Meera Paleja, Program Head for Investor Research and Behavioural Insights at the Ontario Securities Commission.

Over the last decade, Meera Paleja has worked in academia, management consulting, and different levels of government. Drawing on her diverse experiences, Meera shares a high-level look at BI in Canada and walks us through the similarities and differences in BI challenges and methods across organizations and sectors. We also talk about the benefits of bringing BI academics and practitioners together to enrich each other's work.

Jordyn Hrenyk, Michif researcher & PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University.

Jordyn Hrenyk uses her background in strategy and entrepreneurship to study behaviour, business, and society at both the micro and macro levels. Jordyn's research portfolio questions a variety of implicit and explicit assumptions, such as how values are communicated through everyday business decisions, how entrepreneurs impact one another and create market norms, how business concepts are taught, and who can learn from Indigenous business leaders.

Brett Cloutier, Senior Research Manager at ATB Financial.

From the BI perspective, personal finance is a classic example of an intertemporal choice problem where spending tomorrow depends on planning and saving today. Brett Cloutier is a UX/CX researcher who has added this type of BI lens to his work exploring barriers and solutions for financial planning. We talk about the importance of financial plans, areas of opportunity for BI, and the value of using qualitative research to complement quantitative research.

Britt Titus, Behavioral Insights Lead with the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Britt Titus applies BI to wicked problems in humanitarian settings around the world. These problems and settings require modifications to the standard BI approach to problem-solving. Britt walks us through how her team at the IRC has expanded the problem scoping phase to spend time: (1) validating assumptions with a variety of involved parties and (2) identifying leverage points that maximize impact and feasibility.

Craig Hutton, Senior Behavioural Scientist with the BC Behavioural Insights Group (BC BIG).

In a great BI project, the behavioural and decision sciences provide the questions and data science provides the tools to answer those questions. As someone who is both a data scientist and a behavioural scientist, Craig Hutton is the ideal person to talk us through similarities, differences, and complementarities between these fields. Craig also shares best practices for managing, analyzing, and communicating about data.

Brianne Kirkpatrick, Principal Advisor with BIT Canada, & Ansley Dawson, Senior Manager, Financial Empowerment Program at WoodGreen Community Services.

Ansley Dawson and Brianne Kirkpatrick tell us about their joint work using BI to support folks on social assistance. We focus on the innovative Income Transition Project, which is free social worker counselling to help folks understand the financial process of transitioning to employment. This project is a great illustration of how scoping, evaluation, and scaling can be tackled in a complex problem involving multiple partners, datasets, and outcomes that matter.

Stina Grant, Methods Specialist with the BC Behavioural Insights Group (BC BIG).

Stina Grant joins us for a deep dive on secondary research. Stina walks us through the importance of understanding the existing evidence base -- what has been done in which context and to what effect. She shares tips for how to conduct good literature reviews, how to synthesize information from across sources, and how to feed in primary research. As Stina says, conducting secondary research is like finding the pieces to a puzzle and solving the mystery.

Stephanie Mertens, Behavioural Scientist at the Ontario Behavioural Insights Unit.

Foundational research developing new theories. Applied research testing solutions in the field. Stephanie Mertens helps us explore different ways of contributing to the behavioural and decision sciences. She also shares her takeaways from her meta-analysis of BI's first decade: Nudges work, but we still have a lot to learn about how, when, and for whom. Stephanie explains how she applies these insights to her work developing and testing BI solutions.

Yarnel Bender, Associate Vice President, Corporate Change Management & Communications, at TD Bank.

Changing behaviour and managing change are two inextricably linked processes. As someone who is both a change management expert and a BI practitioner, Yarnel Bender is the perfect person to talk us through how these two tools complement and enrich each other. We also talk about how to use BI in everyday work, how to communicate about BI, and the value of bringing your own background and expertise into your BI practice.

Jennifer Parisi, Manager of Marketing and Communications with Michael Smith Health Research BC.

In her work across organizations in the health sector, Jen Parisi has come to appreciate the role that behaviours by patients, doctors, nurses, administrators, and others play in health outcomes. And, where there are behaviours, there are opportunities to use BI, from hand hygiene to program uptake to cultural safety and beyond. We discuss these opportunities and how initial BI projects can set the stage for future work by pinpointing the right questions to ask.