Team Category: Presenter

Acting Manager, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion – Public Services and Procurement Canada

Marylaine Choquette occupies an Acting Manager of Employment Equity, Diversity and Inclusion position in the federal public service. She started in this field in 2009 after working for 7 years in the field of learning. Since 2020, she has also facilitated the Interdepartmental Employment Equity and Diversity Network, which brings together hundreds of representatives from several federal organizations. She seeks to create links between various stakeholders in the field. She wants to identify, and then dismantle, systemic issues.

As a mother, she is involved in schools to offer an EEDI framework that promotes openness to the uniqueness of everyone. Marylaine is counting on the next generations to create real substantive change.

Areas of expertise

Diversity relatededucation

Jill Chesley is the Diversity and Inclusion Lead, Employee Services for the City of Edmonton. She brings domestic and international experience and over 20 years of experience in the non-profit, private and public sectors, including working in the USA, Japan, Trinidad & Tobago, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Afghanistan. Jill has subject-matter expertise in the fields of intercultural competence, equity, diversity and inclusion, particularly in large, complex organizations.

Jill’s competencies include strategy and policy development, design and delivery of training, program development and coordination, as well as employee engagement via vehicles such as diversity & inclusion committees, employee resource networks, and mentoring programs. At the City of Edmonton, Jill is responsible for the development and implementation ofThe Art of Inclusion: Our Diversity & Inclusion Framework. She leads the Corporate D&I Advisory Committee, and advises each department D&I Committee. Jill also oversees the implementation of Gender Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) at the City. During her tenure, the City of Edmonton was named a top Diversity Employer in Canada in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Prior to her role at the City of Edmonton, Jill was the Team Lead, Diversity & Inclusion at Enbridge. Jill has a MA in Intercultural Relations. She is the Founding Chair of the Edmonton Business Diversity Network and the National Municipal D&I Network. She is a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), and a Senior Facilitator of Personal Leadership ©.

Paul has been working as a Manager, Inclusion and Diversity at Starbucks Canada since 2023. He’s a leader in organizational development, specialized in inclusion, learning and talent management. Leveraging his background in business consulting, project management and market research to strategize, he implements successful plans and actions, and leads multidisciplinary and multicultural teams.

His career encompasses the management of products, services and intangible goods in companies operating internationally. His leadership style boosts team member’s skillset development through coaching and strategic empowerment driven by strong professional work ethics.

To be updated.

Sania Chaudhry has been active on the anti-racism sphere from the view of the workplace and is now at a firm that does the same. She was published last year in the globe and mail talking aboutintersectional identities and the legal workplaceand was also a panelist on gendered Islamophobia last year at the Legal Education and Action Fund Equality Breakfast. She has also moderated, created and spoken at various other webinars for the legal profession for the CBA and The Advocates Society on the issues of bias, racism, systemic barriers in the legal profession and written articles in CBA National magazine that regards as well focusing onantiracism education for legal professionalsandother recommendations for change.

Since last fall, Sania was appointed to the Alberta Anti-Racism Advisory Council by the Ministry and received the 2022 Women Who Inspire Award from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, the 2022 Community Crusader Award from the South Asian Inspiration Awards, and was named one of the 2022 Top 30 Under 30 by the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation for her anti-racism and EDI work in the legal profession.

Akira De Carlos is a dynamic force embodying the intersectionality of identity and activism. As a Queer Afro-Indigenous Sephardic Jew hailing from Luanda, Angola, their journey unfolds as a testament to the richness of cultural diversity. Presently, they serve as the Director of Programs for the African Canadian Development and Prevention Network, while fundamentally remaining a community organizer and learning facilitator at heart.

Based in the vibrant city of Tioh:tke/Montreal, Akira’s passion converges on empowering racialized minorities through accessible education, with a particular emphasis on environmental justice. Co-founding the Black Afro-Indigenous Farming Cooperative Sankofa underscores their commitment to fostering spaces for connection, healing, and reclamation of ancestral lands.

Their extensive experience collaborating with various NGOs manifests in initiatives that champion anti-racism and anti-oppression frameworks within organizational structures. A seasoned panel moderator adept in navigating discussions on youth mobilization, climate justice, and combating anti-Black racism, Akira’s advocacy extends to pressing issues like abolition, affordable housing and food security.

Drawing from their upbringing as a third culture individual, Akira eloquently articulates the significance of intersectionality and cultural diversity. Their nuanced approach infuses depth into their work, amplifying the voices and experiences often marginalized in mainstream discourse.

HR Professional | Founder, Speaker, and HR/DEIA Consultant at Accessible Creates | Neurodiversity Coach | DEIB Facilitator

It is Sydney’s understanding that their professional purpose must be to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to be successful regardless of barriers and that they must as a professional remove these barriers. Sydney conducts training and consulting for other companies on how to be more Accessible and Inclusive from a Human approach and how to recruit and retain more diverse individuals through the lens of Intersectionality/Human Resources as well as other areas of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in an authentic manner at the company they founded called Accessible Creates due to understanding the barriers that exist within the workplace for diverse individuals.

Associate professor of history and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba

Sean Carleton is a settler scholar and an Associate Professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation. He is also currently the Associate Head, Department of Indigenous Studies. He uses ‘he/him’ pronouns.

His award-winning research and publications examine the history and political economy of colonialism, capitalism, and education in Canada.

Sean holds BA and MA degrees in History from Simon Fraser University and a PhD from the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent University. He has been a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and held a post-doctoral fellowship in the Departments of History and Native Studies at the University of Alberta.

Hefrequentlycomments on issues related to history, Indigenous-settler relations, and education for CBC, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Toronto Star, The Conversation, The Tyee, CTV, APTN, Global, et. al.

Sean is also a Contributing Editor with Active History, a Fellow of St John’s College, an Associate with the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History and the Centre for Human Rights Research, and a founding member of the Graphic History Collective.

Director of Corporate Services at Pride at Work Canada

Althea has anHonoursBachelor of Science in Language from Laurentian University and a Certificate in Human Resource Management (Honours) from Sheridan College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning. Althea is bilingual in English & French. She is genuinely involved in intersectional womanism from a Black SOGIESC perspective. Althea has led successful talent acquisition, operations & organizational design initiatives for some of the world’s most recognizable brands. She has also worked in local grassroots organizations to understand the complex realities of equity-deserving groups & underestimated populations – specifically people of the global majority. When Althea is not actively dismantling the kyriarchy, she loves to design skincare, play soccer with her child and eat all sorts of chocolate.

Yin Brown is a first-generation immigrant of Chinese descent. Her pronouns are she, her and hers, and she happens to be blind. Currently she is the Director, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) at Abilities Centre in Ontario. Previously Yin worked as an Accessibility Consultant at City of Toronto, Manager, Advocacy at CNIB, Ontario , and Coordinator for Stakeholder and government relations at CBM Canada. In addition, she worked for many years in adult education and community development.

Yin’s passion is employment of persons with disabilities, for which she has led several advocacy and mentorship projects when she was under-employed. Having transitioned from being fully sighted to completely blind, Yin is astounded at how her employment prospects decreased in proportion to losing her sight, even though her work experience and education increased over the same period of time, showing that the lack of employment is mainly due to employers’ misconception of her abilities due to her disability.