Face2Face with David Peck

Wendy talks about shame, guilt, principled pluralism and the walking wounded. She considers how many of us have been socialized to feel disgust for the other and touch on how secrets breed toxicity and ultimately cover up truth and justice.

Biography

Wendy Gritter, M.Div, D.Min cand. is the author of, “Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church.” She has served as executive director of New Direction Ministries since 2002 and is committed to cultivating generous spaces in Christian community where LGBTQ+ people can explore and grow in faith in Christ.

Wendy is married 20 years, a proud mom to three teens and three puppies, enjoys playing strategic board games, and talking films with other movie buffs.

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Steve discusses his passion for clean water, prioritization, volunteerism and mentorship. He reminds us that even Ghandi used the media well to further his cause and speaks about the power of one.

Check out The Cherry Trees Band initiative and their website and find out more about what Steve’s up to on their Facebook page.

And for more info check out this piece in the Globe and Mail and a recent 24 News Article.

Biography

Stephen J. Mallory “Steve” is CEO of Directors Global Insurance Brokers Ltd., a professional services firm which supplies commercial insurance brokerage and risk management advice to some of Canada’s top performing organizations. D&O insurance and Enterprise-wide risk services are two focuses of Directors Global. In December 2012, Steve was appointed to the Board of Directors of VIA Rail Canada by the Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Transport.

He currently Chairs the Governance, Risk and Strategy Committee, sits on the Pension Investment Committee, and leads board risk oversight. Previously, Steve was appointed by Industry Minister Jim Prentice in 2008 to sit on the Board of the Standards Council of Canada, also a Federal Crown Corporation, where he was a member of the Audit Committee and led board risk oversight.

He has spent the last 30 years+ in the risk and insurance industry, and has held executive management and leadership positions with two of Canada’s largest insurance brokerages, including in the role of President and CEO. Over the span of his career, Steve has arranged corporate insurance coverage’s for some of Canada’s largest organizations, and is currently the enterprise risk management (ERM) advisor for significant Canadian entities including an OSFI regulated P&C insurer, and for one of Canada’s largest accounting firms. Steve is regularly quoted in Canadian business magazines, speaks regularly at conferences and seminars, and has written numerous articles and blogs on ERM and Insurance.

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Michelle talks to day about her approach to solving social issues in her community. She speaks about celebrating difference, facilitating community and how we really need to learn how to say hello more often.

Biography Michelle lives in Oakville with her husband Jeff. She has 4 adult children and one teenager. Michelle attended Humber College for the Community Worker program and had great placement and early career opportunities with Parkdale Legal Services, St Christopher House, LAMP Community Health Centre, Flemingdon Park Red Cross and ESL program, Community Living & Christian Horizons. She has been privileged to have been mentored by many community leaders who shared their knowledge of the importance of facilitating community. These experiences have led her to take on the challenge of being the Executive Director of Oak Park Neighbourhood Centre where she has been involved for 15 years. Michelle is passionate about the importance of nurturing neighbourhoods to be the best they can be by encouraging support, connections and contributions for every member of a community

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Brett talks about empowerment, innovation and money. He asks how we can bring the villagers struggling for survival all over the developing world, inside our evolving ‘global village’?

Biography

Brett Hudson Matthews is dedicated to lighting the path out of poverty for the poorest billion rural citizens of our planet. In 2012, following a fellowship at the McLuhan Program for Culture and Technology (University of Toronto), Brett launched My Oral Village, Inc. At Mathwood Consulting Company, a consulting firm he founded, Brett has conducted many evaluations of village finance projects, working in 15 of the world’s poorest countries since 2000. He was Gates Advisor at MicroSave India during 2008-09, where he advised over a dozen MFIs in 12 Indian states.

My Oral Village that is re-inventing the ways in which illiterate and innumerate people manage their finances, so they can escape from the perils of saving at home and get on the path to steady asset accumulation. We are also re-inventing the ways ‘oral’ people create and manage organizations that serve their livelihood and other needs, so they can benefit from their talents as entrepreneurs and as leaders.

With the Canadian Co-operative Association, Brett led the development of the Cambodian Community Finance Network (CCFiN) from 2003-07, preparing the way for the emergence of a national credit union movement in that country.

In the 1990s Brett worked at Metro (now Alterna) Credit Union in Toronto, and served on the credit committee of the Calmeadow Metro Fund, a microcredit fund operating in Toronto.

Brett writes and edits a blog for village finance practitioner www.villagefinance.net, and has published numerous papers on microfinance. He earned his MBA (finance) from the Schulich School of Business at York University and his MA (development studies) at the University of Toronto.

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Martin speaks passionately about tacit knowledge, mentorship, the Master/Disciple relationship, the relief found in realizing that we don’t have to “prove” everything and why the thought of Michael Polanyi matters.

Biography

Martin is a Jesuit priest and a Professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He teaches introduction to world religions (“Lose Your Faith 101″) and various topics in Catholic Theology in the Department of Religious Studies and Theology.

He was born in 1952, Allegany, New York, which makes him a “mountain boy.” Allegany county and Cattaraugus county are the two northernmost counties of Appalachia, according to the federal government.

He has written Personal Catholicism, published by The Catholic University of America Press, 2000. Michael Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher, by Oxford University Press, 2005 and Judging Religion Justly: A Catholic Introduction to Religious Studies, published with Cognella University Readers, 2011.

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Join us today as Annie talks candidly about “why she’s not special”, her fight with a rare form of Cancer, about “we” versus “me”, why she’s so positive and why her life and philosophy has changed so radically over the past few years.

Biography

ANNE PARKER is a Canadian living in Toronto, Ontario.

She was born in 1951 and lost her mother and her sister to cancer. Having survived both breast (1980) and ovarian (1988) cancer, in 1994 Annie and other family members were among a small group of North American families tested for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.

After waiting almost two years, she learned that she does carry the deadly mutation. After surviving a further bout of cancer in 2005, Anne is today a 63-year-old, healthy woman living with a ticking time bomb: the BRCA1 gene mutation.

Anne is now a cancer awareness and genetic testing advocate. The story of her life was the inspiration behind the film, Decoding Annie Parker (2013) starring Helen Hunt and Aaron Paul. Anne’s determination to give hope to other individuals and families afflicted by hereditary cancer led her to write her autobiography, Annie Parker Decoded.

For more info head to her site here.

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Biography

Dr. Brayton Polka is Professor Emeritus of Humanities at York University in Toronto. He is the author of several books and numerous smaller studies in which he focuses on the issue of interpretation. He shows that the hermeneutical relationship between text and reader is based on the golden rule of interpretation: that text and reader each bear the responsibility of interpreting the other as they want to be interpreted by the other. Interpretation is, consequently, the covenantal relationship par excellence.

Professor Polka argues, then, that the values that underlie, that “upbuild” or edify, all hermeneutical effort–e.g., love, freedom, justice, and the dignity of all human beings–are at once biblical and modern. He argues, additionally, that it is only on the basis of understanding that our modern values are biblical from the beginning and that biblical values are modern unto the end that we can deconstruct and so overcome the opposition so prevalent today between theology and philosophy, between faith and reason, and between the religious and the secular. He has written general studies, in which he applies his hermeneutical theory to thinking through the relationship between religion and philosophy, and more specialized, interpretive studies of, in particular, Freud, Spinoza (in two volumes), and Shakespeare.

His most recent books are Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible: From Kant to Schopenhauer and Modernity between Wagner and Nietzsche.

He is presently writing a book provisionally entitled In the Beginning is Philosophy: On Desire and the Good.

See more of what he’s written here.

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Join us for a lively chat about leadership, community wellbeing and why we should care, why democracy matters and why we need to leave the planet in a better place than how we found it.

Biography

David Miller is President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund – Canada, Canada’s foremost conservation organization. The WWF creates solutions to the most serious conservation challenges facing our planet, helping people and nature thrive.

David Miller was Mayor of Toronto from 2003 to 2010 and Chair of the influential C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group from 2008 – 2010. Under his leadership, Toronto became widely admired internationally for its environmental leadership, economic strength and social integration. He is a leading advocate for the creation of sustainable urban economies, and a strong and forceful champion for the next generation of jobs through sustainability.

Mr. Miller has held a variety of public and private positions and university affiliations. He is currently an adjunct Professor at York University and a member of the Board of Directors for Centennial College. In his former capacity as Counsel, International Business & Sustainability at Aird & Berlis LLP, Mr. Miller advised companies and international organizations on issues surrounding the creation of sustainable urban economies.

David Miller is a Harvard trained economist and professionally a lawyer. He and his wife, lawyer Jill Arthur, are the parents of two children.

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Dennis talks in today’s interview about the social determinants of health, the working poor, poverty in Canada, influence, corporate power, income inequality and the power of unions and how they’re all connected.

Biography

Dennis Raphael is Professor of Health Policy and Management at York University, as well as the author of over 250 publications that speak to topics in public policy, poverty, and social determinants of health. Raphael’s extensive list of publications includes Poverty in Canada (2011) and Health Promotion and Quality of Life in Canada (2010).

He is the editor of Tackling Health Inequalities: Lessons from International Experiences (2012) and Social Determinants of Health: Canadian Perspectives (2009) and co-editor of Staying Alive: Critical Perspectives on Health, Illness, and Health Care (2010).

He is co-author of Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts, a primer for the Canadian Public, which has been downloaded over 300,000 times.

Get a free copy of Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts or a recent article here from the Hamilton Spectator.

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Tom talks about why ghosts haunt places not people and about magic, ufology and superstition and why as a sleight of hand magician he’s still believes in the notion of mystery.

Biography

Tom Ogden has never seen a ghost. But as a professional magician for the past forty years, his interest in ghosts, hauntings, and all things paranormal was a given.

Tom’s tours have taken him to more than a hundred countries and all seven continents. He has opened for such acts as Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, and the Osmonds, and he has performed for such celebrities as Johnny Depp, Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander and even President Ronald Reagan. Tom’s television work has included appearances on NBC’s The World’s Greatest Magic and FOX’s The Great Magic of Las Vegas, as well as numerous commercials. He has twice been voted “Parlour Magician of the Year” at the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood.

Mr. Ogden’s first published works included ten years of monthly columns for the magic magazines Genii, M.U.M., and The Magic Manuscript, as well as contributions to The Linking Ring and Magigram magazines. His first book for the general public, 200 Years of the American Circus, was released in 1994. It was named a “Best Reference Work” by both the American Library Association and the New York Public Library, which resulted in Tom’s being profiled in Writers’s Market. Subsequent books included Wizards and Sorcerers, two magic instructional books for the Complete Idiot’s Guide series.

In 1998, Tom Ogden was asked to write The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ghosts and Hauntings (now in its second edition), which led to his forays into research as a “paranormal journalist.” Eight volumes of ghost stories followed for

the Globe Pequot Press “Haunted” series. His updated, second edition of Haunted Hollywood, will be released in August 2015. His next book, Haunted Washington, D.C., is slated for publication next summer.

Ogden has been interviewed on numerous national radio programs and podcasts, taken part in a panel discussion for FX’s American Horror Story, and been consulted by periodicals such as the Los Angeles Times.Tom’s original ghost-related videos can be found on his “Hauntings Channel” on YouTube. A two-time nominee as “Lecturer of the Year” by the Academy of Magical Arts, Ogden is also in demand as a special guest lecturer. He is a member of the Paranormal Investigation Committee of the Society of American Magicians.

Tom Ogden resides in haunted Hollywood, California. He can be contacted through his website (www.tomogden.com) or at www.facebook.com/theghostguy.

You can access the book Haunted Hollywood here.

You can visit his web site here.

And can find his books you can find here.

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