Research and Innovation Symposium 2024 Speakers

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Conference Speakers

Speaker	Biography
Dale Booth Owner and President, Innovation7	Dale Booth is the Owner and President of Innovation7, and a Subject Matter Expert who specializes in the field of business, community and economic development. With more than 20 years of experience working with Aboriginal people, all levels of governments and in the construction industry, he is known as a visionary leader with special and tested talents for shaping productive, cooperative working environments by eliminating deficits and creating a successful corporate vision for the future. To find out more about Dale and Innovation 7, click here
Stefania Di Mauro-Nava Director of Development, Metrolab	Stefania serves as MetroLab's Director of Development, focused on curating and implementing federal, philanthropic, and corporate development efforts for the organization. Prior to this role, Stefania served in several other capacities at MetroLab, helping to deploy programs, creating communications content, and implementing MetroLab’s Data Science and Human Services portfolio among other activities. Stefania has spent her career working at the nexus of science, technology and society, forging bridges between technical and nontechnical communities in this space. Prior to MetroLab, she served as a Science & Innovation Officer at the British Consulate-General in San Francisco and as an External Development Manager at CRDF Global in Arlington, VA. Stefania is a certified project management professional (PMP) and holds a M.A. in International Science and Technology Policy from George Washington University and a B.A. in International Studies from American University. To find out more about Stefania and Metrolab, click here
Zahra Ebrahim Co-Founder, Monumental	Zahra Ebrahim is the Co-Founder of Monumental. She is a public interest designer and strategist, and an established bridge builder across grassroots and institutional spaces. Her work has focused on community-led approaches to policy, infrastructure, and service design. Prior to Monumental, she built and led Doblin Canada, Deloitte’s Human-Centred Design practice. In her early career, Zahra led one of Canada’s first social design studios, working with communities to co-design towards better social outcomes, leading some of Canada’s most ambitious participatory infrastructure and policy programs. Zahra is currently an Urbanist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, and an Adjunct Professor at the Daniels School of Architecture . She has been recognized as a Next City Vanguard Civic Leader, Ascend Canada’s Mentor of the Year, one of WXN’s Top 100 Women in Canadian Business, and most recently recognized as one of the Urban Land Institute’s WLI Champions. Zahra is currently a Board member of the Toronto Arts Council, and the Board Chair for Park People.
Ursula Eicker Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Cities	Ursula Eicker is the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Communities and Cities and Founder and Director of the Next-Generation Cities Institute at Concordia University in Montréal. She works on decarbonization strategies for cities using living labs and urban digital twins for scenario modeling, user engagement and operational optimization.   Her research interests cover zero emission and smart cities, renewable energy integration, and sustainable urban infrastructure. With a team of about 50 graduate students and software developers she is working on multiple eco-district projects in Canada and builds the urban modeling and data analytics platform Tools4Cities. To engage users, 3D city models can be accessed via web interfaces or immersive gamification tools. Prof. Eicker has published 8 books, 20 book contributions, over 140 Peer-Reviewed Papers and more than 340 Conference Papers.
Colin Ellard Professor, University of Waterloo	Colin Ellard is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and director of its Urban Realities Laboratory.  Ellard works at the intersection of urban and architectural design and experimental psychology.  He has developed a novel set of methods by which the human response to the built environment can be measured using a toolkit consisting of both traditional psychological methods and sensor-based measurements of physiology and brain function.  Ellard publishes his work frequently in the peer-reviewed scientific literature but he also engages in extensive knowledge mobilization work involving collaboration and partnership with architects, museums and other NGOs. Ellard is an Urban Design and Mental Health Fellow, a Salzburg Global Fellow and an editor of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. Ellard’s most recent book is Places of the Heart (Bellevue Literary Press, 2015). To find out more about Colin, click here
Adam Found Metropolitan City Fellow, C.D. Howe Institute and sessional lecturer in Economics at Trent University	A recognized expert in municipal finance, Adam Found holds a PhD in economics from the University of Toronto and a Professional Land Economist designation from the Association of Ontario Land Economists. He has written several peer-reviewed publications and engaged media on such topics as property taxation, development charges, tax increment financing, municipal governance, and business tax competitiveness. As Manager of Corporate Assets at the City of Kawartha Lakes, Adam oversees the City’s capital planning, capital budgeting, and development charges portfolios, and in 2023 he was elected to serve as Vice President and President of the Municipal Finance Officers’ Association of Ontario for 2024 and 2025, respectively. He is also a Research Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute, a part-time faculty member at Trent University’s Department of Economics, and a public finance consultant specializing in municipal finance. As a professional economist and an advocate for municipalities’ autonomy and self-reliance, Adam continues to work in the public finance field through the municipal, academic, public policy, and consulting sectors. To find out more about Adam, click here
Lisa Helps Executive Lead, BC Builds Project Origination and Process Innovation, BC Housing	Lisa is currently working as Executive Lead BC Builds Project Origination and Process Innovation at BC Housing. Previously she was the Housing Solutions Advisor to Premier Eby for the start-up of BC Builds, a new housing program that uses public land, low-cost financing, and other innovative tools to get more housing built more quickly for working people in B.C. Prior to that she was a two-term Mayor of Victoria, British Columbia. As Mayor, Lisa worked hard to create deep collaboration across the community to get Victoria ready for the future and built connection across the Province as Co-Chair of the BC Urban Mayors Caucus to advance shared priorities for cities. Areas of focus included economic development and prosperity, housing, climate action, resilient infrastructure, and reconciliation. To find our more about Lisa, click here
Dr. Jayne Malenfant Professor at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Tio'tiá:ke / Montreal	Jayne Malenfant is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Tio'tiá:ke/Montreal. They are from Kapuskasing, Ontario. Their research focuses on the intersections of the right to education and right to housing, research leadership by people with lived and living experience of homelessness, and the experiences of Two-Spirit, trans, and non-binary communities navigating housing precarity. To learn more about Jayne and McGill University, click here.
Katie Maslechko Chief Executive Officer, BC Rental Protection Fund	Katie Maslechko is the Chief Executive Officer of the Rental Protection Fund, the $500-million Fund established by the Province of British Columbia, which provides equity investments to non-profit housing providers to support the preservation of existing, unsubsidized affordable housing (NOAH) through acquisition and renewal, while expanding the capacity of the community housing sector across the Province of B.C. She finds great passion in, and has a strong track record of, strategic partnerships across the private development, non-profit and government sectors to deliver innovative, community-building projects. In her prior role as Director of Development for a local developer, Katie was at the helm of groundbreaking projects in a variety of sectors and asset classes including: several public-private affordable housing partnerships, Vancouver’s first purpose-built Life Sciences laboratory and manufacturing facilities, and the award-winning MEC Flagship, the largest retail application of mass-timber construction. She has also worked with a New York City non-profit developer delivering facilities for charter schools in underserved neighborhoods through unique development and financing strategies. Katie is the Chair of the Urban Land Institute’s Public-Private Partnership Product Council (Gold Flight), as well as ULI Americas YLG/NEXT Advisory Board and ULI BC’s Management Committee as Chair of DEI+R. She previously served as the Americas Co-Chair of ULI Americas Young Leaders Group, and as Board Director for a non-profit housing society in Vancouver. To find out more about Katie and BC Retal Protection Fund, click here.
James McKellar Professor Emeritus, Schulich School of Business, York University	James McKellar, was Associate Dean, Schulich School of Business, York University, and Professor in the Brookfield Centre in Real Estate and Infrastructure. Prior to joining York University, he was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and also held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University. He has lectured at universities in North America, Asia and Europe and addressed various industry and government groups across the world. Professor McKellar has a life‐long involvement in many parts of the world on housing, development, finance and investment, asset management, and market performance. He served as Technical Advisor to the Third International Shelter Conference, 1990, sponsored by the U.N. On the practical side, he was also a home builder. For the past decade his teaching and research has focused on private investments in infrastructure and recently released Infrastructure as Business: The Role of Private Investment Capital, Routledge, September 2023. To learn more about James and Schulich School of Business, click here.
Mary Rowe President and CEO, Canadian Urban Institute	For over 30 years, Mary has acted as an impassioned civic leader and a leading urban advocate championing place-based approaches to building livable and resilient cities. Living in Canada and the United States, Mary has supported a wide range of policy transformation efforts and has led local, national and international urban initiatives such as the self-organizing initiatives that emerged in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, the initial development of Re-Imagining the Civic Commons in key cities across North America, and the engagement components of HUD-supported Rebuild by Design that informed the creation of the 100 Resilient Cities program of the Rockefeller Foundation. She is also Senior Fellow with Shorefast and is a frequent contributor to national and international city-building programs such as UN Habitat, Ottawa City Building Summit, Livable Cities Forum, Mansueto Institute Summit, the Art of City Building, and the inaugural meeting of the G7 Urban Development Ministers in Potsdam, Germany.   Under Mary’s leadership, CUI has expanded its work to include an international network from government, industry, community and city-building professions to advance research and collaborate on solutions to some of our greatest urban challenges. To learn more about Mary and the CUI, click here.
Conrad Speckert Architect, LGA Architectural Partners	Conrad is an intern architect at LGA Architectural Partners in Toronto with degrees from McGill and Waterloo. He is leading a CMHC-sponsored research project to develop alternative solutions to the building code requirement for two staircases in small multi-unit residential buildings and has proposed a corresponding change to the National Building Code of Canada. This was a recommendation of the 2023 National Housing Accord, the 2022 Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force and the original 2010 City of Toronto Midrise Performance Standards. The work has also been presented at conferences of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association, Urban Land Institute,  Building Officials Association of British Columbia, Ontario Association of Architects and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. Conrad originally joined LGA as project manager for ‘ReHousing’ - a collaboration with the University of Toronto to visualize gentle density and zoning by-law reform for “missing middle” housing and previously worked for other architects in Toronto, Vancouver, Berlin, and Tokyo.