CSPS Digital Academy Events/Embracing Digital Disruption - Speaker Biographies

Date and time: May 27, 2021 | 1:00 pm to 2:45 pm (ET)

Register for event here
Join us on GCCollab for updates and discussion

Speaker Biographies

	Taki Sarantakis President, Canada School of Public Service Taki Sarantakis has been President of the Canada School of Public Service since July 2018, having previously served as Associate Secretary of the Treasury Board at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Mr. Sarantakis spent most of his career at Infrastructure Canada, including as Assistant Deputy Minister of Policy and Communications. In 2011 Mr. Sarantakis was awarded Canada's Public Service Award of Excellence in Public Policy, and in 2013 he was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Prior to joining the federal government, Mr. Sarantakis was a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from York University in Toronto, as well as an Executive Certificate in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is a graduate of the Rotman School of Management's Institute of Corporate Directors Education Program, holding the ICD.D designation.
	Armughan Ahmad President & Managing Partner, Digital Solutions, KPMG Armughan Ahmad is a President & Managing Partner, Digital at KPMG. He leads the firm’s digital, technology and innovation groups transforming large enterprise, commercial and public sector organizations across industry segments. He is bridging traditional consulting services with exponential technologies to develop organic product IP with eco-system partnerships to deliver business function level transformation fit for a new digital economy customer experience. Before joining KPMG, he served as the Senior Vice President & General Manager at Dell Technologies, where he led the company’s Global Cloud, Solutions and High Performance Computing product group. Prior to Dell Technologies, he has held global executive positions at Hewlett Packard, 3Com and other start-ups. Armughan’s teams have developed award-winning innovative offerings using Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Intelligent automation, Process workflows and Cyber security technologies. These solutions scale traditional and low-code no-code based applications for finance, retail, healthcare, manufacturing and telecom sectors. He is a frequent guest speaker on digital and innovation topics in North America, Europe and Asian markets where he has worked for over 20+ years of his global experience. Armughan serves on the board of Future Skills Center innovating the future of work with human and machine collaboration. He also serves of Queens University’s Smith School of business board and University of Waterloo’s engineering dean’s advisory board. Armughan is a passionate promoter of girls’ STEAM education, mental health awareness and homelessness resettlement programs.
	Ray Wang Principal Analyst, Founder and Chairman, Constellation Research Inc. R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research Inc., a research and advisory firm which studies disruptive business and exponential technology trends. Ray’s the co-host and co-founder of the widely watched DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode. He’s also the author of the popular business strategy and technology blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View” that has received millions of page views per month. Wang also serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council's GeoTech Center. Since 2003, Ray has delivered thousands of live and virtual keynotes around the world that are inspiring and legendary. Wang has spoken at almost every major tech conference, including Salesforce’s Dreamforce, Adobe Summit, IBM, HR Tech Conference, NASSCOM, Mobile World Congress, CES, NRF, HIMSS, Oracle, Microsoft, Wipro, ServiceNow, Google Next, SAP, Infosys, TCS, SXSW, CIO100, TEDX, and sessions at Davos for various clients. His clients include the Global 2000 companies, governments, startups, and investment firms. Wang has held executive roles at institutions such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. His ground-breaking best selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World will be released July 2021 by Harper Collins Leadership. Wang is well quoted and frequently interviewed in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business News, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, Bloomberg, CGTN America, Tech Crunch, ZDNet, CIO Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune. Ray frequently receives accolades and awards from various independent organizations as one of the top technology and business analysts in the world.
	Karen Eltis Law Professor, University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society Karen Eltis is a Faculty member at the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society and a Full Professor of Law within the Faculty of Law, Civil Law Section. She is a past Affiliate with Princeton’s CITP (Center for Information Technology Policy) 2016-2018. A past director of the uOttawa Human Rights Centre, Karen Eltis specializes in artificial intelligence/ innovation law and policy and cybersecurity from a comparative perspective. She served as Senior Advisor to the National Judicial Institute and has taught at Columbia Law School. Fluent in French, English, Hebrew, Spanish and Romanian and proficient in German and Italian, Karen Eltis holds law degrees from McGill University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Columbia Law School (Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar). Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Ottawa, Karen was a litigation associate in New York City. Her research was twice cited by the Supreme Court of Canada (in the landmark case A.B. v. Bragg, 2012 and in Quebec (Attorney General) v. 9147-0732 Québec inc. 2020 SCC 32) and other Canadian and foreign courts. Karen’s latest book is titled “Courts, Litigants and the Digital Age: Second Edition” (Irwin Law, 2016) supported by the CIRA grant. Her research on Artificial Intelligence and Expression is supported by the Foundation for Legal Research.
	Chris Allison Director General, Digital Academy, Canada School of Public Service As a driven, passionate and creative leader and change agent, my career, skills and experiences span across public service, private interests and personal goals. My goal is to reimagine and revitalize the public service - transforming it into an organization that can meet and exceed the needs and expectations of Canadians. Over the past 17 years I've worked on immigration enforcement, investigated war crimes, patrolled Toronto with the Toronto Police Service, conducted surveillance and counter smuggling activities with as an RCMP officer, participated in public relations duties in Japan, managed national security activities with the Canada Border Services Agency, developed legislation, regulations and policy on import, export and cross-border law enforcement operations, contributed to the re-writing of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, created and lead a community of passionate managers in Public Safety Canada, worked to improve the traveler experience with the CBSA and currently lead the Government of Canada's enterprise social network and wiki - working to build a single, collaborative and high performing public service to better serve Canadians. Driven and imaginative, I've reverse mentored three Deputy Ministers, reimagined and built new ways to improve the traveler experience and acted as a catalyst for change - driving innovation in policy thinking, service delivery, information management and collaboration. An avid Python and Go developer, I've built web apps, event simulations, conducted social network analysis, graphed and analyzed social media, analyzed big data with Spark, built machine learning classifiers and used natural language analysis to directly improve my organizations. I'm a top level communicator and writer, a powerful presenter and, above all a storyteller - bringing data, business experience, curiosity and play together into a single narrative. Starting a new adventure as DG Digital Services at the CSPS.