Ben Almond SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CANADA REGIONAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, JACOBS/CH2M
Ben leads the Canada Region for the Buildings & Infrastructure Americas Business Unit. Formerly, Ben was the Canadian Regional Managing Director for CH2M leading a team of 4,000 people across Canada and managing annual revenues of $1 billion. Prior to this role, Ben served as regional business group manager for CH2M's water business in Canada, as well as other leadership roles in CH2M's energy and industrial markets.
Before joining CH2M, Ben served in various program- and project-management posts with Suncor Energy and Imperial Oil. Ben was recently named one of Canada's Top 40 Leaders Under 40, which is a country-wide awards program that identifies outstanding young achievers in Canadian business, visionaries and innovators changing the way things are done. Ben B.S., Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Manitoba. Ben is a Caribbean Canadian Emerging Leaders' Dialogues 2011 alum.
Paula Amos PARTNER, INDIGENOUS WORX
Paula is of Hesquiaht and Squamish Nation descent, born and raised in the Nuu-chah-nulth territory on Vancouver Island. She has worked in leadership roles in the tourism industry for 20+ years. She has worked for the Indigenous Tourism Association of BC for the past 17 years and has been part of the industry's growth and success by driving results with strategies and marketing that work. Her extensive business development experience includes business planning, market research and market plans for Indigenous communities and businesses in every corner of the province.
She sat on the steering committee for the groundbreaking Blueprint Strategy for Aboriginal tourism in British Columbia. The Blueprint was the catalyst for developing Indigenous tourism in BC, and since its launch in 2006, the industry has grown by over 80 percent. Paula was also involved with the 2010 Aboriginal Tourism Working Group, in partnership with the 2010 Bid Corporation. Paula is an alum of the 2017 Emerging Leaders for Sustainable Community Development program.
Mark Berlin PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
A graduate of the University of Toronto (BA) ; University of Ottawa, (LL.B) ; and Cambridge University (M.Phil.), Mark L. Berlin was appointed as a Professor of Practice at ISID in 2012. He brings to McGill a wealth of experience in academia and government practice. For 25 years he was Adjunct Professor in the Law Faculty at the University of Ottawa and authored various articles and co-published "Human Rights in Canada" (Buttersworth). At the same time, he worked for the Department of Justice. Over the course of his career at Justice he had the good fortune to directly serve as legal and policy counsel to 4 Attorneys General; Senior Counsel - Criminal Law Policy; was Senior General Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General; Special Advisor on the Middle East to the Minister of Justice and Director General of International Legal Programmes.
His focus was on legal technical assistance and institutional capacity building in failed and fragile states establishing justice sector reforms in diverse areas such as Sudan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and the Palestinian Authority to name a few. He was also appointed in 2012 to a 3 year term on the Law Commission of Ontario and continues to serve on various executive committees for both the Ontario and Canadian Bar Association.
Cheryl Brooks PRESIDENT, INDIGENUITY CONSULTING GROUP
Cheryl Brooks, an aboriginal woman from Sts'ailes, a Sto:lo community from the Fraser Valley of British Columbia has been the President of Indigenuity Consulting Group since 2000. Prior to this she worked in aboriginal commu¬nities and at a senior level in the federal government before founding BC Hydro's internationally known Aboriginal Relations Program. She was the only aboriginal woman to achieve Associate Deputy Minister status with the BC Government in its Ministry of Energy and Mines. As an Associate Professor at Royal Roads University she helped develop and taught in the Indigenous/ corporate relations program, she also developed and taught change management and leadership programs in the Justice Institute's Aboriginal Leadership Program.
Cheryl is the Vice Chair of the First Nations Safety Council, a director of the Northwest Indigenous Council and formerly served terms as President of the Provincial and National Association of Native Friendship Centres. Mrs. Brooks has published works including the book. "In Celebration of Our Survival; the First Nations of BC" and "Rights, Risk & Respect, a First Nations Perspective".
Agnes Di Leonardi CM PRESIDENT, EMERGING LEADERS' DIALOGUES CANADA
Agnes is an alumna of the 1998 Canadian Duke of Edinburgh Study Conference and the current President of the Emerging Leaders' Dialogues Canada.
Agnes Di Leonardi is an executive who has spent most of her career in the automotive industry assuming increasing levels of leadership responsibility. Agnes has a reputation for adding value to the business and for taking initiative. She was most recently General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and a board director of Mazda Canada Inc. with overall responsibility for legal and corporate governance compliance matters. Prior to joining Mazda Canada Inc., she was with Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited where she held several executive positions including Vice President Legal, Ford Credit Canada Limited and Vice President Law, Premier Automotive Group (Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover Canada and Volvo Canada).
In June 2018, Agnes was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in recognition of her leadership in the automotive industry and for her commitment to mentoring and supporting Canadian women leaders through her work with the International Women's Forum of Canada, a global organization with a mission to advance women's leadership.
In 2016, Agnes was recognized as one of Canada's most powerful GCs by The Legal 500 Canada GC Powerlist.
William Good Tseskinakhen AY LELUM - THE GOOD HOUSE OF DESIGN
William Good is from the Hereditary Chief family of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, in Nanaimo, B.C. He is the Master Carver and Cultural Historian responsible for revitalizing the traditional Coast Salish Snuneymuxw art form. He has spent decades researching this almost extinct visual language of the Coast Salish people, and has spent years producing art and teaching it to students, as well as sharing it with the community. In the height of his career, he worked in many media, including hand-pulled limited-edition silk screens, painting, gold and silver jewellery, art restoration, garment manufacturing and carving-plaques, panels, steam bent boxes and totem poles.
In his retirement years, he continues to carve master works and he collaborates with his family to create garment designs for Ay Lelum-The Good House of Design with his daughters, Sophia and Aunalee, and with their mother, artist, Sandra Moorhouse-Good. Throughout this, he has also passed the traditional art form on to his son, accomplished artist and carver, W. Joel Good, and they spend their days carving side by side. William Good was awarded the prestigious City of Nanaimo Culture and Heritage Award, "Honor in Culture" for 2018.
Prof. Timothy Hodges PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Timothy Hodges joined ISID in 2015 as Professor of Practice focusing on the application of strategic foresight methodologies in global affairs and on the negotiation and implementation of international sustainable development treaties. A principal focus of his research at ISID is understanding how indigenous communities, in both the South and the North, participate in and benefit from the implementing international sustainable development treaties. Currently, he is reviewing the experience of Indigenous Peoples representatives in both negotiating the Nagoya Protocol on genetic resources and traditional knowledge and developing case studies in Indigenous community implementation of the Protocol.
Hodges aims to produce pragmatic results in the form of best practices and lessons learned -- which he hopes will in turn support reconciliation in Canada. Concurrently, Hodges is Adjunct Professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Science at the TransDisciplinary University (TDU) in Bangalore -- where he is developing a course on global sustainable development treaties for TDU's new M.Sc. in Conservation Futures. Hodges is a former career Canadian diplomat and the immediate past President of the Canadian Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO). He brings to ISID over thirty-five years of experience in a wide range of international forums, including within the United Nations System, the G8, World Trade Organization, APEC, OECD, Organization of American States, NAFTA, and the Arctic Council.
Joanne Hughes EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EMERGING LEADERS' DIALOGUES CANADA
Joanne Hughes is an innovative leader of non-profit organizations with twenty years of experience in organizational development, project implementation, revenue diversification and stakeholder partnerships.
As the Executive Director of Emerging Leaders' Dialogues Canada, she is providing executive direction in the areas of donor stewardship, partnership development, brand and marketing capitalization, and in the augmentation of the alumni program. Joanne is also a Director on the Association of Emerging Leaders' Dialogues.
Prior to ELD Canada, Joanne managed the operational requirements of The Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management, and liaised between foreign national ministries, the private sector, civil service organizations and donor agencies, in the planning and implementation of projects on public administration across the Commonwealth. She is also well known in Ottawa for being the creator and Producer of the Ottawa Lumière Festival, which was voted one of the summer's best festivals by the National Post.
