ideacity On The Air

Mark Halpern, CEO of WEALTHinsurance.com®, helps successful business owners, professionals and families with tax-efficient insurance strategies for estate planning, tax minimization and philanthropy.

Anna Van Acker has over 25 years of wide-ranging experience as a pharmaceutical executive at Merck. Anna is dedicated to the optimization of Merck’s product portfolio and marketing strategies on an international scale and strives to ensure access to innovative drugs.

Dr. Avery Broderick, an astrophysicist who holds the Delaney Family John Archibald Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, shared his collaborative discovery of the first ever glimpse of a black hole, with ideacity.

In April 2019, he and colleagues from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration unveiled humanity’s first glimpse of a black hole. The now-iconic image reveals the supermassive black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy, 55 million light years away. Avery helped conceive the globe-spanning EHT experiment, which linked eight telescopes around the world with nanosecond precision, and his team at Perimeter Institute provided crucial analysis of the EHT data. Dr. Broderick is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, and previously held positions at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics.

Alexander Tsiaras has developed a new personalized health platform, StoryMD. StoryMD, is a single, unified platform that translates all your health and wellness data into a visually-rich story, allowing you to track, understand, share, and act on the trajectory of your well-being.

Dr. Tsiaras grew StoryMD out of his already well-established journalism and technology enterprise. His self-styled journalistic career began in 1972 when, at the age of 19, he co-authored his first book?Death Rituals of Rural Greece?(Princeton University Press), and went on to?author Conception to Birth,? Architecture and Design of Man and Woman?and the InVision Guides to Healthy Heart, Sexual Health and Life Blood. Recipient of numerous awards, including the World Press Award, Webby and the prestigious Satava Award for his work in the improvement of medicine through advanced technology. His work has been featured on the covers of Time, New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, LIFE and the London Sunday Times Magazine.

Wade Davis, an Honorary Citizen of Colombia, talks about his passion and the people of this beloved nation. "...two generations of Colombians forced to flee are returning... Colombia is on a threshold of a renaissance."

John Fowler is the Founder and President of The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc., one of the largest and fastest growing Canadian Licensed Producers of cannabis products and brands.

He returns to ideacity’s 20th anniversary to talk about cannabis now, the focus on global legalization, and how it can lead to prosperity and global well being.

"...the idea that legalizing cannabis around the world is a unstobable global force, and if we do it right, It'll be one of the biggest ways that we can leave this world a better place than how we found it."

Jim Harris is a one of North America’s foremost thought leaders, management consultants and authors on disruptive innovation. Association magazine ranked him as one of the nation’s top ten speakers. He works internationally conducting strategic planning sessions with executive teams focusing on future trends, smart technologies and cities, mitigating risk, employee engagement and change.

Mr. Harris’ clients include Association of Research Libraries, Barclays Bank, Certified Management Accountants, Cleantech, Columbia Tristar Pictures, Deloitte, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), IABC, IDG, IBM, IEEE, International Council of Shopping Centers, Johnson & Johnson, MasterCard, Munich Re, NEC, Novartis, SAP, Society of Professional Engineers, the UK Cabinet Office, the World Future Society and Zurich Insurance. He has worked extensively with the healthcare sector, government, financial services, retailers and professional services firms.

Asa Mathat - Artist & Photographer - shows the ideacity audience how to take better photos in this informative session. A don't miss for anyone who sees themselves as a phone photographer.

Libby Znaimer is a prominent Canadian journalist specializing in politics, health, and lifestyle issues. Libby also writes a regular column for Zoomer Magazine, and recently completed a documentary entitled “Cancer Saved My Life.” In this talk, Libby sets the stage for Diane Francis ideacity talk.

Diane Francis is a well-known journalist, author, broadcaster, and Editor-at Large at The National Post. In her ideacity talk, Diane shares her story on surviving cancer.

Irwin Cotler speaks at ideacity's 20th anniversary conference in a session called "Democracy & Freedom of Speech vs. Disinformation in the age of Surveillance"

Hon. Irwin Cotler, The chair of the Raoul Wallenberg centre for Human Rights & an Emeritus Professor of law at McGill University, speaks on the resurgent of global authoritarianism and what that means for democracies. Cotler provides insights on current and historical political and human rights events including crimes against humanity, state orchestrated humanitarian suffering, and weaponization of food and medicine.

“We meet on the 25th anniversary of the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda…What makes the genocide of the Tutsi so unspeakable … is that this genocide was preventable. Nobody could say that we did not know. We knew, but we did not act.”

Hon. Irwin Cotler is the chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, an Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, former Minister of Justice, Attorney General of Canada, longtime Member of Parliament, and an international human rights lawyer.

Marie Henein speaks about the Rule of Law during ideacity's 20th anniversary conference in a session called "Democracy & Freedom of Speech vs. Disinformation in the age of Surveillance".

"I thought that democracy had layers to it. And not for a second did it occur to me that a government elected by the majority of the population, enforced the will of the majority to the exclusion of minority interests and protections."

Ms. Henein is a senior partner at Henein Hutchison LLP recognized in Canadian Lawyer as one of the country’s Top Ten Litigation Boutiques. She has been counsel on numerous high profile cases. Her experience includes a wide range of criminal, regulatory, quasi-criminal and cross border litigation representing individual, corporate and institutional clients both at the trial and appellate level. She acts in an advisory capacity in a range of complex matters. Ms. Henein has frequently argued at all levels of court including the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.

She received her LL.B. in 1989 from Osgoode Hall Law School and her Masters in Law from Columbia University in 1991. Ms. Henein is the Past President of The Advocates’ Society, a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a member of the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute. She is a founder of the Ontario Court of Appeal’s Appellate Pro Bono Program, a program that provides free appellate services to unrepresented individuals at the Court of Appeal. Ms. Henein has lectured extensively throughout the country and is the editor of numerous publications.

Ms. Henein has been repeatedly recognized as one of the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers by Canadian Lawyer Magazine and was the 2013 recipient of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Laura Legge Award. Most recently in 2017, she was awarded The Law Society Medal.