
Dave Keystone
(He/him), Producer, Host, davekeystone.com, Development Lead, Shelter Movers
Dave Keystone is an award winning television host, producer, and writer. Best known as the host and co-creator of the CBC series Small Talk where he seeks life advice from kids, for which he won the 2018 Canadian Screen Award for Best Host, nominated again in 2019.
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Dave is the creator, producer and host of several other hit series, including: Kids On (recently acquired by CBS Studios for sitcom production), where he turns to kids for advice on all things love, dating, and relationships; Who We Are – a talk-show designed to inspire social consciousness through candid conversations – for which he won the 2018 International Academy of Web Television Award for Best Host and Best Pre-Recorded Hosted Series; Sex On The Street TV – a streeter-style interview program exceeding half a million views in its first week featured on Funny or Die; and travel series’ Phil & Dave Do and Dave Does, following his comedic travel adventures.
In addition to hosting Corus Entertainment’s cooking competition series Cook’d on YTV, Dave is also a well-established Snapchat influencer nominated for the 2017 Shorty Award for Snapchatter of the Year, and the 2016 Ghosty Award for Snapchat Storyteller of the Year. He was the first person ever invited to takeover College Humor’s Snapchat account, and has acted as brand ambassador for a number of travel brands, including: WOW Air, Hostelworld, Busabout, Trip Advisor, and more.
In film, Dave co-produced the iTunes chart-topping documentary The Sheik, profiling the life of ex-professional wrestler the Iron Sheik – debuting at the 2014 Hot Docs Film Festival and voted into the festival’s Audience Top 20 Picks.
Alongside his work in entertainment, Dave is co-founder of Keepsake Video Inc. – a production company specializing in creating personal profile videos that preserve people’s stories for future generations.
Additional credits include: Dave’s stand-up comedy at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, Caroline’s on Broadway in New York, and Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto; as well as live storytelling performances at theatres across North America.
Connect with Dave on all social channels: @DaveKeystone

Nadia Batara
MHA, Program Lead, Healthcare Excellence Canada
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Biography coming soon…

Carolyn Hoffman
CEO, Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada
Carolyn Hoffman, RN BScN MN, is the CEO of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada. A national, independent, and not-for-profit organization that purposefully partners with organizations, practitioners, consumers, and caregivers to advance medication safety in all healthcare settings.
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Carolyn’s career began as a registered nurse in critical care and emergency department settings then transitioned to senior leadership positions in quality, risk, and patient safety roles in regional, provincial and national organizations. Highlights include her work at the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, working to launch the Safer Healthcare Now! Canadian Campaign, and more recently as the Senior Vice-President, Quality & Healthcare Improvement for Alberta Health Services, the largest health region in Canada.
Carolyn is co-author of a number of patient safety publications, including the
Tool for the Concise Analysis of Patient Safety Incidents and the Canadian Incident Analysis Framework.

Geoff Wilson
MPA, Director, Public Engagement & Community Health Board Support, Nova Scotia Health Authority, IAP2 Canada
Geoff Wilson is Director of Public Engagement and Community Health Board Support for Nova Scotia Health, a position he has held since 2015. In his role, Geoff is responsible for managing the patient and public engagement, including supporting the work of 37 volunteer-led community advisory boards across Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia Health’s Public Engagement team was awarded Organization of the Year for its leading engagement work by the International Association for Public Participation in 2020.
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Geoff began his career at the House of Commons in Ottawa as a legislative and research assistant where he first developed his interest in public service and public affairs. He has worked in a number of communications roles in the public and not-for-profit sectors. He joined Capital Health in 2002 as a senior communications advisor. From 2007 to 2015 he led efforts to build the patient and public engagement program and create an engagement culture within Capital Health. Through his leadership, Capital Health won two international awards for their engagement work (2008 and 2012).
He has participated on two national collaborative CIHR-funded research projects led by Dr. Julia Abelson (McMaster University). The first project led to the development of the Patient and Public Engagement Evaluation Tool (PPEET) (Abelson et al. Health Expectations (2015) doi: 10.1111/hex.12378). This work won the IAP2 Canada Research Award in 2014. The second project was the Canadian Patient Partner Study (Abelson et al. BMJ Open (2022) http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061465).
Active in both his local and professional communities, Geoff served four years on the board of directors of the International Association for Public Participation, including two years as international president and two years on the IAP2 Canada Board. He has been a guest speaker and presenter at both national and international conferences on public engagement and communications. Geoff has volunteered on the board of the Health Care Public Relations Association of Canada, the Halifax Community Health Board, on local and municipal advocacy and advisory committees, and with Engage NS.
He holds Bachelor of Arts (English Literature, honours) and Masters of Public Administration (Management) degrees from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Dennis Wakabayashi
CX Industry influencer, Chief Collaboration Officer, Team Wakabayashi
Dennis Wakabayashi, “The Global Voice of CX,” is a renowned expert in Customer Experience, social media, and digital marketing. He has worked with top brands including AT&T, McDonald’s, Wells Fargo, and Fedex to develop successful customer experience strategies. With over three decades of experience, Dennis is dedicated to improving customer relationships and sharing his knowledge through speaking and teaching.

Wendy Arnott
Master Trainer, Crucial Learning
Principal Consultant, Liminal Edge Consulting & Coaching
Wendy Arnott is a trauma-informed consultant, coach & emergent strategy facilitator who works in alignment with equity-centered design. She is committed to holding space for change where imperfect humans can learn together to innovate and become a community as they do so. Since everything happens in conversations between human beings in relationship with each other, she loves helping organizations and teams design and hold conversations for “what’s next”.
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A master trainer in Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue with Crucial Learning for the past 11 years – and all of their core content – she integrates her culture as strategy and leadership background in healthcare & dispute resolution system design in her facilitation of learning experiences. She is a student of movement and somatic embodiment practices.

Shrikant Kelkar
Lean Trainer and Consultant, Leading Edge Group
Shrikant Kelkar is a Lean consultant, qualified at the Black Belt level, with over 12 years’ experience working in Canada, the Middle East, Europe and India. Shrikant’s facilitation work has involved using various Lean tools and change management techniques on improvement initiatives across multiple sectors. He has led some of the largest hospitals in Ontario through Lean value stream mapping and standardizing clinical processes.
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A mechanical engineer and a co-active life coach, Shrikant has coached teams on strategy development and process improvement using Lean methodologies. He also has experience in helping to build high performing teams at the front line.
Has successfully led multiple improvement initiatives across the health sector. The following are examples:
- Emergency department (ED) and internal medicine Lean value stream facilitation through:
- Redesigning core processes to maximize efficiency and reduce redundant steps and excessive travel by staff
- Coaching senior leaders in goal setting and establishing appropriate metrics aligned to strategy
- Leading an interprofessional team, comprised of ED and EMS staff, to improve offload and triage processes
- Helping launch huddles and visual boards to measure against quality improvement objectives
- Helping teams set up visual management and standard work for pressure ulcer prevention as well as falls prevention processes
- Introducing a 2-bin system to minimize inventory waste and developing standard work for the new inventory management process
- Led an interprofessional team through standardizing resus room procedures in the ED
- Coaching, facilitation and consulting support to establish a continuous improvement culture in an intensive care unit (ICU)
- Facilitated a senior leadership team through access and flow transformation:
- Setting up visual management to see hospital flow at a glance
- Helping set up structured management tools to predict surgical flows 24 hours in advance
- Facilitated multiple inpatient units through clean supply room inventory 5S

Anita Brisson
CLSSBB, PMP, Senior Consultant / Owner, Lumen Technology Inc.
Anita moved to North Bay in 2008 for the love of the city and has been a community contributor ever since. Anita is a Project Management Professional (PMP) and a Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. She has over 20 years’ experience in project management, continuous quality improvements, financial analysis, managing new business projects, executing contracts and team development across both the public sector and private corporations. She has a unique talent for breaking problems down into small manageable tasks, identifying goals and measuring performance. Her strong leadership skills bring cohesiveness, clarity, and a mutual sense of purpose to any multi-discipline team, which is imperative for project success.

Jean L. Eaton
Privacy Consultant, Health Information Management, Information Managers
Jean L. Eaton (BA Admin (Healthcare) CHIM CC) is a leading expert in privacy management and information privacy in healthcare settings. Since founding her company Information Managers in 2014, she has worked with clinics, hospitals, health authorities, and agencies across Canada, helping them improve their information protection practices and improve privacy compliance. In addition to her work as a privacy trainer and consultant, she also hosts the podcast Practice Management Nuggets for Your Healthcare Practice.
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Jean’s career started as a receptionist in a busy family clinic, giving Jean first-hand insight into the privacy challenges people in many healthcare setting face. As a Certified Health Information Management professional and Director of Health Records in hospitals in Canada, she understands inter-disciplinary teams and integrated records management. Since creating Information Managers, she has helped thousands of healthcare professionals and clinic employees learn every day solutions for properly handling people’s most sensitive information.

Ivan Wanis Ruiz
Public Speaking Lab
Here are some fun facts about Ivan:
* He is a top-rated instructor on Coursera with over 100,000 learners
* He is a top-rated instructor on Udemy with over 50,000 students
* He was the official host for FIFA 2022, Invictus Games 2017 & PanAm Games 2015
* The largest crowd he ever spoke in front of was 50,000
* He wrote a book called “End Boring”
* He can teach you how to salsa dance
You can find out more about Ivan at https://www.instagram.com/publicspeakinglab/

Toni White-Goodridge
MEd, AIT, BA, IT Education Consultant & Trainer Learning Team, IWK Health Centre
Toni White-Goodridge has masters degree in education with a focus in lifelong learning specializing in Information Technology education. She is a LEADS certified specialist and has extensive Microsoft professional certifications. Her years working in healthcare IT education have shaped her talents as an enthusiastic educator, e-learning content creator and transformational learning facilitator who helps teams reshape work processes through IT education. Toni lives in beautiful Nova Scotia.

Dave Paradi
Owner, ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com
Dave Paradi has been recognized by the media and his clients as a presentation expert. He has authored ten books on effective PowerPoint presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for his contributions to the PowerPoint, Excel, and Teams communities.
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His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 3.5 million times and liked over 14,000 times on YouTube. He is a highly rated conference speaker and has delivered more than 500 customized training sessions around the world in the last 23 years.
Dave served five years as a National Director of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) and was awarded the CAPS President’s Award for Distinguished Service in 2003. He holds an MBA from The Amos Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (1991) and a B.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from University of Toronto (1987). In 1998, he earned accreditation from York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in Facilitation and graduated from the Dale Carnegie Course.
Dave’s ideas and content are used by leading universities as resources for their students and staff. Here are some of the institutions that use Dave’s content.

Jennifer Mak
Human Rights and Equity Strategist
Jennifer holds a Master of Arts in Labour Studies from McMaster University with a research specialization in workplace harassment. Jennifer uses an intersectional equity framework to approach and undertake her work. At the systemic level, this framework is used to help organizations embed human rights and equity into their policies, procedures, practices, processes, and programs, eliminate workplace harassment, discrimination, and violence, and, ultimately, abolish systemic barriers that are pervasive within all organizations and institutions.
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In her various capacities, including human rights and equity education, equity policy development, and workplace human rights complaints and resolution, Jennifer has worked in and with both public and private sector organizations, such as municipal, provincial, and federal levels of government, post-secondary institutions, non-profit agencies, and private firms, in both unionized and non-unionized environments.
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