Cyber Summit 2020 Speakers

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of young adult novels like PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London and is pictured here in his office.

Kate Darling

Researcher, MIT Media Lab

Dr. Kate Darling is a leading expert in Robot Ethics. She’s a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, where she investigates social robotics and conducts experimental studies on human-robot interaction. Kate explores the emotional connection between people and life-like machines, seeking to influence technology design and policy direction. Her writing and research anticipate difficult questions that lawmakers, engineers, and the wider public will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades.

Cory Doctorow

Author, Digital Rights Activist

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. His latest book is Attack Surface, a standalone adult sequel to Little Brother. He is also the author of How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, a non-fiction about conspiracies and monopolies; and of Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction for adults. He maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

SPEAKERS & Workshop Leaders

Jim Ghadbane

President and CEO, CANARIE

Jim Ghadbane was appointed President and CEO of CANARIE in 2013, after joining the organization as Chief Technology Officer in 2010. Jim’s leadership, technical expertise, and focus on stakeholder needs support an increased impact and relevance of CANARIE programs and services in Canada’s public and private sectors.

Nationally, Jim works to strengthen the governance, collaborative operation, and evolution of Canada’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). Internationally, Jim works with global colleagues on the NREN CEO Forum to guide the evolution of the Global Research and Education Network.

Todd Hirsch

Vice President and Chief Economist, ATB Financial

Todd Hirsch is the Vice President and Chief Economist for ATB Financial. He holds degrees in economics from the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary. For over 20 years, he’s worked as an economist at numerous organizations including the Canada West Foundation and the Bank of Canada.

He’s also the author of three books. His latest, “Spiders in Space: Successfully Adapting to Unwanted Change,” was released in 2017. Todd is a strong advocate in the arts and culture community. He is the board chair of the Calgary Arts Academy, and is on the boards of the Glenbow Museum and the Alberta Ballet.

Katina Papulkas

Education Strategist, Dell

Katina is an experienced educator with a background in teaching, online learning, educational leadership, assessment and educational technology. Katina was an elementary teacher, a central instructional leader who designed and implemented initiatives around the effective integration of technology into curriculum, and a middle school administrator at the Toronto District School Board. Most recently, she was the Director of Educational Partnerships at Television Ontario (TVO) where she focused on the design and development of digital learning resources. Katina holds a Master’s Degree in Education and Technology from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

Brandy Payne

Workplace Mental Health Consultant

Brandy Payne is a Workplace Mental Health Consultant who works with leaders teams to build mental health at work so their teams are resilient, productive and able to do great work. Her main area of focus is Burnout Prevention for leaders and teams. She is a former Associate Minister of Health in Alberta (responsible for Mental Health & Substance Use), and a CMHA-Certified Psychological Health & Safety Advisor.

Rick Klumpenhouwer

Partner, Cenera

A partner with Cenera, Rick is a Privacy and Information Governance expert with over 30 years of experience in both the public and private sectors. His energetic and upbeat style inspires action, while his expertise and knowledge of privacy legislation and its application in the health sector creates positive change. Rick is a skilled investigator and evaluator, with experience in both breach and workplace investigations. He is known for his practical, creative and engaging approach that makes complex information, concepts and ideas accessible.

Helen Wetherley Knight

Principal and CIO, Helen Knight Consulting

Helen Knight fights poverty with technology. With over 20 year’s experience as a visionary and strategist, Helen leads award-winning significant and meaningful technology transformations at nonprofits across Canada. Extensive work experience and an unending thirst for knowledge (MBA, PMP, Prosci) are the backbone of her ability to influence, design, solve problems, and implement effective strategic change. Helen leads organizations large and small to realize the promise of technology. In her spare time, Helen is a new board member of Cybera, runs TechforSocialGood.ca as a support hub for nonprofits wanting to learn better ways to work, and is the President of the Calgary Chapter of the CIO Association of Canada.

Lindsay Sill

COO & Interim ED, Quantum Algorithms Institute

Prior to over a decade-long career at WestGrid / Compute Canada, Lindsay worked as a Laboratory Manager in the Department of Medicine for the University of Calgary where she did research on gene therapy and immunology, which eventually led to a publication in Nature. Lindsay was also an Advisory Board member of the first international and Canadian chapter of the non-profit organization Women in HPC, which works to improve the gender balance in advanced research computing. She serves as a National and Global Ambassador for the Universal Women's Network, is a member of the CIRA Nominations Committee, and is on the Board of Directors for the Kelowna Ultimate Players society, as ultimate frisbee is one of her many passions

Art Exner

Associate Vice-President (Information Services), University of Regina

Art Exner is responsible for IT infrastructure for the University of Regina, including voice and data networking, desktop provisioning and service, operations, security, and system administration activity. In addition, Art provides support to campus research and instructional computing. A member of the central IT management group, Art actively participates in policy design and implementation.

Jon Strømme

Senior Advisor, Unit – The Norwegian Directorate for ICT and Joint Services in Higher Education and Research

Jon Strømme received an MSc in Computer Science from NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He has worked as a research scientist, and as a developer in Telecom support systems. He has done standardization work for ETSI, ITU and ISO on support issues for mobile communications. From 2002, he worked in the Norwegian NREN Uninett, parts of which were in 2018 merged into Unit – the Norwegian Directorate for ICT and Joint Services in Higher Education & Research. The work at Uninett included supporting the establishment at universities and colleges of Feide, a common IAM solution for the educational sector. He took part in the establishment of national IT security services for education. He has been service coordinator and manager for national services for the educational sector, including technical services, ERP services, and at present digital examinations services.

Bo Wandschneider

CIO, University of Toronto

A respected IT veteran, Bo Wandschneider has spent 30 years in higher education information technology, first at the University of Guelph, then as CIO at Queen’s University and currently as CIO at the University of Toronto. He has a graduate degree in Economics and has worked extensively in the field of Research Data Management.

Bo is actively engaged in many cross institutional projects and currently sits on the CUCCIO Board, as well as the Portage Advisory Committee, Research Data Canada, the CanSSOC Steering Committee, and chairs the Portage Data Repositories Expert Group.

Ravina Anand

COO & Founder, FLIK

Ravina Anand is a social-tech entrepreneur and the COO of FLIK, the first female-identifying apprenticeship portal. In a hyper globalized world, Ravina aims to advance womxn’s economic participation and help womxn from remote and underserved communities. With experience in municipal politics and community advocacy, she promotes diversity by encouraging people to fight injustices and challenge stereotypes. On a global level, Ravina advocates for womxn and creates conversations around the trends and procurement for scaling social innovation situated in inclusivity, diversity, and equity.

An autodidactic polymath, builder, and innovator, Anand is passionate about the intersection of social good and technology. Pursuing an unconventional career path, her myriad of interests in technology, global health governance, and socio political philosophy, has led to a culmination of recognitions including the Diana Award, Top 30 Under 30, and the President’s Medal.

John Krogh

President and CEO, Value Shepherd Inc.

John is President and CEO of Calgary based “Value Shepherd Inc.”

He is a sought-after speaker, trainer and coach with a focus on value optimization. His unique approach to optimizing the value of IT investments involves the coordination of an organization’s value management, business relationship management, and IT service management capabilities.

John has over 25 years of comprehensive experience in these disciplines, and has been sharing this experience across North America since 2007 through executive coaching and mentoring.

Kylie Woods

Founder, Chic Geek

Kylie is passionate about improving gender diversity in technology. She’s the founder of Chic Geek, a Calgary-based non-profit that curates people, content and companies to build an inclusive community where tech-enabled women advance their careers.

Kylie was named Top 40 Under 40 by Avenue Magazine and has been profiled in Metro News as one of "Calgary Heroes." She has also been recognized as a "Need to Know" in Alberta Venture and profiled by the Mount Royal University Summit Magazine in their feature on Women in STEM. Kylie represented Alberta in the prestigious International Visitors Leadership Program hosted by the US Department of State and was a voice for women in STEM on an international stage.

Proud mom of identical twins, Lily and Mae, Kylie brings the lessons learned through her journey as a social entrepreneur into her role as a parent.

Marianne Schroeder

Deputy Director, University of British Columbia & Community Health & Wellbeing, CIC

Marianne currently has two roles at the University of British Columbia. She is responsible for teaching and learning technologies including learning application development, integrations into the ecosystem and analysis of learning data. She also is part of the leadership team of a new public private partnership with AWS, which brings innovation in cloud technology to teaching and learning.

Coral Kennett

Digital Innovation Lead, AWS

Coral Kennett has 17+ years’ experience helping organizations solve challenging business problems with IT solutions. As a part of the AWS Digital Innovation team, Coral works to introduce public sector organizations to Amazon's peculiar customer-centric approach to innovation. Coral joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2017 and is the Digital Innovation Lead
at the Canadian Cloud Innovation Center (CIC). The Canadian CIC is a public-private collaboration between the University of British Columbia and Amazon, which identifies digital transformation challenges that matter to the community and provides subject matter expertise and Amazon’s innovation methodology to find digital solutions. Coral holds a Bachelor Degree in International Business from the University of Victoria, and a Master Degree in Educational Technologies from the University of British Columbia.

Jennifer Schaeffer

Vice-President Information Technology and Chief Information Officer (VPIT and CIO) of Athabasca University (AU)

Schaeffer served at the University of Alberta for seven years, where she was Associate Vice-President of University Digital Strategy in University Relations and while there, co-founded the spin-off Onlea Corporation, now a 6-year old company focused on producing engaging interactive learning experiences for academia, government and industry.

Before joining the post-secondary sector in 2010, Schaeffer spent over a decade working in and leading product development, R&D and customer acquisition strategies in institutional securities and retail banking in financial services firms headquartered in the USA and Canada. Also in the mid-‘90s, she founded and was Executive Editor of one of the first online and virtual news media start-ups, NewsTrolls, Inc. Schaeffer holds a Master of Music degree (’93) from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Music (’91) from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Mark Gaudet

Product and Business Development Manager, CIRA

Mark Gaudet is a product and business development manager at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). In this role, he leads CIRA’s cybersecurity product offerings that are complementary to the core .CA registration service. Mark holds a B.Sc. in Engineering Physics from Queens University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Ottawa. Mark’s extensive experience in DNS management began as one of the founders of a start-up that developed NetID, one of the first enterprise DNS, DHCP and IP address management products. He also sits on the board of directors for the Halifax IXP.