Speakers
Below are the speakers and performers of the TEDxMcGill event held on February 4th, 2024.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz is Director of McGill University’s “Office for Science and Society” which has the mission of separating sense from nonsense. He is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching chemistry and for interpreting science for the public. He was the first non-American to win the American Chemical Society’s prestigious Grady-Stack award for popularizing chemistry. “Dr Joe” has hosted a radio show on science for forty-three years, has appeared hundreds of times on television, writes a regular newspaper column and is the author of nineteen best-sellers. He has been awarded four honorary doctorates and teaches a course on “Food and Nutrition” that with 2700 students holds the record for the largest enrolment for any university course in Canada. Professor Schwarcz is also an amateur magician, often spicing up his presentations with a little magic.
Elaine Xiao craves stress and the feeling of being busy. She grew up in BC before moving to Montreal to study Pharmacology and Philosophy at McGill, where she enjoys getting involved in equity and sustainability initiatives around campus. She works at the Eating Disorder Centre, is a volunteer first responder, and is involved in student government. She is also burnt out. Over the past two years, Elaine has spent a lot of time reflecting and realizing she is functioning on autopilot to the point that she hardly feels human.
The shadow of overcommitment is a familiar presence in the lives of many undergrads and students. As a student with a fear of the unknown and the future, Elaine will be talking about navigating overcommitment and how to dedicate our limited time to activities we value.
Beyond bustling around campus, she loves to hike, read a book she’s been trying to finish for months, and attend spin classes.
Brad Crocker is a PhD candidate in the Healthy Living Lab at McGill University, where he uses mixed methods research to explore how people get information, form attitudes, and make decisions relating to their health. Brad has been awarded over $250k in scholarships towards his graduate studies, which will be wrapping up in Spring 2024. Brad has won multiple best-presenter awards at academic conferences and competed as a finalist in McGill’s 3-Minute Thesis program, as well as at the 2023 SSHRC Storytellers Showcase. Brad hopes to foster critical thinking in people searching for health information online, and aims to empower people to feel they can live a healthy evidence-based lifestyle.
Nithya Lakshmi Mahasenan is an Economics and Finance student at McGill University. Originally from the United States, Nithya now resides in Montreal. Her talk, “From Competition to Collaboration: Redefining Women’s Relationships in the Workplace” explores the complex interpersonal relationships between women, and what happens when gender stereotypes enter the professional world. Nithya worked as an EDI consultant, providing insight into drafting inclusive legislation on collegiate campuses that uplifts women of colour through advocacy, mentorship and education, for which Nithya was the 2023 recipient of the South Shore University Women’s Club Award. At McGill University, Nithya is the VP Mentorship of McGill Women in Leadership and a consultant for JED Consulting, Canada’s #1 student-run consulting firm. In her talk, Nithya will compile lived experiences, case studies and data to demonstrate the socialized circles that foster competitive behavior between women from adolescence to the workplace, providing insight into deconstructing false narratives women are sold and leveraging paths to a more inclusive culture. She hopes to share her own experiences of breaking down internalized misogyny to encourage and uplift other women to do the same and harness their best self within the workplace.
Nick Cholmsky is a first-year undergraduate student at McGill pursuing psychology. For years, Nick has passionately spoken on mental health in a variety of settings. From small-scale seminars to national speech competitions, he has used public speaking as a vessel to break down the stigma surrounding mental health. Most recently, he spoke on the issues facing Canada’s mental health care system in the National Speech and Debate Canada’s 2023 Persuasive Speech Competition and was awarded first place. For his TedxMcGill talk, he will take a more personal approach and discuss how the ideals of masculinity have affected his battle with mental health. Through his own experiences combined with recent scientific discoveries, Nick hopes to inspire others to look at masculinity from a new perspective that invites talking about mental health instead of antagonizing it.
Linnea Nguyen is a second-year student at McGill University pursuing a double major in Political Science and Sociology. As the Strategy and Global Partnerships Officer on Amnesty International Canada’s National Youth Action and Advisory Board (NYAAC), Linnea is responsible for seeking out global opportunities for Amnesty’s youth membership and the development of the National Youth Strategy.
Linnea additionally serves as a U-Report Ambassador for UNICEF Canada and a Crisis Responder for Kids Help Phone. She also fulfills advisory roles as a member of the RCMP National Youth Advisory Committee and of the UNESCO Global Youth Community (GYC).
Through her talk, Linnea hopes to articulate her vision for the integration and engagement of young perspectives in democratic processes, along with the steps to achieve this objective. She emphasizes the significance of empowering youth to embrace and partake in their ability to shape the world.
Ramiro Almeida is Co-founder and CEO of TRAM Global Inc – a technology company that empowers people and companies to measure and reduce their carbon emissions by incentivizing sustainable actions. As an entrepreneur he along with co-founder, Dr. Ryan Chin, has built world class engineering teams of AI, Behavioral Change, and Design. Working together on sustainable solutions to improve life in cities for over 10 years they have also raised over $100M in venture capital from reputable investors like Emerson Collective, Reid Hoffman and Eric Chen. Ramiro and Ryan are co-founders of a MIT spin-off autonomous vehicle technology company. Ramiro is the recipient of the prestigious Harvard University Loeb Fellowship and a Scholar at the MIT Media Lab. Additionally he was the director of the Innovation Lab at Miami Dade College and has published extensively about Technology, Urban Design, Social Innovation, Photography, Art, Sports and Anthropology. He is the creator and Director of the docuseries Miami Now, to be released in March 2024.
Dr. Ryan Chin is Co-Founder & COO of TRAM Global – a technology company that enables companies to automatically compute and verify carbon measurements and reductions due to Scope 3 mobility emissions. TRAM’s carbon methodology has been validated by AENOR, a leading, independent certification body based in the EU. Ryan spent 18 years at MIT inventing the concept of Smart Cities and developing the CityCar — a foldable, electric, shared, two-passenger vehicle w/ General Motors and the Architect Frank O. Gehry. Time Magazine named the CityCar the “Automotive Invention of the Year” in 2007. Ryan has advised industry and government agencies. He was a member of the White House PCAST’s (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) working group in 2015 on “Technology and the Future of Cities.” Ryan received at MIT his Ph.D. and M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences and a M.Arch in Architecture.
Jiordana is a clinical nutritionist & hypnotist with a degree in behavioural psychology. After overcoming obesity by recovering her own relationship to food, Jiordana helps woman all over the world let go of overeating, increase confidence and release the excess weight without dieting. Jiordana is the co-author of “Reversible Journal”, a book written with Dr. Mohammed Abrahim on reversing obesity and its related disorders, and the sole author of “The Mind-Full Journal”, a journal for behaviour change. Jiordana firmly believes in the brain-body connection and helps clients to recover their mental and physical health through the use of clinical nutrition, hypnotherapy and the psychology of eating.
After completing his PhD in philosophy at McGill, Oran has been teaching as a course lecturer at McGill and at Dawson College. His main work in recent years has been on expanding the scope of what is taught in undergraduate philosophy courses to include non-Western philosophical traditions.