[ Bio ]

Ron Mitchell has held numerous senior executive and general management positions including Executive Vice President of Marketing with Fujitsu America, Compaq Canada, EDS Canada and MCI Systemhouse. He is also on the board of directors of a $25 million charitable foundation, a number of other business and community advisory boards, and is very active in fund-raising initiatives that support childhood cancer programs in Canada and the US.

[ Bio ]

Matthew Pupic is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Net Business Advantage Inc. (www.netba.ca) a GTA-based organization providing financial consulting services and management advice for the not-for-profit and charity sector. Matthew has over a decade of senior financial management experience and brings proven abilities which include strategic planning, budgeting, business management and cost improvement. Previously Matthew was the Senior Director of Finance and Operations at Pollution Probe and was responsible for ensuring sound financial oversight and office management for the organization.

[ Bio ]

Eugene is the lead for PwC’s Emerging Company Services practice, where he focuses on early stage and high growth companies in the areas of technology, mobile, digital and social media, and education and music technology platforms, from pre-revenue to $25 million. In addition to his role at PwC, Eugene is a mentor at INcubes and DRIVEN, two startup accelerators located in Toronto, where he advises companies on managing growth, financing, cash flow management, and accounting. Eugene has also been a panelist on BNN’s ‘The Pitch’. Prior to rejoining PwC in 2008, Eugene was the CFO at Healthscreen Solutions Inc., an early stage technology company that was listed on the TSX-V.

[ Bio ]

Virginia Mantycki is a Consultant and Facilitator with FranklinCovey, a global professional services firm focussed on helping clients achieve sustained superior performance. She brings extensive experience in organizational learning & leadership development. Her background includes founder of Business Unusual; Associate, Johnston Smith International; Director, Right Management Consultants; Vice President, Sales & Client Services, MICA, and Executive Officer, MICA World.

[ Bio ]

Ellen Ratchye-Foster is Principal of Burning Glass Consulting. Previously Chief Context Officer at Fallon Worldwide, the ad agency, her clients included BMW, Citi, Purina, Nordstrom, Sony Europe, and Timberland. A trend analyst, her observations have been quoted in TIME, Newsweek, Business Week & AdWeek. Ellen earned a B.A. in Germanic languages and literature at Harvard College and a Masters in comparative literature from the University of Minnesota, with a focus on German film and literature. She has studied and taught in Norway and Germany.

[ Bio ]

François-Philippe Champagne joined AMEC as Strategic Development Director and member of the Management Committee on 2 January 2008. He is responsible for mergers, acquisitions and strategy and supply chain management and is based in London, United Kingdom. He provides advice and support to the Chief Executive Officer and the Board of Directors on the formulation of AMEC’s corporate strategy and direction, as well as strategic evaluation of investment and acquisition opportunities. Mr Champagne, born in Quebec, Canada, joined AMEC from ABB in Switzerland, where most recently he was Group Vice-President and Senior Counsel serving as a senior adviser to the group executive management team on a wide range of strategic and international legal matters. He qualified as a lawyer in Canada and did a Master of Laws in US Legal Studies at Case Western Reserve University, USA. Mr. Champagne is the past president of the Canadian-Swiss Chamber of Commerce and is involved in various think tanks, including the Banff Forum in Canada. He is also a non-executive Vice-Chairman of Bionest Technologies, a leading provider of waste water treatment technologies.

[ Bio ]

Rahaf Harfoush is a social media strategist on the rise. Her interest in technology's impact on governance, education and the workplace began as an analyst at Don Tapscott's thinktank, where she published whitepapers on topics including the Net Generation and women and the web. Her clients include InnoSpa-Unilever, British Telecom Wholesale, and the Web Foundation. She speaks to corporate and non-profit groups on the increasing use -- and vital importance -- of online technologies and the powerful ideas of community that animate them. Rahaf is an Associate Director at the World Economic Forum in Geneva. Previously, she was a part of the Forum's WELCOM Interaction team. Prior to this, she spent three months with the Obama New Media team in Chicago. An active member of Toronto's technology community, she is involved with associations like The Movement and The Overlap. In love with the written word, Rahaf is the author of Yes We Did, a book about the grassroots groundswell inspired by the Obama campaign. She is the Research Coordinator to the critically acclaimed Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything and a contributor on both Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing your World and Everything I needed to Know About Business I learned from a Canadian.

[ Bio ]

Ms. Guzman is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of the American Management Association, where she is responsible for the financial strategy, structure and resources worldwide to support the overall mission and strategy of the Association. She has an extensive background in the financial services industry where she spent over 10 years in investment banking and consumer banking prior to joining AMA. A Certified Public Accountant, Ms Guzman also spent over six years with the international accounting firm KPMG, where she served multinational audit clients in the United States and Latin America. Ms. Guzman serves as a member of the Board of Trustees and is Chairman of the Audit Committee of Rockhurst University Continuing Education Center.

[ Bio ]

Benjamin was an actor, volunteer and teen author of the 1996 proposal for a United Nations Youth Assembly. His proposal evolved into the Global Youth Action Network (GYAN), which became one of the most expansive networks in the world, connecting over 10,000 organizations in 180 countries, fostering global collaborations, and working closely with the United Nations to support youth participation. Benjamin helped launch and coordinate Global Youth Service Day, an annual celebration mobilizing millions of young volunteers; Chat the Planet, a two-way youth television show broadcast in 17 countries and on MTV; the 2000 US National Youth Conventions with presidential candidates; and We Are Family Foundation's Three Dot Dash, a global teen leadership/media initiative. He has also been a consultant, producer, speaker, author, photographer, frequent presenter at UN Headquarters and was invited to address issues of youth violence at the White House with the president in 1999. He resides in Florida and is currently Senior Vice President at Natural-Immunogenics Corp, a company started by his father to promote health sovereignty. Benjamin sits on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including TakingITGlobal, GYAN and the We Are Family Foundation. He speaks 5 languages, has traveled to 30 countries, and recently published a collection of his photography entitled a Book of Smiles.

[ Bio ]

Joshua Gorman is a writer, youth organizer, and student who designed a major called “Global Youth and Social Change” at George Mason University. He is the founder of Generation Waking Up, an organization working to ignite a generation-wide movement of young people helping to bring forth a thriving, just, sustainable world. He is passionate about transformational education and providing young people with the knowledge and skills they need to address the challenges of the 21st century. Currently, he is at work completing a book titled Generation Waking Up: How A New Generation is Coming of Age and Changing the World.

[ Bio ]

Ricardo Baruch is an activist who has worked on sexual and reproductive rights and HIV prevention for 9 years. He
has developed projects on sex education, gay rights, youth participation and other topics in Mexico and other countries in Latin America. He has participated in several consultations of UN agencies, particularly UNFPA, UNESCO and UNAIDS in different continents. Ricardo is a member of GYCA and Youth Coalition. In 2008 he was the youth coordinator for the International AIDS Conference and he represented NGOs of Latin America in the board of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. He is also part of the aids2031 Steering Committee and
is now preparing for the International AIDS Conference in Vienna.