Host
Diana Swain
One of Canada’s most widely-recognized journalists, Diana Swain earned multiple awards and widespread respect for her insightful storytelling, and on-air poise during an extraordinary 33-year career at CBC News. Diana’s journalistic journey took her around the globe, where she played a pivotal role reporting investigative stories and covering major events, including three Olympic games.
After a stellar on-air career in which she won the award for Best New Anchor three times, she moved into several senior editorial roles, including Executive Producer of the network’s esteemed Investigative Unit and later, documentary program: The Fifth Estate. In her final role with CBC, Diana was Managing Editor responsible for all network investigative programs.
Now, in her next professional chapter, Diana has formed Diana Swain Strategies, a bespoke Executive Coaching and Strategic Communications firm. In this role, she leverages her wealth of experience to assist corporate leaders in clearly articulating their message, strengthening their executive presence, and minimizing the need for crisis communications.
Moderator
Chris Burgh
Partner
National Healthcare Practice, EY
Chris Burgh is a Partner at Ernst & Young Canada in the National Healthcare Practice. Based in Toronto, Chis has played instrumental roles in a number of large-scale, complex and high-profile engagements. Chris’s work has taken him across geographic boundaries, collaborating with healthcare organizations in the UK, Canada, US, and Middle East. Through these roles Chris has developed proprietary expertise in enhancing operational performance, reimagining clinical, and non-clinical service configuration, and delivering continuous improvement programs.
Speakers
Janet Bannister
Founder and General Partner
Staircase Ventures
Janet is the Founder and General Partner of Staircase Ventures, which invests in Canada's most promising early-stage technology companies. Staircase recognizes that founders are the bedrock upon which companies are built, and therefore provides unparalleled support to accelerate founders' development and performance. Staircase Ventures is backed by leading institutional investors and successful entrepreneurs.
Prior to launching Staircase Ventures, Janet was Managing Partner at Real Ventures, one of Canada's largest and most active early-stage investors. Janet is also a graduate of the prestigious Kauffman Fellows program, a global network of the world's top 1% of venture investors and innovation leaders.
In addition, Janet is very active in the Canadian tech ecosystem; she is the Co-Chair of C100 and on the Boards of the Ivey Business School and LEAP, a social venture accelerator. She is a mentor at Creative Destruction Lab and advisor to One Eleven. In addition, Janet was Honorary Co-Chair of the Princess Margaret Ride to Conquer Cancer in 2023, the largest single fundraising event in Canada.
Janet has won numerous awards and recognition including Toronto Region Builder of the Year Award for 2023, Business Insider's 2024 and 2023 “Best Women Early-Stage Investors”, Venture Capital Journal's 2021 “Women of Influence in Private Markets”, Pitchbook's 2021 “Female Founders & Investors to Know”, and American Bankers' 2019 “Most Influential Women in Payments”.
In 2004, Janet launched Kijiji.ca and grew it to become one of the most visited websites in Canada. Subsequently, she led the Kijiji Global business, launching the website in new countries and accelerating growth in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Janet also spent four years at eBay in Silicon Valley where she helped transform eBay from a collectibles to a mainstream marketplace, growing the business 4-fold year-over-year for four years. She started her career as a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble and then joined McKinsey & Co. where she was an Engagement Manager. She also founded and built a successful consulting business and was CEO at a venture-backed start-up.
Janet was a varsity long-distance runner at Western University, where she completed her business degree at Ivey, earning the Gold Medal. Post university, she switched to triathlons and two years later, became Canada's National triathlon champion. She competed internationally on the National team for several years while working full time. Janet is married with a 19-year old son.
Megan Leslie
Co-Founder & CEO
NanoTess
Megan is passionate about delivering innovative solutions within healthcare that are equitable and accessible for all. Megan holds two degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Finance and brings her background as a former management consultant to her work at NanoTess. Today, she is the CEO and Co-Founder of NanoTess. NanoTess is disrupting the skin and wound care market with its catalytic innovations.
Dr. Joshua Liu
Co-Founder & CEO
SeamlessMD
Dr. Joshua Liu is a physician turned digital health entrepreneur, and co-founder/CEO of SeamlessMD – which enables health systems to digitize patient care journeys (e.g. pre/post surgery, oncology, chronic care) with automated reminders, education and symptom monitoring - leading to lower length of stay, readmissions, and costs. An advocate for healthcare innovation, Dr. Liu has served as Chair of the Canadian Medical Association’s Joule Innovation Council and on the Advisory Group to the Office of the Chief Health Innovation Strategist for the Ontario Ministry of Health. Dr. Liu has received numerous honours, including being named Digital Health Executive of the Year by Digital Health Canada and one of Healthcare Innovation’s 40 Under 40. Dr. Liu holds a MD from the University of Toronto and a BSc from York University.
Dr. Dante Morra
Founder & Chair, CAN Health Network
Dr. Dante Morra is a transformational healthcare leader who serves as the THP Solutions President and Chief Clinical Innovation officer and Founder and Chair of CAN Health Network. He had previously served as the inaugural Chief of Staff at Trillium Health Partners’, one of Canada’s largest academically affiliated hospitals serving the West Toronto community. Dr. Morra is a specialist in internal medicine, Professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and holds a Master of Business Administration. An acclaimed and in-demand teacher, Dante has earned awards for his course on leadership, systems change, and quality, which has transformed the way doctors are educated.
In his hospital role, Dr. Morra oversaw 1,400 physicians and professional staff and has created one of the most innovative hospital networks in the province. In addition, he has launched a series of bold ventures to transform health care which include the Institute for Better Health, founded in 2014 to lead practical research to solve the major challenges in the health care system, and the CAN (Coordinated Accessible National) Health Network, founded in 2019, that allows Canadian medtech companies to scale to their full potential to advance prosperity through a new health care economy.
Dr. Dante Morra has made it his life’s work to advance Canadian health care by creating a new, more inclusive and prosperous health care economy. From the start of his career as a physician, researcher, and teacher at the University of Toronto, Dr. Morra has stood out as an original thinker who could see all too clearly how the Canadian health system is slow to embrace innovation and commercial partnerships. For his efforts, Dante was selected by both the UofT faculty and student body to receive the W T Aikins award – the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s most prestigious teaching award. Dr. Morra is now recognized as one of the most successful innovators of health care in Canada, spearheading the much-needed movement to harness Canadian research and development talent to unlock economic prosperity. He was recently recognized in The Globe and Mail’s April Report on Business Magazine in the Top 50 Executives 2022 as a key academic leader who translates ideas into real world change.
Nevin Pick
President
MOBIA Health
Nevin Pick is a Technology leader with over 25 years of experience developing and implementing complex enterprise solutions for customers in industries such as Aviation, Telecom, Retail, and Healthcare. Nevin’s background as a Software Developer, Technical Architect, Project Manager and Business Leader provides a rounded view when leading teams delivering custom enterprise e-business applications.
Nevin’s passion is to bring to healthcare the digital transformation that other industries have already experienced. Allowing Healthcare to stand on the shoulders of leading innovations and empowering clinicians to find new solutions to face their critical problems and improve the health outcomes of patients.
Tomi Poutanen
CEO & Co-founder, Signal 1
Co-founder, Layer 6
Former Chief AI Officer, TD Bank Group
Tomi is the CEO and a co-founder of Signal 1. Before Signal 1, Tomi co-founded Layer 6 which was acquired in 2018 by TD Bank Group, where he served as SVP and Chief AI Officer. Prior to Layer 6, Tomi founded three technology companies with exits to Microsoft and Yahoo!. Tomi is a co-founder of the Vector Institute, a world leading academic research institute for deep learning, and a co–founder and Partner of Radical Ventures, a leading AI-focused venture fund. He is a founding fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab, the world’s largest AI venture accelerator. Tomi holds an MSc in Computer Engineering and an MBA from the University of Toronto.
Ananth Ravi
Co-founder
MOLLI Surgical
In his thinking, innovation, and research, Ananth puts the patient first. He believes the patient’s experience of treatment is just as important as the treatment itself.
While growing up in Zambia, Ananth’s early years were marked with loss due to cancers that were treatable in other parts of the world. He has dedicated his career to lowering barriers for treatment and developing innovations that help increase access to care.
Ananth believes that one of the responsibilities of medical technology is to advance in a way that reduces unintended harm and long-term challenges for patients. Getting to a place where a therapy becomes a non-event in somebody’s life is part of the shift in how Ananth thinks about research and impacting healthcare.
Ananth has a history of peer-reviewed research focused on improving image guidance for medical procedures ranging from radiation to surgical oncology techniques. He is a co-inventor on numerous patents and has garnered several grants for medical device innovations. Ananth's commitment to improving the treatment process for patients inspired him to develop the localization technology, MOLLI® that resulted in the creation of MOLLI Surgical.
Prior to co-founding the company, he was a certified Medical Physicist at Sunnybrook’s Odette Cancer Centre and Clinical Operations Lead, Brachytherapy. Under Ananth’s leadership, Sunnybrook’s brachytherapy program became one of the highest performing in the world. He is the only medical physicist to even win the Human Touch Award, which recognizes his passion for improving the quality of care for cancer patients within Ontario.
Michele Romanow
"Dragon", CBC's Dragons’ Den | Co-Founder and Executive Chair, Clearco
Tech titan Michele Romanow is a serial entrepreneur who started six companies before her 35th birthday. A “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den, Romanow is the co-founder and executive chair of Clearco, the world’s largest e-commerce investor. It has invested over $5 billion into 10,000 entrepreneurs in 13 countries. Prior to this, she co-founded SnapSaves, acquired by American tech giant Groupon, and Buytopia.ca, acquired by Emerge.
Romanow joined Dragons’ Den in 2015, becoming their youngest judge to date. That same year, she co-founded Clearco which earned unicorn status by 2021, making it one of only 23 fintech unicorns in the world to be founded or co-founded by a woman as of 2022. A prolific investor, she was named one of Fortune’s “40 under 40”, a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, one of Canada’s “100 Most Powerful in Canada” by WXN, and Canada’s “Angel Investor of the Year”.
Romanow has created digital solutions for many of the world’s leading brands, including P&G, Netflix, Starbucks, and Cirque du Soleil. Her work has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, TechCrunch, and the Globe and Mail. In 2021, Romanow was honoured with RBC’s Women of Influence Innovation Award.
Romanow is a director for Vail Resorts, BBTV, and Queen’s School of Business. Previously, she was a director for Freshii, Whistler Blackcomb, SHAD International, and League of Innovators. Romanow also co-founded the Canadian Entrepreneurship Initiative non-profit with Sir Richard Branson and is the host of The Audible Original podcast, The Revisionaries.
Dr. Andy J. Smith
President and CEO
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
Since 2017, Dr. Andy Smith has been the President and CEO of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre where he leads over 12,000 staff, physicians, researchers and learners and an annual budget of more than $1.4 billion. Prior to his current role, Dr. Smith served as Sunnybrook’s Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Executive.
With a long-established career as a surgeon and a recognized leader in the management of colorectal cancer, Dr. Smith is intensely passionate about improving healthcare. He has been involved for many years in quality improvement initiatives in Ontario and is passionately interested in healthcare leadership, innovation and the evolution of the healthcare system in Canada. Dr. Smith is the immediate past Chair for the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network (TAHSN), and is on the Board of Directors for HealthCareCAN, ORNGE, Public Health Ontario (PHO), and Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP)
Tom Turner
President
Business, Rogers Communications
Thomas (Tom) A. Turner resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and has served as President, Business since July 2022. As President, Rogers Business, Tom is responsible for delivering Wireless, Wireline, IoT, Wholesale, and Data Centre/Cloud products and solutions to small, medium, large, and public sector businesses across Canada.
Prior to taking on the President of Business role, Tom held several executive leadership positions within Rogers, most recently as the Senior Vice President of Sales for Business. Tom has proudly built his career at Rogers since 1992, holding key leadership roles across Rogers Cable, Wireless and Media business units in addition to his strong business-to-business experience.
Tom has previously served as a Board Member for the Toronto Board of Trade, the largest policy and advocacy group for the city’s business community. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, Political Science from Michigan State University, and a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) from the PhD program at Michigan State University College of Law.
Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser
Physician, Four-time Olympic Gold Medalist, Assistant General Manager, Player Development for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Seven world championships, six Olympic appearances, five Olympic medals — Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser is a titan of sport and a leader both on and off the ice.
A first-ballot Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, Wickenheiser’s hockey IQ is highly respected in both the male and female game. She has played in/coached at four NHL development camps with the Philadelphia Flyers, the Edmonton Oilers, and the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 2018, Wickenheiser joined the Toronto Maple Leafs as assistant director of player development in 2018 before being promoted to assistant general manager in 2022.
Alongside her career in the NHL, Wickenheiser is currently a resident medical doctor practicing in the Toronto-area — a pursuit she had dreamt of her whole life and began in 2017 following her retirement from the National Women’s Team after 23 years. She is also the author of Over the Board: Lessons from the Ice.
In addition, Wickenheiser is a member of the Order of Canada, a retired member of the International Olympic Committee’s Athlete’s Commission, member of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, and founder of The Canadian Tire Wickenheiser World Female Hockey Festival.
Patty Wickson
Executive Director, Innovation Evidence Evaluation & Impact
Alberta Health Services
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Event Date & Time
Wednesday
October 30, 2024
8:00 AM – 4:00 PM EST
Event location
Rogers Communications Inc.
333 Bloor Street East
Toronto, ON
M4W 1G9
For more information
For more information contact:
chn@canhealthnetwork.ca