Prof. Robert Forest
job-trotter

Presentation Title: Living your passions... make your dreams come true
E=mc2 or the story of guy who is neither famous nor rich

Bio and Workshop Description: Robert Forest has travelled around the globe and made a tour of labour markets to live out his passions. From Saint-Jacques-de-Montcalm to Ottawa, from Prague to New York, from Las Vegas to Pretoria, from Oslo to Beijing, and in many other cities of the world, he has worked at various jobs. From one anecdote to another, Robert explains his personal interpretation of Albert Einstein’s well-known formula E=mc2, which he employs tenaciously in his quest to live out his passions and his dreams.

André Laperrière
Deputy CEO
The Global Environment Facility (GEF)

Bio: Mr. André Laperrière joined the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in February 2011 as Deputy Chief Executive Officer in Washington D.C., USA. Mr. Laperrière was born in Canada, where he completed graduate studies in Administration and in Industrial Relations.

During his career, Mr. Laperrière has led/managed numerous large scale projects on behalf of Private Corporations and subsequently, within the United Nations. He has extensive work experience in the Americas, Caribbean, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, in particular in developing countries and in conflict/post conflict environments.

Before joining the GEF, Mr. Laperrière was Director General of the Global Trust Council (GTC), a Sweden-based international organization. Prior to GTC, Mr. Laperrière has held various senior management positions in the United Nations Common System. In this context he played a major role in the design and the implementation of major reforms within a number of agencies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.

Among other positions, Mr. Laperrière has been the first Executive Director of the Trust Fund for Victims at the ICC, Director of the Administration and Finance Division in WHO, and Coordinator for all reconstruction and rehabilitation activities under the responsibility of UNICEF in Iraq.

Mr. Laperrière also held senior management positions in Ethiopia, Guinea, Gabon, Haiti, and led numerous missions in neighboring countries.

Prior to his career in the UN, Mr. Laperrière was Director in the International Services of Price Waterhouse. In this position, he led numerous development, privatization, mergers and structural reform projects in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Caribbean.

Mr. Laperrière is an expert in international development. Read More...

Prof. Evan Fraser
University of Guelph

Bio: Evan Fraser is an adjunct professor of geography at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and he is also a Canadian Research Chair (tier II) in Global Human Security. Prior to his appointment at Guelph, Prof. Fraser was a Senior Lecturer at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds in the UK. He has a Ph.D. in Resource Management and Environment Studies from the University of British Columbia.

His is an expert in the following areas: food security under economic globalization and climate change; land use change; integrated socio-economic / crop / climate modelling; farmer behaviour.

Prof. Fraser most current project with the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy focuses dealing with how to capture farmer decision-making processes in integrated crop-climate models and to investigate trade-offs between climate adaptation and mitigation policy with reference to farmers in different parts of the world. Read More...

Prof. Paul Wilson
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Bio: Paul Wilson hails from a farming background near the English Lake District. Having obtained first and higher degrees at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne he went on to take up a lectureship in agricultural management and economics at the University of Nottingham in 1995. Currently Associate Professor and Director of the University of Nottingham’s Rural Business Research Unit, Dr Wilson is also Chief Executive Officer of Rural Business Research, leading the English Farm Business Survey research programme which feeds into UK and EU policy making.

Dr Wilson’s specific research interests include farm efficiency, consumer demand, prices transmission through the food chain, agricultural decision making, sustainable agricultural systems, applied econometrics, agri-environment interactions and bioenergy. The Nottingham agricultural management research group includes PhD students from Asia, Africa, Saudi Arabia and the UK.

He is the University of Nottingham champion for Global Food Security research responses to climatic and environmental change. Much of the research in this area is located in the School of Biosciences which was ranked first in terms of research power in the most the recent English Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) for agriculture, food and veterinary sciences. Dr Wilson also chairs the School of Biosciences Knowledge Transfer and Outreach group focusing upon transferring research information to stakeholders and the community. Read More...

Gail Motsi
CHF Program Manager, Africa

Ms. Motsi is a senior management professional and organizational development specialist with more than 20 years of experience living and working in Southern Africa. She has been involved with the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of numerous development programs as well as with the provision of technical services to a range of organizations. Ms. Motsi is CHF’s Program Manager for Africa, responsible for overseeing CHF’s projects in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ghana. She also provides technical support to CHF’s partners in the region, as well as to CHF’s operations in other continents.

Ms. Motsi began her international development career with CIDA as a policy analyst and planning officer prior to be posted to the Canadian High Commission in Zimbabwe. She stayed on in the region working with KPMG Zimbabwe and Deloitte South Africa managing a number of donor-funded programs for public sector reform, local governance or youth development. During that time, she also provided programming advice to a range of donors as well as strategic planning, organizational design, capacity building, performance management, and funding advice to governments and non-governmental organizations. After returning to Canada, Ms. Motsi focused on policy research and advice related to the governance of complex economic, social and environmental issues.

Ms. Motsi earned a B.A. (Hons.) in political science from Carleton University, an Executive Development Diploma from the University of Zimbabwe and a Masters in Public and Development Management from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Read more...

Samina Khan Executive Director
Sungi Development Foundation

Samina Khan has been working to empower women in Pakistan for thirty years. Samina is one of the founding members of the Sungi Development Foundation www.sungi.org which she started in 1989 with her husband Omar Asghar, to advocate for the rights of the marginalized. Sungi believes in organizing village communities so that they can demand their rights and can be responsible for the development of their region.

In Sungi’s initial stages Samina conducted gender sensitization workshops and helped strengthen the organization. Since then she has gone on to tackle a range of issues including capacity building, market-led development, women’s empowerment, and disaster management and preparedness. She has been the Executive Director of Sungi since 2006.

Sohel Khan
Program Advisor, Climate Change and Disaster Mitigation

Bio: Mr. Khan has joined CHF to lead its climate change, disaster risk reduction and post disaster recovery initiatives. He brings with him 20 years of program development and implementation experience in the areas of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and recovery, emergency response, institutional and community capacity building, livelihood improvement, and human settlement issues.

Prior to joining CHF, Sohel worked for the UNDP, UN-HABITAT, CARE and CECI in South, Central, Southeast and East Asia, mostly in the areas of Climate Change Adaptation, DRR and recovery. In the aftermath of the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, he provided technical assistance to develop early recovery and shelter recovery guidelines for the earthquake recovery program of UN-HABITAT, and participated in UN joint damage and needs assessment activities in earthquake affected areas.

Mr. Khan was also involved in post-tsunami recovery activities in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. His earlier experiences include: UNDP Program Analyst for International Recovery Platform in Japan, UNDP Regional Program Coordinator for South Asia based in Nepal, Project Team Leader for a CIDA funded Climate Change Adaptation program in Vietnam, Program Manager for the World Bank disaster mitigation project for Central Vietnam and Mekong region, and short and long term assignments in various capacities in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, India and Cambodia. Read more...

Wairimu Mungai

Wairimu Mungai has been working for fifteen years on program development in East Africa with an array of organizations. As Founder, Program Director and team leader at WEM Integrated Health Services (WEMIHS) an indigenous NGO in Kenya she has been well acknowledged for innovative and high impact programs that complement the Kenyan national response to reducing the impact of HIV /AIDS and poverty. She has also contributed to the localization of Millennium Development Goals and aiding in the implementation of Kenya’s agriculture transformation policy. Read More...

Jeffrey D. Sachs
Director of The Earth Institute, Columbia University

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015.

Yolanda Banks
Senior Corporate Social Responsibility Advisor
Export Development Canada

Yolanda Banks is the Senior Corporate Social Responsibility Advisor at Export Development Canada (EDC). Her primary responsibilities include management of stakeholder relations with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as coordination of and championing Corporate Social Responsibility practices within the corporation. She serves on the Management Advisory Board of the Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN), and was previously a member of Canada’s delegation to the International Standards Organization (ISO) Working Group on Social Responsibility. {Read More}

Before joining EDC in August 2001, Ms. Banks enjoyed a  career in international development, working for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Her assignments included Latin America, the Caribbean and Cameroon. Prior to that, she served as a Foreign Service Officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. Her career has been international in scope and includes nine years abroad on postings in London (UK), Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) with cross-accreditation to Myanmar (then Burma) and Sudan.

Ms. Banks holds a Master of Arts in International Affairs from Carleton University, and a MBA from the University of British Columbia.
EDC is Canada’s export credit agency, offering innovative commercial solutions to help Canadian exporters and investors expand their international business. EDC’s knowledge and partnerships are used by more than 8,200 Canadian companies and their global customers in up to 200 markets worldwide each year. EDC is financially self-sustaining and a recognized leader in financial reporting and economic analysis.

Dev Aujla
DreamNow

Dev Aujla is the Founder of DreamNow, a charitable organization that works with young people to develop, fund and implement their social change projects. Dev works as a Director of Partnerships for Change.org and has worked for other leading companies that do good and pay well like GOOD Corps. His work and writing have been featured in numerous media outlets including the Globe and Mail, CBC Newsworld and the Huffington Post. Dev is the co-author of Making Good: Finding meaning, money and community in a Changing World (Penguin 2012). Aujla divides his time between Toronto and New York.

Laurence Blandford
A/Director, Partnerships Division | Directeur p.i., Division des Partenariats
Climate Change International | Changement Climatique International
Environment Canada | Environnement Canada

Laurence Blandford is the Director of the Partnerships Division, Climate Change International, Environment Canada, where is he responsible for multilateral climate change engagement and overseeing Canada’s international climate change assistance. Most of his career has been spent at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, including 4 years at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo and advising on policy issues for several G8 Summits, including the 2002 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta. Laurence is originally from Montreal, has a BA in Economics from Concordia and a MBA from INSEAD.

Danuta Swiecicka
Program Officer for Africa
CHF

Ms. Swiecicka holds a Master’s degree in International Development with a specialization in Poverty, Conflict and Reconstruction, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Development and Globalization. Before joining CHF, Ms. Swiecicka worked for a number of years as a Policy Analyst with the Federal Government. ;

David Rhody
Program Manager for Africa
CHF

Mr. Rhody is an international development professional with 30 years of experience in managing complex development and relief programs, mostly in Africa but also in Indonesia and East Timor. Now based at CHF headquarters in Ottawa, he has close to 20 years of field experience -- the most recent assignment being CHF’s Country Director in Ethiopia. There, he was also Project Director for the Partnership for Food Security Program, a major CHF undertaking that promotes long-term livelihoods in drought-affected communities.

Paula Richardson
Manager of Technical Services
CHF

Ms. Richardson combines strong project design, analytical and communication skills with practical experience in project management, monitoring and evaluation, results-based management, social and gender analysis, and research and report writing. She holds a Masters degree in International Conflict Analysis and Conflict Resolution, and an honours undergraduate degree in International Development and Gender.

Jennifer Williams
CEO
La Siembra

Jennifer is the CEO of La Siembra Co-operative, creator of the Camino brand of Fair Trade and organic food products.   Intent on building vibrant sustainable communities in Canada and overseas Camino products support rural livelihoods through sustainable agriculture and value-add process in rural communities.