No need to watch TEDx Talks on YouTube five years after they’re relevant anymore!
You can see some of BC’s brightest minds deliver specially curated TEDx Talks live as they happen via an exclusive livestream.
On Saturday, February 25th, 12 local voices who are undoubted experts in their field will take the stage at Royal Roads University’s Dogwood Auditorium to share their thoughts and experiences.
The theme for these TEDx Talks is ‘Changemaking’ and topics will range from “Going to nature to create healthier workplaces,” to “Can the way we think about time help us to navigate change” and “Saving the world isn’t ‘someone else’s problem.’”
The 12 speakers who will share their TEDx Talks with attendees are:
Shauna Begley: Digital literacy in the modern world of work
Shauna Begley is an educator, strategist and technology leader in BC and across Canada with over 20 years of experience leading digital change. Begley says she is inspired to challenge the status quo while remaining mindful of the need for the purposeful alignment of technology, people, and processes.
Throughout her career, Begley has devoted herself to advocating for technology as a source enablement that drives strategic advantage and transformative business outcomes.
From the boardroom to the classroom, she engages with individuals and teams to support their digital transformations by ensuring they see the possibilities.
Dr. Kathy Bishop: Going to nature to create healthier workplaces
Dr. Bishop is an organizational leadership consultant and associate professor at Royal Roads University in the School of Leadership Studies.
She has over 30 years of leadership experience spanning multi-disciplinary fields including counselling, social services, business development and adult education.
Bishop says she is committed to fostering thriving organizations and workplace cultures through values based leadership education which utilizes a variety of creative, experiential, participatory, nature-based and transformative methods.
Faith Doll: The unexpected power of words
Faith Doll is a grade 12 International Baccalaureate (IB) and honour roll student at Norkam Senior Secondary, in Kamloops. She is active in many social justice activities.
Doll directed and filmed a documentary on Ukrainian refugee students at her school to bring light to the struggles these students faced.
She aspires to use her passion for human rights and equality as she works toward her career goal of being a lawyer.
Kate Fagan Taylor: Can the way we think about time help us to navigate change?
Kate Fagan Taylor is an organizational culture strategist who helps companies develop unique work cultures as a business advantage.
With ideas that inspire, she guides organizations to solve their practical business challenges by providing management consulting, culture assessments, courses, executive coaching, keynotes and workshops.
Early in her career, Fagan Taylor served as an Interfaith Chaplain at the University of Victoria. Since then, she has led strategy and business transformations in the not-for-profit, public sector, health, academic and technology sectors.
Ben Homer-Dixon: Saving the world isn’t ‘someone else’s problem’
Ben Homer-Dixon is a student of Royal Roads University whose ambition has always been to create positive change in whatever form he can — be that serving on his school’s student council, participating in a climate strike or presenting a TEDx talk on global issues.
Trevor Koot: Seeing business differently
Trevor Koot is currently serving as CEO of the BC Real Estate Association, drawing on his extensive experience as a business owner, leader and board director.
With an innovative and entrepreneurial leadership style, Koot’s focus is change management, while maintaining strict governance and policy structure.
Facilitating leadership and governance training sessions demonstrates his interest in proper structure, while creating new technology and advocating for industry-wide change provides fuel for his entrepreneurial side.
Candice Neveu: 3 mindset shifts for academic success
Candice Neveu lives with her family in Sooke and she is a certified Wayfinder life coach. Combining her lived experience and extensive training to support her clients in getting the results they want so they can create a career and life they love.
After completing her masters in English to pursue her dream of teaching at post-secondary, Neveu spent over 15 years teaching academic writing and deepening her training in adult and continuing education before being certified as a life coach.
One of her core beliefs is that every student and person has the capacity to succeed in meaningful, authentic ways — even if they don’t quite see it themselves.
That’s why her mission is to help lifelong learners build the skills and mindset they need to feel confident and be successful when they’re pushing their growth edge.
Dr. Zia Poonja: Your mortality, your agency
Dr. Zia Poonja is an oncologist, researcher, health enthusiast and founder of companies that specialize in health optimization.
He has a passion for prevention and advocates for people to recognize the agency they have in their quality of life. Dr. Poonja completed a bachelor of science in human physiology followed by his MD at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Poonja also completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Alberta and a fellowship in medical oncology at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
Zia currently practices oncology at the BC Cancer in Victoria and is an actively involved founder of Healthspan Labs and PrehabRx.
Vishal (‘Vish’) Punwani: How saving our culture saved our remote team
Vishal (‘Vish’) Punwani is the CEO and co-founder of SoWork — the ‘Workplace Metaverse’ — founded at Harvard’s Innovation Labs.
He says SoWork started off as a more human way for his team to internally communicate, and now Fortune 10 companies and thousands of businesses and startups utilize SoWork everyday to work, socialize, build community, and host events.
Besides being a CEO, Vishal is also a medical doctor, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, a mentor at the Oxford Foundry and alumni advisor at MassChallenge Boston.
In his prior life, Vish worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva, and became one of the highest rated Teaching Fellows at Khan Academy in Health and Medicine.
Peter Scott: Will AI have to be able to feel?
Peter Scott is a futurist, coach, and technology expert helping people master technological disruption.
After receiving a master’s degree in computer science from Cambridge University, he moved to California to work for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has continued to do that ever since.
Scott raises awareness about artificial intelligence. He has appeared on radio and television, given university courses and numerous appearances in several countries.
In February 2020 he spoke to Britain’s House of Lords on the future of AI, and delivered a TEDx Talk to a thousand people in British Columbia, Canada.
He hosts a weekly podcast, Artificial Intelligence and You, which tackles three questions: What is AI? Why will it affect you? How do you and your business survive and thrive through the AI Revolution?
In July 2022, he published a book, also called Artificial Intelligence and You.
Jared Qwustenuxun Williams: Our food make us strong, how Indigenous foods create Indigenous cultures
Jared Qwustenuxun Williams is a passionate traditional foods chef who spent much of his youth with his late grandmother, immersed in Salish culture.
After he graduated from culinary arts school, he spent a decade working in restaurants across Vancouver Island before deciding to move back home to Quw’utsun to take the role of Elder’s Kitchen Manager at Cowichan Tribes.
After more than decade of cooking for his elders Wiliams now works as an Indigenous foods educator, writer and consultant.
TEDxRoyalRoadsU
- Where: Dogwood Auditorium, Royal Roads University, Colwood
- When: Saturday, February 25th from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
- Tickets: Only 100 available for $19.99 on TEDxRoyalRoadsU
