, Ramos sought to combine art and activism, giving agency to marginalized individuals and communities. In his earliest black-and-white video pieces, Ramos engaged in forceful, direct performances for the camera, often using physical endurance and actions to confront political issues.

His 1977 video About Media is an incisive deconstruction of television news. It documents an interview Ramos gave to news reporter Gabe Pressman on the subject of Ramos’s eighteen-month prison term for draft resistance during the Vietnam War. Ramos appropriates the interview, contrasting the unedited interview footage with the final televised news report, exposing the artifice of television news. He also interjects footage of his extraordinary and unnerving early performances, including Balloon Nose Blow-Up, which speak to the influence of Allan Kaprow, with whom Ramos had studied and worked in California.

Ramos has traveled widely in Europe, Africa, China and the Middle East. He videotaped the end of Portugal’s colonial rule of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, Teheran during the 1980 hostage crisis, and Beijing just prior to the Tiananmen Square massacre. Ramos produced a number of video works that critique the media through deconstruction and appropriation, and explore the relation of mass cultural imagery, African-American identity, and the politics of race in America. In the late 1980s he turned to painting as his primary medium.

Ramos was born in 1944 in Providence, Rhode Island. He received an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts, where he was assistant to Allan Kaprow. Among his awards are a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. In the 1970s Ramos was a video consultant for the United Nations and the National Council of Churches. In the 1980s, he lived in Paris where he was a Professor at the American Center, and oversaw the television cabling of ten blocks of Paris for the first time. He has also taught at Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, and the University of California at San Diego.

His recent screenings and exhibitions include Light Industry in New York (2010); Circa 1971: Early Video & Film from the EAI Archive at Dia: Beacon (2011-2012); The Embodied Vision: Performance for the Camera at the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado in Lisbon (2014); and Anthony Ramos: Vidéo et après at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2014).

A social profit entrepreneur, Farah Mohamed created G(irls)20 and now serves as its CEO. G(irls)20 galvanizes the world’s greatest resource – girls and women – and cultivates a new generation of leaders through education, entrepreneurship and global experiences. G(irls)20 provides advice on female labour force participation to the G20 and Business20.

For 10 years, Farah worked closely with some of Canada’s most senior politicians. Farah began her political career in 1995 with The Honourable Paddy Torsney. From 1999 to 2004, Farah served as the Director of Communications for The Honourable Anne McLellan in her role as Minister of Justice, Minister of Health and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.

Post politics, Farah served as Vice President, Public Affairs and Community Engagement for VON Canada. At VON, she was successful in building government and private sector partnerships, as well as strengthening the brand of Canada’s largest, national, non-profit, charitable home and community-care organization.

In 2008, Magna heiress and former Cabinet Minister, Belinda Stronach recruited Farah to establish The Belinda Stronach Foundation (TBSF). Under Farah’s leadership, TBSF created and launched the Foundation’s flagship programs. She also oversaw the Foundation’s work in Liberia with President Johnson Sirleaf and a $1M humanitarian relief effort in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

Stephen Cornish is the executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Canada. With over ten years of direct field experience, Cornish has managed major MSF humanitarian interventions in Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Georgia, Peru and elsewhere. Cornish holds a Masters degree in global risk and crisis management from the Université Panthéon Sorbonne in Paris and post-graduate diploma in conflict resolution from the University of Bradford. He has successfully negotiated humanitarian access to vulnerable populations in active conflict settings across the globe and played key roles in resolving aid worker abduction crises and other emergency scenarios.

Cornish has served in management and advisory roles for the Red Cross and Care Canada, and also serves on the boards of directors for several charitable organizations in Canada. His work has been published in academic and policy journals, including the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies and Policy Options. In Canada, he spurs public debate on pressing humanitarian issues as an analysis contributor to national newspapers and by delivering keynote addresses to thought leaders in the humanitarian, international development and global health sectors.

Dr. Bessma Momani is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada. She is Senior Fellow at the Centre For International Governance and Innovation (CIGI), a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre, a 2015 Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and a regular media analyst and contributor to national and international media on the Middle East and on global economic governance issues.

Rabin S. Baldewsingh is currently Deputy-Mayor of the City of The Hague, The Netherlands. He has been Deputy-Mayor in this International City of Peace and Justice since April 2006. At this time his portfolio consists of Social Affairs, Employment, Neighbourhood Approach, Integration Policies and Sports. In the last decade he has been one of the leading figures in the debate on integration and diversity in The Hague. He is strongly in favour of building bridges towards all ethnic communities.

Rabin S. Baldewsingh is of Indian descend and was born in 1962 in Suriname, South America, as a grandson of Indian indentured labourers of a sugarcane plantation. He migrated to The Netherlands at the age of 13 in 1975. He lived for 5 years in Leiden. After his education he moved in 1980 to The Hague and became active in the socio-cultural and political activities. From 1985 onwards Mr. Baldewsingh initiated various cultural festivals in The Hague. In 1986 he entered the media world in broadcasting journalism. As editor, producer and director, he has several dozen programs and documentaries to his credit.

Mr. Baldewsingh has been a member of the Dutch Labour Party since 1986 and served as a member of The Hague Municipal Council from 1998-2006. Since April 2006 he is Deputy Mayor of the municipality of The Hague.

Besides politics Rabin S. Baldewsingh is also an accomplished writer both for prose and poetry. He has published his works in Sarnámi, English and in Dutch.

Being a migrant himself, Rabin Baldewsingh firmly believes that given the chance, anyone can be successful in carving out a future for themselves and their families. Mr. Baldewsingh is a real social democrat and has set out to provide equal opportunities for every citizen of The Hague. Providing jobs is the key to successful participation in the community. But economic participation is not the only way forward. The Deputy Mayor is thoroughly convinced that all ethnic groups, including the native Dutch communities, should cherish their identity and bestow the best features of their own culture to the great city of The Hague, International City of Peace and Justice.

Photo credit: Roos Trommelen

Sol Guy is a storyteller across all mediums, with a passion to connect art and social change that has allowed for a unique creative journey. His early days were spent as a rapper in the legendary Canadian hip hop group, The Rascalz, which he then parlayed into a successful career as a television host, film producer, artist manager, and social entrepreneur. He has collaborated with some of the biggest artists in the word including Lauryn Hill, K’naan, Robert De Niro, and Cameron Diaz. Most recently, he was based in New York, where he was the Creative Director of Tribeca Enterprises, overseeing the film festival, the production company, and the Tribeca Film Institute. In his newest and most personal endeavor, Guy has returned to Canada and founded DAIS, a launchpad dedicated to developing, producing, and distributing creative projects in partnership with Bell Media.

Professor Hoppers is a scholar and policy specialist on International Development, education, North-South questions, disarmament, peace, and human security. She is a UNESCO expert in basic education, lifelong learning, information systems and on Science and Society; an expert in disarmament at the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs; an expert to the World Economic Forum on benefit sharing and value addition protocols; and the World Intellectual Property Organisation on traditional knowledge and community intellectual property rights.

In South Africa, Professor Hoppers holds a South African Research Chair in Development Education at the University of South Africa (2008à) a National Chair set up by the Department of Science and Technology. Prior to that, she was a technical adviser on Indigenous Knowledge Systems to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (South Africa) and led the Task Team to draft the national policy on Indigenous Knowledge Systems. She was a Distinguished Professional at the Human Sciences Research Council; an Associate Professor at the University of Pretoria; a visiting Professor at Stockholm University (Sweden) where she led the Systems Research Collaboration (Sweden and South Africa), bringing together policy makers and professionals in the academia in the two countries. She was the Scientific Coordinator and Campus Director for the Council for the Development of Social Science in Africa (CODESRIA) Annual Social Science Campus (2006); and a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Orebro University (Sweden), and an Honorary Doctorate in Education from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. She was formerly a member of the International Faculty of the United Nations International Leadership Academy (Amman-Jordan); and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), and was a member of the Academy of Science Special Panel on the Future of Humanities (South Africa). She serves as member of the Board of the PASCAL International Observatory (initiated by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development Countries (OECD)). She is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and is the Chair of the African Academy of Science Advisory Council on the Social and Cultural Sciences (2014). In 2013, she was appointed by the Minister of Higher Education (South Africa) as Member of the Task Team on the Ministerial Project on the Future of the Humanities and Social Science.

She has addressed the International Bar Association, the Swedish Research Council, and Academy of Science of South Africa, the British House of Lords, and the Royal Dutch Shell. She is Goodwill Ambassador for Makerere University in Kampala Uganda; and Ambassador for Non-Violence at the Durban Universities’ International Centre for Non-Violence. She was given the Presidential Medal of Honour by the President of Uganda on the 9^th October 2013, marking Uganda’s Golden Jubilee, for her ground-breaking academic research and leadership. In July 2015, she received the Nelson Mandela Distinguished Africanist Award for her pursuit of the total liberation for the African continent through the promotion of Indigenous Knowledge Systems of Education. In August 2015, Prof Hoppers was awarded “Woman of the Year” by the University of South Africa, and was named as a “Leading Educationist” and was honoured in the Gallery of Leadership as the 63 most influential people who have shaped Unisa since its inception in 1873, in a permanent exhibition in Kgorong Building in UNISA.

Sevaun Palvetzian has been CEO at CivicAction since January of 2014. Before CivicAction, Sevaun held several senior executive roles within the Ontario Government including leading the Ontario Place Revitalization project and launching the Youth and New Professional Secretariat – a government-wide strategy to attract and retain future generations of leaders which included launching the award-winning Learn and Work Program for at-risk youth.

Prior to her work in government, Sevaun held positions at the University of Toronto, the World Bank Group, and Presidential Classroom, a Washington D.C. -based civic education organization.

Sevaun frequently contributes to city-building efforts including serving as a member of the Premier’s Community Hubs Advisory Group, the City of Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Advisory Committee, The Toronto Police Service Board Transformational Task Force, and as a member of Mayor John Tory’s Advisory Panel for International Hosting Opportunities. She also sits on the Board of Directors for both Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC), NPower Canada, and is a member of Ivey Business School Leadership Council.

She completed the Ivey Executive Program at the Ivey School of Business and has an M.A. in history from the University of Western Ontario.

Marina Jimenez is a foreign writer with the Toronto Star and writes about everything from Latin America and the global drug trade to Europe’s migrant issues. The National Newspaper Award winner and National Magazine Award winner has traveled to more than 50 countries, and in 2009/2010 was the St. Clair Balfour Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto.

Pico Iyer is the author of 12 books, on subjects as diverse as globalism, Canada and the imagination, the Cuban Revolution and Islamic mysticism. He has also written many liner-notes for Leonard Cohen, a screenplay for Miramax and the introductions to more than 50 other books, among them works by both Michael Ondaatje and Rohinton Mistry. He gave talks for TED in both 2013 and 2014—one on movement, one on stillness—and each has been seen by roughly 2 million viewers.

Born in Oxford, England and educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard, Iyer has been based in Western Japan for 28 years, though he spends much of his time traveling everywhere from North Korea to Yemen and Easter Island to Ethiopia. His 2008 book on the XIVth Dalai Lama, The Open Road, drawn from more than 30 years of talks and travels with the Tibetan leader, was a best-seller across the U.S and was translated into a dozen or more languages. The same is true of his most recent book, The Art of Stillness, the second TED Original ever to be published, featured on hour-long programs with everyone from Krista Tippett to Oprah Winfrey.

Josef Haslinger was born in 1955 in Lower Austria. In his home country, he is respected for his willingness to confront Austria’s past in writing that contemplates the last world war’s effects on Europe’s current social and political forces. Opernball (1995), a bestseller in Germany, was translated into fifteen languages and adapted for television. A subsequent novel, Das Vaterspiel (2000), portrays Holocaust survivors and perpetrators living in the United States. His book Phi Phi Island (2007) is a report about the surviving of the tsunami on the island of Phi Phi in Thailand. His latest novel, Jáchymov (2011), recalls the arrest of the Czechoslovakian ice hockey team in 1950.

He has been Professor of Literary Aesthetics in Leipzig, Germany, since 1996.

Renu Mandhane is the former Executive Director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. She has an LL.M in international human rights law from New York University, and is a recognized expert. Renu sits on the Canada Committee of Human Rights Watch, and has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada and the United Nations. She has also trained Canadian and foreign judges through the National Judicial Institute of Canada.

Renu has worked at several domestic and international organizations to advance women’s human rights, and has represented survivors of domestic and sexual violence and federally sentenced prisoners.

Renu was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in October 2015.

Dr. Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe, originally from St. Peter’s (Little Peguis) Indian Settlement near Selkirk, Manitoba, and is an Associate Professor and current Head of the Department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba. He is an international commentator on Indigenous issues for outlets like Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, and national broadcasters like CTV, CBC, and The Globe and Mail and was named one of CBC Manitoba’s “Top 40 under 40” in 2015.

Niigaan is an award winning speaker, writer, and editor of such books as the award-winning Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (Highwater Press, 2011) and Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories (Michigan State University Press, 2013), The Winter We Danced: Voices of the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More Movement (Arbeiter Ring Press, 2014).

Luis Larraín is an activist based in Santiago, Chile. He co-founded and currently leads Fundación Iguales, the largest LGBTI organization in the country. In 2015, The Economist magazine listed him as one of the top 50 diversity figures in public life.

Earlier this year, he was chosen as the 2nd most admired member of the non-profit world in a survey conducted by La Segunda, a local newspaper, to over 200 opinion leaders. Due to a genetic condition, he has undergone dialysis and two kidney transplants, the last of them thanks to his brother’s donation. He is an industrial engineer from the Catholic University of Chile and holds a Master on International Affairs from Sciences Po Paris. A language and social media enthusiast, he can be reached on Twitter or Instagram at @LuisLarrain.

Dr. Monia Mazigh was born and raised in Tunisia and immigrated to Canada in 1991. She is the National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. She speaks Arabic, French, and English fluently and holds a Ph.D. in finance from McGill University. Dr. Mazigh has worked at the University of Ottawa and taught Finance at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. In 2004, she ran in the federal election as a candidate for the NDP, gaining the most votes for her riding in the history of the NDP.

Dr. Mazigh was catapulted onto the public stage in 2002 when her husband Maher Arar, was deported to Syria where he was tortured and held without charge for over a year. During that time, Dr. Mazigh campaigned vigorously for her husband’s release and later fought to re-establish his reputation and sought reparations. In January 2007, after a lengthy inquiry, her husband finally received an apology from the Canadian government.

Dr. Mazigh has authored a book called Hope and Despair which documents her ordeal after her husband was arrested and how she campaigned to clear his name. It was published in 2008.

Dr. Mazigh wrote many articles published in the Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen, Le Devoir and other newspapers.

En 2011, Dr. Mazigh a publié son premier roman intitulé Miroirs et mirages. Un livre qui porte sur les femmes musulmanes. Miroirs et mirages a été finaliste pour le prix Trillium, pour le prix du livre d’Ottawa et pour le prix Christine Dimitriu-Van-Saanen. En 2014, Miroirs et mirages a été publié en anglais chez House of Anansi.

En septembre 2015, Dr. Mazigh a publié un roman sur les évènements du printemps arabe, Du pain et du jasmin. Ce roman sera publié en anglais en 2017 chez House of Anansi.

Dr. Mazigh habite à Ottawa avec son mari et ses deux enfants.

Rohinton P. Medhora is president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), joining in 2012. He served on CIGI’s former International Board of Governors from 2009 to 2014. Previously, he was vice president of programs at Canada’s International Development Research Centre.

Rohinton received his doctorate in economics in 1988 from the University of Toronto, where he also subsequently taught for a number of years. In addition to his Ph.D., Rohinton earned his B.A. and M.A. at the University of Toronto, where he majored in economics. His fields of expertise are monetary and trade policy, international economic relations, aid effectiveness and development economics. He has published extensively on these issues in professional and non-technical journals, and produced two books: Finance and Competitiveness in Developing Countries (Routledge, 2001); and Financial Reform in Developing Countries (Macmillan, 1998), which he co-edited with José Fanelli. In 2013, he was co-editor of Canada-Africa Relations: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, which is volume 27 in the influential Canada Among Nations book series. In 2014, he co-edited International Development: Ideas, Experience, and Prospects (Oxford University Press) and Crisis and Reform: Canada and the International Financial System, which is volume 28 in the Canada Among Nations book series.

Rohinton serves on the boards of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research and the Balsillie School of International Affairs and on the advisory boards of the McLuhan Centre at the University of Toronto and the WTO Chairs Program.

An award-winning multi-media journalist, John Yearwood is president and CEO of Yearwood Media Group, a global consulting and conference moderating firm. He also serves as executive board chairman of the Vienna, Austria-based International Press Institute and is former World Editor of the Miami Herald.

The World Desk won numerous awards under his leadership, including two McClatchy Company President’s Awards and the Arthur Ross Award for best coverage of Latin America. Yearwood’s coordination of The Herald’s Haiti earthquake coverage contributed to the newspaper being named a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News.

Yearwood is a regular guest on national and international radio and television news programs, including National Public Radio, Al Jazeera, BBC and China Central Television.

He is involved with a number of international organizations and causes, including serving as a key organizer of the United Nations Global Youth Leadership Summit series, former co-chair and founder of the World Affairs Committee of Unity Journalists and a founder of the Africa Diaspora and Renaissance Network.

For his work leading the Miami Herald‘s national/international news coverage, Yearwood and his team have won several national and international awards, including recognition from Columbia University, the Overseas Press Club, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the King of Spain.

Before joining the Miami Herald, Yearwood was National/International Editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas. Before the Star-Telegram, he spent two years in the Caribbean as founding publisher/editor of Ibis, a general lifestyle magazine.

Prior to Ibis, he spent 10 years at The Dallas Morning News, where he reported from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Yearwood also was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Connecticut and Oklahoma, a national correspondent for Focus magazine and the News/Public Affairs Director for WHUS Radio in Connecticut.

Yearwood was named one of the 40 most influential African-Americans under 40 in South Florida and one of the 100 most successful Caribbean-Americans in South Florida. He is recipient of a Miami-Dade County Pillar Award, ICABA Community Builder Award, the Haitian Women of Miami Leadership Award and the COSMOS 2016 Distinguished Citizen Award.

Devyani Saltzman is a Canadian writer, curator and journalist. She is the author of Shooting Water (Publishers Weekly, Library Journal starred reviews, ‘A poignant memoir’ The New York Times) and is the Director of Literary Arts at the Banff Centre as well as the Founding Curator, Literary Programming, at Luminato. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, National Post, The Atlantic and Tehelka, India’s weekly of arts and investigative journalism. She sits on the advisory committee for Project Bookmark Canada and has been a juror for the National Magazine Awards, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and The Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Saltzman has a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University and is currently working on her first novel.

Rachel Kiddell-Monroe is a lawyer and an activist, specializing in global health, governance and bioethics. Joining MSF in 1992, Rachel spent five years in the field as head of mission in Djibouti, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She also spent four years in Latin America heading a regional humanitarian affairs initiative.

Between assignments, Rachel has taken on a variety of programme, advocacy and policy roles with MSF, including Director of the Access Campaign in Canada between 2003 and 2007. Rachel is currently President of the Board of Directors of the international advocacy group Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, and has consulted for a number of health organizations internationally.

Rachel was first elected to the International Board in June 2013, and reelected for a second term in 2016. Rachel was reelected to the International Board during the 2016 IGA.

Yusuf S. Müftüoğlu is a communications expert, a political analyst and a former presidential advisor.

He currently works as a Senior Advisor for Macro Advisory Partners, a London-based global advisory firm. Before this assignment, he served as the Communications and Public Diplomacy Advisor to President Abdullah Gül of Turkey. He advised the President on matters concerning both his individual communications, as well as the official communications of the Presidency. He was also responsible for planning and coordinating public information and public diplomacy efforts on behalf of the President – global media affairs and relations with non-diplomatic stakeholders worldwide, and for developing and promoting the key themes in these areas.

Yusuf has a career in consultancy sector with a focus on strategic communications. Before Presidency, he worked as a consultant in Turkey’s leading communications agencies, where he served domestic and international companies across different industries. He still advises Turkey’s leading companies on strategy and communications.

A graduate of the London School of Economics and Istanbul University, Yusuf has an academic background incorporating management, politics, media and communications.

Chima Nkemdirim, Q.C., is a born and raised Calgarian who is passionate about building strong communities. He is the Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Calgary. Prior to that, Chima practiced law with Dentons LLP.

Chima attended bilingual schools in both of Canada’s official languages. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of Calgary and a law degree at the University of Ottawa. While practicing law, Chima served on the Advisory Committee of the Alberta Securities Commission and was an instructor at the University of Calgary’s law school.

Chima has long been active in politics. He has managed successful election campaigns and recently co-chaired the National Policy Convention of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Chima is also an active member of the community and volunteers his time with a variety of non-profit organizations. Chima is a member of the Calgary Foundation’s Signature Grants Committee and a member of the board of Alberta Theatre Projects.

In 2011, Chima was appointed as Queen’s Council by the Government of Alberta for his contributions to the legal profession. In 2012, Chima received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contributions to Canada.

Kamal Al-Solaylee, an associate professor at the School of Journalism at Ryerson University, was previously a theatre critic at the Globe and Mail. He has written features and reviews for the Toronto Star, National Post, The Walrus, Toronto Life, Chatelaine, Quill & Quire, Canadian Notes & Queries, Literary Review of Canada and ELLE Canada.

His bestselling memoir Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes won the Toronto Book Award and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Lambda Literary Award, and Canada Reads. Al-Solaylee holds a PhD in English from the University of Nottingham. His new book, Brown, has been hailed as “brilliant” by The Walrus magazine and “essential reading” by the Globe and Mail.

Andrea Menapace is the executive director of the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties (CILD) and Open Migration, CILD’s data-driven media project dedicated to contributing to a better understanding of global migrations. Previously he worked for Transparency & Accountability Initiative, a London-based donor-collaborative where he led the new technology program.

He has been an independent consultant for research institutes, international organizations and NGOs working on governance, human rights, digital media, access to information, transparency and accountability. He is co-founder of Diritto di Sapere an Italian organization working on access to information. He co-authored the report The Silent State (2012).

Ric Young, founder of The Social Projects Studio and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Social Innovation at Ryerson University, is recognized as one of Canada’s leading practitioners and thinkers in the field of social change. As a practitioner, he has committed his career over the past 25 years to advancing innovative approaches to social change. He cut his teeth on the early stages of the PARTICIPaction campaign, and was co-founder of Canada’s first dedicated social marketing agency. He left that company in the mid-90s to start The Social Projects Studio – a company focused on transformational social innovation. Working with government, non-government, corporate and community leaders, he has been the architect of numerous initiatives to address some of society’s most complex and pressing challenges.

As a thought leader, Ric’s personal mission is to “change change” – that is, to foster new mindsets and skill-sets to enable society to tackle the transformational challenges of our time in constructive new ways. He has written and lectured extensively on the nature of change, transformational leadership, civic engagement and the centrality of narrative in the pursuit of 21st century well-being. In 2002, he forged a partnership between DuPont Canada and McGill University to create one of the world’s first social innovation think tanks. In his foreword to Getting To Maybe, the best-selling book that came out of that think tank, he wrote: “We are living at a point in history when the need and desire for change is profound…It is a pivotal time. Over the past two hundred years, human society has developed exceptional competencies and systems for the task of making things. Going forward, we must become equally adept at the task of making change.” The primary focus of Ric’s work now is The Boldness Project, an initiative he has developed to advance the possibility and practice of bold change.

Ric serves on the boards of Ecotrust Canada and Right To Play (Canada). He is a fellow of The Royal Society of Arts and a Quadrangle Member of Massey College. He was awarded The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of his contributions to society. And he was recently adopted as a respected elder by the Maasai tribe.

Brenda Cossman is Professor of Law and the Director of the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She joined the Faculty of Law in 1999, and became a full professor in 2000. She holds degrees in law from Harvard and the University of Toronto, and an undergraduate degree from Queen’s. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, she was Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.

In 2012, Professor Cossman was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2009, she was awarded the Mundell Medal for contributions to letters and law. In 2002 and 2003, she was a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Professor Cossman’s teaching and scholarly interests include family law, law and sexuality, and freedom of expression. Her most recent book on Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging was published by Stanford University Press in 2007. Her publications include the co-authored Bad Attitudes on Trial: Pornography, Feminism and the Butler Decision (University of Toronto Press) and Censorship and the Arts (published by the Ontario Association of Art Galleries).

André Naddeo, 35, is a Brazilian journalist with a 16 year career creating content on demand for online media, with a focus on video. He graduated at Sao Paulo’s Metodista University with a special project that provided TV broadcasting skills to Heliopolis favela residents. That initiative allowed the residents to broadcast their own community news program. It is was social inclusion tool for the residents to produce their own content and feel represented by it.

In 2007, Naddeo moved to Rio de Janeiro. Since then, he lives in the social contrast of those up the hills and those in wealthy areas of Brazil’s most touristic city. He worked as a videomaker for some of the best online media in Brazil and as a correspondent for Uruguayan radios. He also had several video, text and photo jobs performed inside poor areas to show the conflicts around residents, who feel forgotten by the state, attacked by police and controlled by drug lords.

During the nationwide protests against corruption and police violence in 2013, Naddeo covered extensively the case of brick layer Amarildo, a resident of the Rocinha favela, the biggest in Brazil. That case made the streets boil and forced police to investigate. Justice found out that police officers inside Rocinha, under orders of a unit commander, tortured Amarildo to death and concealed his body. The case got worldwide notoriety and shocked Brazil.

Naddeo brings to the 6 Degrees forum the reports of his two latest experiences covering social inclusion topics. Between April and June, he began two independent projects (Drawfugees and I am Immigrant). He lived for 45 days as a journalist and volunteer at the refugee camp of Piraeus, Greece. The main objective of his work was to give a voice to immigrants that don’t feel represented by the media. Living under the same conditions of Syrians, Afghans, Iranians and Iraqis, Naddeo practiced volunteer journalism, not only
absorbing stories but also giving something in return. He cooked, fundraised, took care of clothing distribution, among others, as he documented how these people lived. In the Rio Olympic Games, he worked for the local organizing committee covering the Olympic refugee team, an unprecedented initiative by the International Olympic Committee.

Bruce Cahan, Director of Migration Storytelling Project at Stanford University

Abdul-Rehman Malik is an award winning London-based journalist, educator and organiser. Toronto born and bred, he is Programmes Manager for the Radical Middle Way. Since 2005, Radical Middle Way has worked alongside grassroots partners – in the UK and around the world – to provide powerful, faith-inspired guidance that gives tools to enable change, promote social justice for all and combat exclusion and violence. His work has spanned the UK, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, Mali, Morocco, Singapore, Canada and Malaysia. He has most recently pioneered a creative capacity-building co-lab with the UN Alliance of Civilization aimed at empowering Somali diaspora voices.

Since January 2015 he has also been Director of the Insight Film Festival, a unique festival which celebrates the intersection between faith and film, exhibiting new work and encouraging filmmakers - particularly young and emerging auteurs - throughout the world to make films that explore faith.

Abdul-Rehman contributes to BBC Radio, regularly offering contemporary perspectives on spirituality for Radio 2’s flagship breakfast show and presenting documentaries for Radio 4 and the World Service. In 2016, he will also be presenting several episodes of the long-running “Something Understood” programme for BBC Radio 4.

Abdul-Rehman is also a trustee of the Sandford St Martins Trust, a UK based trust which promotes media excellence in religious programming, and a consultant on global programs to SeekersHub, an online Islamic educational portal that seeks to promote the study of classical Islamic texts through dynamic digital platforms.

Abdul-Rehman has a keen interest in harnessing cultural capital for social change. He is currently working with colleagues from around the world to establish a global network of Muslim cultural leaders committed to supporting cutting edge Muslim cultural production and building cultural capital.

Mathieu Lefèvre is currently starting a new venture called Plus 1, with a mission to reinvent the French and European dreams. Until February 2016, Mathieu was the Executive Director of the New Cities Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to shape a better urban world. In this role, Mathieu oversaw the Foundation’s strategy and fundraising and its day-to-day operations working with mayors, companies, startups and think tanks all over the world.

Previously, he worked for the World Bank and as a political officer for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, working in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Office of the Secretary General in New York. Mathieu is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and of the London School of Economics. Mathieu serves as a senior advisor to Purpose, a company that builds movements and new power models to tackle the world’s biggest problems, as well as startups in the urban space. Mathieu lives in Paris and is a dual citizen of France and the USA.

We are a coalition of journalists, coders, designers, digital strategists, & global citizens coming together to tackle the Mediterranean migration crisis.

http://the19millionproject.com/

His Highness the Aga Khan, the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), is the 49th hereditary Imam (Spiritual Leader) of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. For His Highness the Aga Khan, one manifestation of his hereditary responsibilities has been a deep engagement with development for over 50 years.

Son of Prince Aly Khan and Princess Tajuddawlah Aly Khan, the Aga Khan was born on 13 December 1936, in Geneva. He spent his early childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, and then attended Le Rosey School in Switzerland. He graduated from Harvard University in 1959 with a BA Honors Degree in Islamic history.

He became Imam (spiritual leader) of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims on 11 July 1957 at the age of 20, succeeding his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan. As spiritual leader, the Aga Khan has emphasised the view of Islam as a thinking, spiritual faith: one that teaches compassion and tolerance and that upholds the dignity of man, Allah’s noblest creation. Over the course of history, Ismaili Imams and their communities have made major contributions to the cultural, religious and intellectual life of Muslims. These include the University of Al-Azhar and the Academy of Science, Dar al-Ilm, in Cairo, and indeed the city of Cairo itself, which was founded by the Aga Khan’s ancestors. Among the renowned philosophers, jurists, physicians, mathematicians, astronomers and scientists of the past who flourished under the patronage of Ismaili Imams are Qadi al-Numan, al-Kirmani, Ibn al-Haytham (al-Hazen), Nasir e-Khusraw and Nasir al-Din Tusi.

Rufus Wainwright, one of the great male vocalists and songwriters of his generation, has released seven studio albums, three DVDs, and three live albums. He has collaborated with artists ranging from Elton John, David Byrne, Mark Ronson, Joni Mitchell to Burt Bacharach. At the age of 14 he was named Canada’s best young musician and later received the Juno Award for Best Alternative Album. His album “Rufus does Judy” recorded at Carnegie Hall in 2006 was nominated for a Grammy.

His acclaimed first opera, Prima Donna, premiered at the Manchester International Festival in July 2009 and has since been presented in London, Toronto and BAM in New York. In 2010 Wainwright was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony to compose and interpret “Five Shakespeare Sonnets,” a five-movement song cycle that sets Shakespeare’s “Sonnets” to orchestra and voice. They have since been performed worldwide by orchestras including the Chicago and Montreal Symphonies.

In 2010 he was the first artist to complete a 5 concert residency at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London. In Sept 2014 he had his debut with the London Proms at Royal Albert Hall and performed at the Last Night of the Proms in the Park.

Other achievements include the 2012 world premiere of Sing Me The Songs That Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle, the feature length music documentary that captured the May 2011 tribute concert honoring Rufus’ late mother, the legendary Kate McGarrigle. In 2013 he sang for Billy Joel at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington and the fall of 2015 saw the Deutsche Grammophon release of a double CD/vinyl recording of Prima Donna with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Deutsche Grammophon also released an album of Shakespeare Sonnets set to Rufus’ music on April 22, 2016 in celebration of the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

The Canadian Opera Company commissioned Wainwright’s second opera, about Roman Emperor Hadrian, to premiere in Toronto in the Fall of 2018.

Photo credit: Matthew Welch

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestsellers, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate (2014), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and No Logo (2000).

This Changes Everything was an instant New York Times bestseller and is being translated into over 25 languages. Nominated for multiple awards, it won the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The documentary inspired by the book, and directed by Avi Lewis, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015.

Since This Changes Everything was published, Klein’s primary focus has been on putting its ideas into action. She is one of the organizers and authors of Canada’s Leap Manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and justice-based transition off fossil fuels. The Leap has been endorsed by over 200 organizations, tens of thousands of individuals, and has inspired similar climate justice initiatives around the world.

In November 2016 she will be awarded Australia’s prestigious Sydney Peace Prize, for, according to the prize jury, “exposing the structural causes and responsibility for the climate crisis, for inspiring us to stand up locally, nationally and internationally to demand a new agenda for sharing the planet that respects human rights and equality, and for reminding us of the power of authentic democracy to achieve transformative change and justice.”

Klein is a member of the board of directors for climate-action group 350.org. In 2015, she was invited to speak at the Vatican to help launch Pope Francis’s historic encyclical on ecology, Laudato si’.

Klein is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and her column for The Nation magazine is syndicated internationally by the New York Times Syndicate. Recent articles have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, the London Review of Books and Le Monde.

She has multiple honourary degrees and in 2014 received the International Studies Association’s IPE Outstanding Activist-Scholar award.

Born in Transkei, South Africa and raised between South Africa and the United States, grandson of the iconic late President Nelson Mandela, Kweku Mandela lives to help amplify the voices of communities across his country and the world. His deep experience across the philanthropic and documentary film world allows him to exemplify his work with excellent penetration. Kweku is actively involved in grass roots outreach efforts across the globe and participates on the boards of Global Citizen, Out of Africa, Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, Africa Rising and Pioneer Works among others.

Dave McKay was appointed President of RBC on February 26, 2014 and Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Board on August 1, 2014.

In his previous role as Group Head, Personal & Commercial Banking, which he held from November 2012 to February 2014, Mr. McKay was responsible for RBC’s banking businesses in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean, including personal and commercial financial services, credit cards and payments, as well as RBC’s sales and branch distribution, operations and advice centres.

Prior to this, he served as Group Head of Canadian Banking, Executive Vice President of Personal Financial Services, and Senior Vice President of Financing Products, respectively. Mr. McKay started his career at RBC in 1988, and has held progressively senior roles in Canada and Japan in retail and business banking, group risk management, and corporate banking.

In 2012, Mr. McKay received the “Retail Banker of the Year” Award by Retail Banker International.

Mr. McKay holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. He serves on the Board of Trustees for the Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) in Toronto and is the Chair of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council. He is also a director of The Conference Board of Canada and a member of the Catalyst Canada Advisory Board and the Business Council of Canada.

A passionate advocate for helping children to build the confidence to be active and healthy for life, Mr. McKay has also coached children’s basketball and hockey for many years.

Bursting forth from Canada’s capital, native Producer/DJ crew A Tribe Called Red is producing a truly unique sound that’s impacting the global electronic scene and urban club culture. Since 2010 the group – currently made up of DJ NDN, Bear Witness and 2oolman – has been mixing traditional pow wow vocals and drumming with cutting-edge electronic music. Their self-titled album, released in March 2012, was long-listed for Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize and included in the Washington Post’s top 10 albums of the year.

In a sense, ATCR’s music is the soundtrack to a contemporary evolution of the pow wow: their Electric Pow Wow events in Ottawa showcase native talent and aboriginal culture, alongside an open, wild party. Within a couple of years they’ve become the face of an urban Native youth renaissance, championing their heritage and speaking out on aboriginal issues, while being on top of popular music, fashion and art. Bear Witness doubles as the crew’s visual artist and creates stunning, political and sometimes humorous videos that incorporate film and pop culture references to native people and reclaim the aboriginal image.

Their second album, Nation II Nation, was on the shortlist of the Polaris Music Prize as one of the 10 best Canadian albums of the year and 4 APCMAs (Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Award) for best group, best producer, best album and best cover art. ATCR have also collaborated and produced one of the last known Das Racist songs called Indians From All Directions as well as the song A Tribe Called Red on Angel Haze’s album Dirty Gold.

A Tribe Called Red will be releasing their newest album, We are the Halluci Nation, on September 16, 2016.

Cris Derksen is a two-spirit Juno Award–nominated Canadian Indigenous cellist from Northern Alberta. Derksen is known for her unique musical sound which blends classical music with traditional Indigenous music. Her music is often described as “eletronic cello” or classical traditional fusion.

Joseph’s award-winning writing career has had a strong focus on the historical and contemporary experience of First Nations peoples. He is best known for his books Three Day Road, Through Black Spruce, which won the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and The Orenda, which was named the winner of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads 2014. Joseph’s work reflects the perils and inner strengths of marginalized groups.

Photo: Norman Wong

Jamaias DaCosta (Kanien’keha:ka, Cree, Irish, French, and Jamaican (Colombian, African, Portuguese, Sephardic Jew) ) is a mother, facilitator, spoken word performer, writer, deejay, radio geek and a lover of futurist resurgence movements. Through spoken word, radio, and arts based facilitation and training, Jamaias’ work focuses on critical deconstruction of colonial narratives, ancestors and identity, and celebration of Black and Indigenous futurism.

As a spoken word poet, Jamaias creates narratives inspired by her ancestors and mixed identity, and has performed at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, Urban Alliance on Race Relations, Art Gallery of Ontario, Bold as Love Toronto, the Feminist Art Conference, Mixed Arts Conference and many other local community venues and events.

As a radio geek, Jamaias (aka Jams) has been co-host, deejay and producer of The Vibe Collective radio show since 2007, and producer of Indigenous Waves Radio since 2011, both on CIUT 89.5FM.

Jamaias is Associate Director of Artistic Programs and Development at the Children’s Peace Theatre and sits on the advisory Board of Mixed in Canada.

Jamaias will be releasing her first spoken word recording project, Flint & Fire in fall 2016.