2023 Speakers
Below are the speakers and performers of the TEDxMcGill event held on January 22nd, 2023
Nancy Dewar
Nancy Dewar is a sought-after keynote speaker who engages audiences internationally through her experience and warm style. She is a Certified Executive Leadership Coach, PCC and holds a Master of Education in Adult Learning and is a Certified Sales Professional, CSP.
Nancy has held several senior level positions and led several corporate coaching and learning initiatives. She specializes in leadership development, culture transformation, change management, motivation and mindfulness and has industry experience to include hospitality, automotive, consumer packaged goods, retail, and pharmaceutical. She is certified in six different assessment tools.
Nancy’s passion is to help inspire others to their next level and is the founder of Inspiring You Events and runs a Podcast focused on Elevating Women in Leadership. She has written two books and is currently responsible for Mentor Coaching other Executive Coaches around the globe.
Karim Atassi
Karim is an award-winning medical student best recognized for his efforts in promoting unity. He is the recipient of the prestigious Dave Williams Leadership Award for his initiatives on promoting harmony and understanding between Muslims, Christians, and Jews at McGill. He achieved this upon establishing the Arab Student Network (ASN), a McGill service that centralizes resources from the Arab community whilst promoting an inclusive interpretation and diverse representation of Middle Eastern & North African culture. ASN was nominated as a finalist for the SSMU Service of the Year Award and holds the title of the largest Arab student-run cultural organization in Canada. Karim was also nominated for the McGill Equity & Community Building Award and the SSMU Roma Nadeem Memorial Award. Moreover, Atassi is heavily involved in advocacy. At McGill, Karim drafted motions that provided McGill students with limitless access to the student wellness services of Grammarly, Udemy and Calm. At the federal level, Karim sat on the Consultation Committee of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students to reform policies on the topic of housing & homelessness. At the global stage, Karim was 1 of 47 delegates representing Canada in the G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance, where he advised governments on policies that harbor peace and sustainability through entrepreneurship. Karim works alongside Canada’s largest innovation ecosystem builders to help entrepreneurs find the resources they need. Currently, Atassi is the co-founder of Zatiq, a start-up helping merchants accept credit card payments in cash-based economies through affordable pocket-sized point of sale system machines.
Ruoqi Wang
Ruoqi Wang is a strong advocate for multiple perspective thinking with a focus on the interrelation between social fabric and the built environment. She is the director of Rewrite Your Narrative, an observer at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) and is currently in pursuit of an architectural degree at McGill University. Having studied across continents, she has developed a global mindset, granting her the Radoslav Zuk Travel Award in Architecture. She practices multiple perspective thinking in problem-solving and has a keen interest in global affairs and leadership. With a background in engineering and an attentiveness in social issues, she is passionate about the intertwining relationship between architectural design, cultural exchange, and social phenomena. She hopes to share the benefits of bridging cultures and disciplines to the public, through the power of speech.
Anna-Maria Tosco
Anna-Maria Tosco is a psychologist and tenured psychology lecturer of over 15 years. She has two graduate degrees in psychology and has worked in a variety of Canadian provinces. She’s been involved with health care institutions, community organizations and scholastic settings and today, she is most excited about her new self-appointed mandate: Making psychological concepts more mainstream to decrease stigma and encourage help-seeking. She hopes to show the general public that there are normalizing and approachable explanations behind our psychological schtick. The changes brought on in 2020 led to the undertaking of her new mandate with the help of major media outlets, often appearing as a guest psychologist on some of Canada’s most popular news and talk shows. Today, she is grateful to be delivering an important message on the TEDx stage – a message that is vital to her, both professionally and personally, in her life as a psychologist, mom, and woman.
Jason Dellatolla
What if we can repurpose a medium that over 3 billion people routinely engage with to solve the leading cause of disability worldwide? With a vision to do just that, Jason is a Ph.D. candidate researching and developing an "educational" video game for depression. As someone who has been navigating depression for over a decade, Jason is acutely aware of its wide range of onerous, shackling, and compounding symptoms. As someone with over 25 years of gaming experience, Jason also understands the extent to which videogames can provide people with an escape from their harsh reality. According to recent research, videogames can allow players to learn and practice depression-management skills in a safe, digital environment. By sharing personal stories of what it can feel like to live with depression—through its peaks and valleys—Jason wants to connect with those with lived experience—to make them feel a little bit less alone on their path through the thick, dark fog that is Depression.
Ben Harrison
Ben Harrison is a Cambridge educated physicist turned generalist. He has innovated across multiple domains, including medical imaging, aerospace, and nanotechnology. Now, he is focused on pushing the boundaries of Human Light Interaction. He has 16 patents, with another 50 pending.
Sophie Arseneault
Sophie Arseneault is a long-standing advocate for health equity. Serving as a Board Director for Fòs Feminista's International Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice, she supports youth-led approaches to regressive policies impeding on the health and well-being of vulnerable communities. In this capacity, Sophie has identified disparities in policy and programming - addressing inequities through the WHO's Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health. Sophie has previously served as a consultant for the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children's Health, Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning, and the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises; and currently advises UNICEF, UNAIDS, UNFPA, and UNDP on best practices to enable the scaling of youth-led approaches in the global HIV/AIDS response in regions at risk of being left behind
Sharon Gai
Sharon Gai currently serves as General Manager at Pattern, an unicorn ecomtech company. She is a China-born Canadian who has 10+ years in ecommerce, digital marketing and branding. She was selected into Jack Ma’s Global Leaders Program with a 0.3% acceptance rate. In her tenure at Alibaba, she has advised large to emerging internet-viral brands in crafting their digital marketing and online e-commerce strategy in China. She has been the keynote speaker at Singularity University, UBS, Shoptalk, Ecomworld, Etail, and Ecommerce Asia with over 40,000 attendees as well as the presenter to governments and heads of states on the developments of the tech industry in China. She is the author of the book, Ecommerce Reimagined: what we can learn in retail and ecommerce from China. Sharon has an Honors Bachelor’s degree in International Development from McGill and a Masters in Information Management from Columbia University.
Felicia Gisondi
Felicia Gisondi is currently the Executive Director and Founder of Sex and Self. Felicia holds a bachelor’s in education and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Psychiatry at McGill University. At just nineteen years old, Felicia created the organization that she did not know she needed growing up, and unknowingly becoming a trailblazer in the Sexual and Reproductive health industry. Felicia founded Sex and Self in 2019 with the support of the Mary H. Brown Endowment Fund at McGill University after recognizing a disproportionate disparity in comprehensive and inclusive sexuality education for individuals regarding their sexual health and bodily autonomy on college campuses and in schools. In just three years, Felicia has expanded the organization to 10000+ individuals aged between 6-24 by tackling the problem at its root. Sex and Self and all affiliated initiatives aim to provide a safe space for individuals who have not previously had the opportunity to reclaim or engage positively with their own sexual narrative.
Andrei Adam
Andrei is a third-year McGill undergraduate studying Economics and Finance. He is also the Co-President of Canada's largest Gen Z consulting firm, JED Consulting. Working for some of Canada's largest and most innovative companies, JED delivers the strategies, marketing and consumer insights that shapes how corporate Canada engages with the 16-24-year-old demographic. Prior to this role, Andrei founded one of largest peer-tutoring companies in the Greater Toronto Area and spearheaded the advocacy for various youth-centric pieces of legislation. In his talk, Andrei will seek to provide a new perspective on a challenge countless organizations have faced since the COVID-19 pandemic: retaining their young employees. Leveraging the latest JED research and his personal experiences, Andrei will provide actionable insights relevant to any organization that employs – or is looking to employ – young talent.
Evelisa Genova
Evelisa has over 10 years of experience working in DEIB as a strategist in complicated and tense environments. She is currently the National Director of Diversity Equity and Inclusion for Scouts Canada, leading enterprise-wide culture change, developing the first DEI strategy + embedded/integration across all functions of the organization impacting over 20,000 youth, and 40,000 members total. She also happens to be a painter.
Given there continue to be high rates of resistance and fear to Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives, companies and leaders can draw upon our long-standing storytelling tool - the arts - to assist in their inclusion journey. The arts have been researched to increase a sense of belonging, building trust, acceptance, and social inclusion across diverse groups and cultures - some of the very indicators for our Inclusion work. She wants the audience to come away inspired to consider new methods, and have a sense of joy around our complex and critical DEIB work on this pale blue dot - free to be our excellent selves.
Joseph Boonen
Dreamy, poetic and daring, Joseph Boonen draws his musical inspiration from French folklore as well as from modern and techno waves. A lover of nature, Joseph offers us committed music, rich in sounds and words, a soft and inviting universe.
Mahshad Nadalian and Farzad Milani
Farzad Milani is a music producer, accordion player, and researcher based in Montreal. He is finishing his second year at Schulich School of music where he is majoring in a music theory program. His area of speciality is in Persian-Arabic-Turkish modal system and maqam/dastgah musical culture. Currently, he is working on his thesis about the Persian microtonal seventeen-tone system.
Mahshad Nadalian is a musician and Oboe player. She is in her master's studies in Oboe performance at Schulich school of music. She graduated from the University of Art, Tehran, Iran. Currently, she is working on her final recital with Iranian composers writing pieces for the Oboe.
For our performance, by applying some re-tuning and articulation techniques on accordion and oboe and using melodic figures from the modal collection of Persian traditional music, we will demonstrate the distinguished feeling of the melodies outside the scope of western classical music and the twelve-tone system.