In lieu of speaker gifts, a donation is being made to Indspire.ca 
Speakers / Panelists
- 26 years as a corporate leader
- 13 years as a leadership, team coach, and business strategist
- Author of two books – Raise Your Visibility & Value: Uncover the Lost Are of Connecting on the Job and Drive Your Career: 9 High-Impact Ways to Take Responsibility for Your Own Success
- Host of the bi-weekly podcast, Be Brave at Work
- Designing and facilitating strategic planning processes
- Working with boards to support effective governance
- Designing and facilitating processes for board orientation, assessment and development
- Leading advocacy initiatives and developing strategic relationships
Dr. Maja Djikic
Dr. Maja Djikic
Dr. Maja Djikic
Maja Djikic, Ph. D. is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Self-Development Laboratory at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. She is a psychologist specializing in the field of personality development. Her work examines means of developing a congruent and flexible self. She has been a post-doctoral fellow with the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking at the Rotman School of Management, and Psychology Department at Harvard University. She has published more than 30 articles and book chapters in the area of personality development. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The Scientific American Mind, and many other media outlets. At Rotman, in addition to teaching students in the MBA programs, she teaches executives in three EMBA programs, Advanced Health Leadership Program, UHN’s Academic Hospital Leadership Academy, Police Leadership Program, and the Sunnybrook Leadership Institute. Outside Rotman, her previous client engagements also include Facebook Inc., McKinsey & Co., Deloitte, Eli Lilly, CSL Behring, Sunlife Financial, RBC, TD, Aird & Berlis LLP, Hyundai Canada, & Microsoft Canada.
Ed Evarts
Ed Evarts
Ed Evarts
Former President of the International Coach Federation of New England
Lorna MacEachern
Lorna MacEachern
Lorna MacEachern
For over 15 years Lorna MacEachern has been helping graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in a wide variety of disciplines to plan their goals and transition into meaningful careers. She has presented at professional conferences and been a guest speaker at numerous academic conferences and meetings. After obtaining her MA in Counselling Psychology, Lorna began her career at McGill University as a Career Counsellor for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. She then joined the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs at Yale University, where she established a new career service for postdocs. Lorna is currently working for Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at McGill, where she is managing myPath: a network of tools and programming to help students and postdocs to create an Individual Development Plan (IDP). She is also the past president of the GPDN (Graduate and Postdoctoral Development Network).
Steve McFadden
Steve McFadden
Steve McFadden
Steven McFadden has been with the CJE NDG for over 10 years. He focuses on finding points of contact with his clients to make connections that will develop into a strong understanding of the individual, their needs and their contributions to the job market. Seeing the job search as an inclusive process allows for dialogue that leads to a professional profile that responds to family, financial and personal attributes. He’s a part of our career development team.
Jaclyn Gaffaney
Jaclyn Gaffaney
Jaclyn Gaffaney
Jaclyn researches and evaluates scaled wellbeing initiatives and social programs to optimize their development and implementation. She specializes in quantitative and qualitative research design and data analysis, process and outcome evaluation, and program design. She has worked with educational institutions, organizations, social programs, and communities. Jaclyn is an advanced PhD student with a co-concentration in positive organizational psychology and research methods & evaluation at Claremont Graduate University. She holds a Master's in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor’s from the University of Southern California. She currently lives in Claremont, California and enjoys hiking, road tripping, trying all of the foods, and nerding out over a good book.
Tina Solvik
Tina Solvik
Tina Solvik
Tina Solvik, Ph.D. is Program Manager of Graduate Career Education at The University of Texas at Austin. She holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She supports graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in professional skill development, career exploration, and job preparation for academia, industry, non-profits, and government. In her role leading curriculum design, delivery, and assessment of graduate courses, workshops, and programs, she focuses on translating principles of pedagogy to career education. She previously worked at the UCSF Office of Career and Professional Development, creating career and professional development programming for life sciences Ph.D.s and postdocs.
Nancy Barrett
Nancy Barrett
Nancy Barrett
Nancy has more than 25 years of experience in industry, government and the association sector. Nancy is a Partner with AMCES and is responsible for leading the association management practice. During the past 20 years, Nancy has provided consulting and leadership services to the not-for-profit sector and has been directly involved in:
Nancy is a graduate of the University of Waterloo, a trained facilitator, a Certified Association Executive (CAE) and an Accredited Director (Acc.Dir.)
Erika Brown
Erika Brown
Erika Brown
Erika Brown is passionate about change management, knowledge mobilization and organizational practice. For the last 20 years she has brought rigorous, project-based perspective to improving the way organizations conceptualize, plan and implement governance and program activity. She provides consulting, executive director and association management services to the not-for-profit sector.
Erika holds a Bachelor of Science internship in human ecology and is a Certified Association Executive. In her recent roles as executive director for the Canadian Association of Provincial Cancer Agencies (CAPCA) and the Canadian Partnership for Quality Radiotherapy (CPQR), Erika led strategic planning, developed targeted programs to enhance health program service delivery and created system-level benchmarking tools.
Erika also uses her collaborative, win-win approach to support a range of clients. She has worked with organizations including the Canadian Association of Radiation Oncology (CARO) and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer to enhance their position as health care system leaders, drive stakeholder awareness and support program uptake.
Erika is an effective communicator and facilitator and is experienced in the development of academic, professional and public communications.
Lisa Barbera
Lisa Barbera
Lisa Barbera
Dr. Barbera is nationally and internationally recognized health services researcher and radiation oncologist. In 2018 she moved from Toronto to Calgary to become the Head of Radiation Oncology at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre and the University of Calgary. Her academic areas of interest include health services research, quality of care and symptom management using large sources of administrative health care data. She has published extensively on health service use at the end of life in cancer patients. She has also completed extensive work using a unique patient reported symptom dataset in Ontario. As the former lead of Cancer Care Ontario’s Patient Reported Outcome Program she has considerable knowledge and experience with using patient reported outcomes in routine care. Her active clinical practice is in breast cancer. She also has years of experience treating gynecologic malignancies.
Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson trained in experimental particle physics before moving into medical physics in 1972, in which he worked in clinical service, research and teaching in diagnostic radiology and radiation therapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital/Institute of Cancer Research, UK, the Queensland Radium Institute and Flinders University Medical Center, Australia, Hamilton Cancer Centre/McMaster University and, since 1993, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre/University of Toronto. His primary research interests for the past 30 years have been in biophotonics and, in the past 10 years also in nanotechnologies, applied to cancer diagnosis, treatment and interventional guidance. He has published over 450 peer-reviewed papers and trained more than 50 graduate students and postdoctoral/clinical fellows. Awards for his work in translational cancer research include the Robert L. Noble Prize of the Canadian Cancer Society and the Britton Change and Michael S. Feld Awards of the International Society for Optics and Photonics and the Optical Society of America, respectively, and he is a Fellow of both organizations. He also holds the Richard Hill Mentorship Award from Princess Margaret Cancer Centre for his roles in post-graduate education and career mentorship.
Vincent LaPointe
Vincent LaPointe
Vincent LaPointe
Experience spans 25+ years in cancer care working as a Radiation Therapist, Medical Physics Assistant and currently as a Systems Architect and Analyst.
Kavita Murthy
Kavita Murthy
Kavita Murthy
Kavita Murthy’s career at the Canada’s nuclear regulator began in 2003, as a project officer/ inspector in a Division responsible for the regulation of Class II Nuclear Facilities, which includes medical accelerators and cyclotrons. This aligned with her training as a medical physicist at McGill University and work experience in PET and radiation therapy. In 2005, Kavita became director of the Division and worked in that role for 11 years. Starting in 2016, Kavita transitioned to a couple of different director roles at the CNSC getting experience in the regulation of other nuclear sectors and facilities such as uranium processing and the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. In 2020, Kavita became the Director General of the Directorate of Nuclear Cycle and Facilities Regulation, with the responsibility for the regulatory oversight of nuclear fuel cycle facilities, uranium mines and mills and nuclear waste management facilities across Canada.
Brenda Hubley
Brenda Hubley
Brenda Hubley
Brenda is a senior healthcare leader who has worked in the health sector for over 20 years, developing a wealth of experience in leadership, project management, and strategic and operational planning in health care service delivery. She is a graduate of Dalhousie University and completed her Radiation Therapy training through the Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation of Nova Scotia. Brenda is a Canadian College of Health Leaders Certified Health Executive who has held significant leadership positions in cancer programs, both at large, academic centres and in rural and community settings. She began her career in Nova Scotia at the Nova Scotia Cancer Centre as a staff Radiation Therapist and eventually as Manager of the RT Department. Since relocating to Alberta, Brenda has held several positions in Alberta Health Services and is currently the Chief Program Officer for Cancer Care Alberta, Alberta Health Services, leading the province’s cancer program. In all circumstances, she has been part of provincial cancer programs and health systems, focusing on partnerships and relationships with key stakeholders in support of the highest quality service achievable. Brenda is a career-long active and proud member of her provincial and national professional associations and is a past member of the CAMRT Board of Directors and CAMRT Vice-President.
Brenda is committed to a high-performing health system that is informed by research and evidence, designed in partnership with patients and families, and is respectful and responsive to the diversity of the populations we serve. She takes every opportunity to emphasize the need for practitioners to reflect on their personal contributions to their profession and, through active participation in their professional associations, ensure that we fulfill our individual and collective responsibility to make certain that we are each practicing at our full scope of practice, expect and support those around us to practice at their full scope, and to collaborate across professional designations to optimize how our care teams meet the needs of patients.
Francois Therriault-Proulx
Francois Therriault-Proulx
Francois Therriault-Proulx
Medical physicist, researcher and entrepreneur, Francois co-founded Medscint in 2018. This startup company, based in Quebec City, is specialized in the development of scintillation dosimetry solutions for radiation-oncology. In 2019, the company won the OSEntreprendre Startup Business Grand Prize in the category “Technological and Technical Innovations”. Prior to co-founding the company, Francois obtained his PhD in Physics from Université Laval (2008-2012) and was an Odyssey postdoctoral Fellow at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (2013-2015). In 2012, he won the « J.R. Cunningham Young Investigator Award » from the COMP as well as a « Best in Physics » prize from AAPM. With an expertise in plastic scintillation dosimetry, he is co-author on 22 scientific publications, one patent, and two book chapters. In addition to his academic resume, Francois has taken part in multiple entrepreneurship training programs in both the US and Canada (NSF I-CORPS, Académie de la Relève Entrepreneuriale, Medical Alley Bootcamp, Rice Ignite Entrepreneurship Trek).
Ananth Ravi
Ananth Ravi
Ananth Ravi
I am a medical physicist by trade, where I started out my career responsible for the growth of the brachytherapy program at Sunnybrook Odette Cancer center. Throughout my academic career as an associate professor in the radiation oncology department at UofT, my main area of research was developing and improving image-guided therapeutics. One of the avenues of exploration was developing a surgical guidance device to improve the precision and patient and provider experience of breast-conserving surgery, culminating in creating MOLLI Surgical. As of 2020, I transitioned full-time to the executive leadership of MOLLI Surgical, where I continue to explore ways to make precision healthcare simpler.
Katharina Sixel
Katharina Sixel
Katharina Sixel
Katharina Sixel received her PhD in Physics from McGill University in 1993. Upon graduation, she joined the Toronto Bayview Regional Cancer Centre (currently Odette Cancer Centre) at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, as a Medical Physics Resident. Whilst at Sunnybrook, she progressed to Medical Physicist and then Senior Medical Physicist.
In 2006, Katharina joined a start up cancer centre, the Durham Regional Cancer Centre (DRCC) at Lakeridge Health in Oshawa, Ontario. As Chief of Medical Physics, she helped build the radiation program which has grown over these past years to a 7 linac facility, with one satellite bunker and over 3000 new radiation patients per year. She is the Radiation Safety Officer and provides leadership to the radiation team as chair of the Radiation Oncology Subcouncil of the Cancer Program.
Katharina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Toronto. She is site coordinator for DRCC in the CAMPEP accredited Physics Residency Program at the University of Toronto.
John French
John French
John French
John has extensive professional experience in the field of clinical health care and health care leadership, working closely with senior executive and physician leadership, and assuming progressively more senior roles and responsibilities for strategy and operations for multiple portfolios in a complex multi-site health care delivery model. As an accomplished leader, John has led a number of major change initiatives, managed large capital projects and had overall responsibility for budgets in excess of $60M. John has extensive experience in procurement, contract negotiation and vendor management. An innovative change agent, john has been integral in the adoption of operations research and advanced analytics in health care operations. Respected nationally, John has served on many Canadian committees in a leadership role. A successful collaborative researcher, John has secured over $2M in research grants, published extensively in peer reviewed journals and has been invited as key note speaker at a number of international conferences. John also has extensive experience in sport administration and the management of professional academic journals.
Del Leary
Del Leary
Del Leary
I am a Medical Physicist practicing within the field of veterinary medicine. My role is very diverse and atypical to conventionally trained clinical physicists in clinical roles. At CSU within our radiation oncology service, we have many of the modern treatment hardware and software and imaging modalities that you would find in any modern human RO service, but there are new anatomical and outcome challenges that must be met. My professional experience has also been relatively diverse outside of radiation therapy working in acoustics, signal and image processing, and basic science. My publication record can be found here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Leary%20Del&sort=date&pos=10
Young Lee-Bartlett
Young Lee-Bartlett
Young Lee-Bartlett
Young has been working in industry for just over a year and a half after working as a hospital physicist for 17 years in Canada and UK. She is working in Elekta QA Solutions group and has immersed herself into multiple QA projects. Previous experiences include leading the CNS site including the spine SBRT program, and the Gamma Knife medical physics group at Sunnybrook Hospital, which has led to co-authoring >50 peer-reviewed journal publications and multiple book chapters. She was a committee member of clinical trials groups including the successful CCTG spine SBRT trial SC.24 and was also the CCTG Medical Physics representative in the NCTN medical physics group. She is a member of the COMP executive as a Treasurer since 2017 and has chaired the 2017 ASM and was on the first virtual COMP Winter School Committee in 2021. She has completed her Global Executive MBA – Healthcare and Life Sciences through Rotman, University of Toronto in 2020. In her current role she is hoping to modernize the radiation oncology QA processes and minimize the gap between clinical and industry radiation oncology and is also passionate about global equitable radiation therapy. Though she is passionate about her career, her proudest achievement thus far is being a proud mom of two very fun and active children, Eden and Alexis.
