Career Buzz

Our message today is about gathering others to support you. Wayne Pagani’s term was Circle of Support. Take the time to pause, re-listen to the definition of the term and let us know how you grow your Circle of Support. Bella Doswell is on a mission to increase awareness about the work that Career Development Professionals do. She calls it a movement and is inviting everyone to join. Is there a topic for which you would like to advocate? What would you do to start a movement? Listen & join Hoda and her guests on Career Buzz to increase your Career Literacy.

Guest Bios

Guest and Career Development Professional, Wayne Pagani has over 25 years of coaching experience serving people with diverse backgrounds internationally. He has assisted over a thousand clients with career / life objectives to develop effective action plans in order to achieve their life aspirations and career goals. This is combined with over 14 years of business experience in the transportation industry where Wayne was responsible for managing operations and maximizing employee engagement. In addition, he brings over ten years of counselling experience working with clients in residential facilities to foster personal growth. 

Wayne also facilitates inspirational workshops and services to clients seeking solutions in all sectors of business and community. He has delivered customized train-the-trainer programs for career / employment service organizations. 

And finally, Wayne offers a holistic perspective and approach to supporting people, empowers them by providing resources and connections to others to help them realize and fulfill their career/life aspirations.

Bella Doswell, is an award winning, Certified Careers Development Professional who brings successes in helping people make successful career management decisions and develop winning job search strategies. Rather uncommonly, she has a master’s degree in Career Development & Coaching, which gives her more flex and depth when helping Clients. Bella has helped people with their careers in the UK, the UAE and since 2012, for Clients in Canada. She has enjoyed working with a wide spectrum of clients, from under/post grads at university, right through to more recently, professionals and Senior Executive level employees, from all sectors of the labour market. Bella has also taught student CDPs counselling skills and ethics at Further Education level and is a passionate advocate for the promotion and professional wellbeing of CDPs around the world. 

And finally, Bella is the Co-Architect of the successful #SoMuchMoreThanTalkingAboutJobs campaign, and author of the weekly CDP Thought For The Week, posted every Monday on LinkedIn. 

For career counselling for you or someone you care about, start with a free discovery call: careercycles.com

In this episode, Professor Mark Chignell shared his decade-long journey transforming research into real-world tools aimed at enhancing cognitive and physical health in aging populations. His work bridges psychology, engineering, and entrepreneurship, resulting in products like To Race With Me, BrainTagger, and Chummy, now being tested in care homes across Canada and Japan.

Guest Bio

Mark Chignell has been a member of the Mechanical & Industrial Engineering faculty since 1990. Prior to that he was an Assistant Professor in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California from 1984 to 1990. Professor Chignell taught in the Psychology Department at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia from 1980 to 1982. He has a PhD in Psychology (University of Canterbury, New Zealand, 1981), and an MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering (Ohio State, 1984). He was formerly (2013-2017) the Director of the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto, and the BUL Chair in Human Computer Interaction. He has been a visiting scientist at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies in Toronto since 2002 and he was a visiting scientist at Keio University from 2005 to 2010.

Professor Chignell has co-authored books on expert systems and intelligent databases (published by John Wiley & Sons) and he has co-edited three books. He has many journal and conference papers on topics such as hypertext and information retrieval, user interface design and healthcare applications. His research has been funded by the Bell University Laboratories, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), IBM, the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, TELUS, Oki Corporation, Ricoh Corporation, and Apple Computer. He has founded two start-up companies, both of which received funding. His latest startup is Centivizer Inc. which is a University of Toronto startup that has been funded by the AGEWELL National Centre of Excellence. Centivizer creates exergaming and cognitive assessment products to support healthy aging.

For career counselling for you or someone you care about, start with a free discovery call: careercycles.com

Dr Dorothy E. Siminovitch shares tremendously valuable career advice. Her career term was Awareness Intelligence. Take the time to pause, relisten to the definition of the term and the questions that Dorothy asks and let us know how easy it was for you to answer them. Listen, learn and respond! Join Hoda and her guests on Career Buzz to increase your Career Literacy.

Guest Bio

Dorothy earned her PhD through Case Western Reserve University’s prestigious Department of Organizational Behavior. She pioneered the application of Gestalt theory, concepts, and practices in the service of professional coaching. She began delivering Gestalt coach training in 1996 after earning her Master Certified Coach credentials from the International Coach Federation (ICF).

Dorothy honed her rich coaching, teaching, and consulting skills while serving in leadership and primary educator roles at renowned Gestalt study centers, and she has expanded her knowledge and wisdom by co-presenting with fellow thought-leaders in the coaching field.

Dorothy specializes in coaching for signature awareness of one’s presence, leadership peak performance, overcoming derailment, and working with high performance leaders, groups, and teams. She presents additional training and development opportunities to ICF conferences and chapters and by invitation to commercial and non-profit organizations worldwide.

Her book, A Gestalt Coaching Primer: The Path Toward Awareness Intelligence (2nd Edition), is recognized as a profound introduction to professional coaching for those well-practiced and novices alike. She is co-developer and co-author of the Awareness 20/20™ leadership assessment instrument, a quantitative analysis of leaders’ awareness and the demonstrated ROI benefits of the self-aware leader.

Dorothy is best known by colleagues, clients, students, and presentation participants as someone whose inviting warmth inspires trust, hope, and intuitive wisdom. She was recently honored by the ICF-Toronto Chapter with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award in Coaching

For career counselling for you or someone you care about, start with a free discovery call: careercycles.com

One of the most alarming aspects of AI is its impact on jobs and the economy. Advances in AI threaten to make many human jobs obsolete.  Which will completely disrupt national and international economies. And, a growing number of AI experts - such as "The Godfather of AI," and Canadian Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton - are warning that the current AI Arms Race between OpenAI, Google and other tech companies, is very dangerous, and might lead to the destruction of the human race. 

Yet - little is being done to prepare for the impending shock.  

Dagan Shani is a filmmaker who explores the future implications of AI and automation on the job market. His 2 documentaries, OBSOLETE and DON’T LOOK UP are available on Youtube. Through interviews with experts and smart editing of film clips from news and talk shows like Jon Stewart, Shani explains the risks and sounds the alarm.  

Join Mark Franklin, and Dagan Shani, from his family’s home in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel in Central Israel, on this episode of Career Buzz.

Career planning is important because it helps you manage your career effectively and achieve your professional goals. By planning your career, you can focus on your overall objectives and not just your immediate plans, which can lead to a more fulfilling and successful career path.  Planning your career allows you to define what you want to achieve and carefully plan the steps to make it happen. It helps you build your career on your own terms and can be an adaptive process that evolves as your life changes. On the other hand, it is often said, letting your career happen without planning can lead to missed opportunities and a lack of direction. But is this true - what happens when you are driven more by opportunities that arise than by knowing where you want to go?

Guest Bio: Civil Engineer Keith Farndale. He has worked in construction management from 1974. He was a “designated consulting engineer” in Ontario. He ran a successful project management consulting and training business based in the GTA from 1993 to 2014 (21 Years). He taught PM non-credit and degree credit courses in the MEng programme at University of Toronto since 1993. (note: now a “retired” PEng in Ontario.)  He holds a BEng in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from McMaster University.

You sit in a favourite comfortable chair, or enjoy that useful kitchen gadget or you clean up using a cool vacuum cleaner; these products were probably designed by an industrial designer. 

Imagine combining artistic talent – together with skills and knowledge in product use, marketing, and materials – to create functional and appealing product designs. Today we talk to 2 industrial designers. ⁠Doreen Stegmuller ⁠and⁠ Morna Gamblin⁠, both experienced industrial designers, and teachers. We'll explore their career stories, design philosophies, and the challenges and opportunities in the field today. Join us for an insightful conversation that’ll take us from Acceptance to Appetite, and from Bike Racks to Biomedical Devices.​ (Learn about Industrial Design in ⁠Canada⁠ | ⁠US⁠)

You sit in a favourite comfortable chair, or enjoy that useful kitchen gadget or you clean up using a cool vacuum cleaner; these products were probably designed by an industrial designer. 

Imagine combining artistic talent – together with skills and knowledge in product use, marketing, and materials – to create functional and appealing product designs. Today we talk to 2 industrial designers. Doreen Stegmuller and Morna Gamblin, both experienced industrial designers, and teachers. We'll explore their career stories, design philosophies, and the challenges and opportunities in the field today. Join us for an insightful conversation that’ll take us from Acceptance to Appetite, and from Bike Racks to Biomedical Devices.​ (Learn about Industrial Design in Canada | US)

Sustainable aviation involves the development and use of renewable or waste-derived aviation fuels, known as Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), which meet sustainability criteria. These fuels are designed to reduce CO2 emissions from aviation, a sector responsible for 12% of CO2 emissions from all transport sources.  The global aviation industry is committed to a sustainable future for aviation, aiming to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. This goal will be achieved through improvements in aircraft and engine efficiency. In this show we focus on issues beyond fuels including design, materials and we unpack some myths with David Zingg and Stephen Armstrong.

Guest Bio: Professor David Zingg is Internationally recognized as a leading researcher in the field of computational fluid dynamics, and has achieved numerous advancements that have increased the competitiveness of Canada's aerospace industry.  As a Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) for the past 37 years, Dr. Zingg has championed the need to reduce the impact of aviation on the environment, and has built a highly respected team to develop technological solutions to address this issue. His research areas include aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, and aerodynamic shape optimization. His current research is focused on applying high-fidelity aerodynamic shape optimization to aircraft design to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft.  To help ensure that results of his research are quickly transferred to practice, Dr. Zingg has consistently engaged industry in his research activities and has close ties with Bombardier and NASA. He holds BSc, MASc and Phd all from the UofT.

When you’re traveling, there’s something that opens up. It’s easier to meet people and good things seem to happen in a more concentrated way. That’s what happened to Mark when he travelled in lovely BC recently. On a transition day between spending time with friends and starting to work, Mark had a Sunday to myself to drive from Vernon to Kamloops in BC’s interior. Looking for a coffee shop, he found the wonderful Bean Scene on Vernon’s 30th Avenue. The servers, Carmela and Hannah were super friendly. Mark noticed the happiest and most colourful art that made him smile. When he decided to buy a couple pieces, Mark contacted the artist Nancy Vince and had a great conversation. Her story of making happy art inspired him and led to her being a guest on this show.

If someone lives to live to age 90, which is now true for over half of Canadians, and they retire at 60, that’s a 30 year, post-work life. At age 60, they have half their life more to live. So, what’s next for them? How will they find purpose and meaning across 30 more years? And who is there to help them design their lifestyle?  

⁠Mike Drak⁠ is a Retirement Lifestyle Designer. After a 30+ year career in financial services, Mike retired. He quickly realized he needed to figure out what to do in his post-work life. Which he set out to do. Now, he’s author of three books: Victory Lap Retirement, Retirement Heaven and Hell and Longevity lifestyle by design.  He’s a public speaker and workshop leader on the topic of non-financial aspects of retirement. And he’s currently training for IRONMAN competition.